Hi friends, welcome back to the blog and my first real fall post! A big thank you to Cindy at County Road 407 for giving us this Fall Mantel Shelf Styling as our challenge this month. I am sooo excited to share my shelf styling with you. Let’s get this fall inspo rolling…
Mrs. Wilder’s books feature in today’s shelving as risers and such, since I still have mine which my mother bought for me when I was 11-12 years old. They have the perfect patina of age now, so what’s not to love? 🙂
I am totally happy for this challenge as it hits two birds with one stone for me:
- I get to finish working on a wall project I’ve been fiddling with this summer (post soon!).
- Plus, I also get to revamp this shelving unit to the left of our fireplace, which we are decorating today. It really needs it!
French Ethereal: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest
A little shameless plug for the blog: It’s a first for me putting my photo on a Pinterest Challenge page, but if you’ve never been here before, you might like to follow my blog and any of my social media channels. I hope you will!
We have some really amazing ideas today for your fall decorating, friends. Every particpant is such a talented designer and this challenge really shows it. Here is our inspiration photo in all its soft wheat, taupe & chocolatey brown glory from Michele at Vintage Home Designs.
If you are coming over from Laura’s blog at Decor to Adore for the first time, welcome! Didn’t you just love how her hutch is decorated? I love Laura’s style!!! Plus, she’s a cousin to my absolute favorite author of all time, Laura Ingalls Wilder. <3
What I am focusing on from our inspiration
Love how browns are back in fashion!
MIchele has used subtle creamy pumpkins tucked into her shelves along with brown transferware, a couple of baskets, and a few more creamware pieces.
Of course, she also has a fun shelf of neutral books, and bits of nature’s beauty with faded hydrangea blooms, small taupe ball topiaries, and more darker browns hues brought in with pinecones at the top in her display.
This look can easily span all through fall with the quiet white pumpkins and the pinecones leading right up to Christmas.
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How I styled my shelves for fall plus making more shelves and getting them painted (my mini DIY project)
I knew right away, with the small tureen from our inspiration photo, that I wanted to incorporate this large soup tureen as my main focal point “vase” to hold a few of the hydrangeas I have dried.
I did a quick mock-up similar to Michele’s using small brown transferware plates found at Hobby Lobby this summer. (not sponsored, I wish!!)
Once I removed our wedding portrait and all the usual internet equipment from these shelves, it was obvious I needed to paint. Plus, there were only three shelves as a television must have been here on the bottom section at one time.
DIY in Two Days!
Mr. Ethereal got home early Friday night after work so after a quick dinner, I put him to work drilling more holes in the side boards. He knew I was on a time crunch!
A Lowe’s trip was in order after working outside in the garden on Saturday morning, and the perfect size board was found and cut on site. It even came primed and ready for paint!
The weather was hot so I was able to flip each board and paint every hour, making this part of the DIY project go quickly; both boards were done and drying hard overnight, ready to install on Sunday.
Painting the inside of the cabinet turned out to be the major challenge…
I realized that once the first coat was on the inside of the cabinet case, one coat would not be enough, even with sanding first to rough up the old paint. It took 3 coats of paint rolled on with a roller made for cabinets and furniture.
This type of small roller gives a nice, clean, even coat, but it still took three full coats to get everything even. I painted this lower cabinet bright white, like the walls (Valspar Eggshell Interior, Ultra White) right out of the can; however, I may go and paint it back to the original Antique White.
We took one of the original shelves in to color-match and Valspar’s Antique White was the match to what the original color is (same base of Valspar Eggshell, as above).
I believe this color used to be called Navajo White, which is what builders all over Southern California use as their color “white” of choice. It’s a nice off-white, not as glaring as this bright white. I do like the contrast of the interior with its bright white against the softer antique white on the shelves themselves. 🙂
Now the Fun Part ~ Decorating!
Time for the magic! Let’s dissect these shelves and see how to arrange one against the other for contrast and balance. 🙂
Studying our inspiration piece, I brought in a fall painting I had along with a photograph placing them at opposite ends of the shelving unit ~ one on the bottom right, bottom shelf and the other in the upper left, top shelf.
Michele used her basket on the bottom shelf as the counterbalance to the framed mirror she used on her upper shelf, then had a second basket on the next-down shelf.
I brought in a similar basket and put in on the bottom shelf, too. Our inspiration piece had several creamy faux pumpkins, so I gathered a couple of my glittered & Gorilla Glue pumpkins which I had decorated when I first started blogging 11 years ago.
I also brought in a couple of faux velvet pumpkins and a couple of new cream minis I picked up for this challenge.
I then added in a pumpkin-shaped cutting board with its warm brown tones used here as a riser for the tableware. Our inspiration piece used several small plates and saucers stacked as risers.
I like that practically anything can be used to lift up an object to give it more height and weight!
Definitely use your imagination when it comes to creating a riser: book stacks or a single title, small boxes, mini drawers, boxed puzzles, you name it!
My focal shelf eventually became this photo (above) but it started out with the small brown transferware plates, like our inspiration piece (below). I felt the little plates didn’t add enough height in the back, plus…
I like both versions of this shelf, but I wanted to use the small plates as “bookends” with the shelf of books, so I brought in a creamware vegetable platter to place along the back wall behind the creamy soup tureen. I did bring in one of the new brown transferware dinner plates (matches the smaller plates) and stacked that against the plattter, then decided to add a third plate, a square cake plate, for subtle visual interest.
Layering is what keeps our shelves interesting, and it’s fun to add and subtract items until the whole feels and looks finished. 🙂
I brought in symmetry with the small plates and little pumpkins surrounding the books, and larger pumpkins on either side of the next shelf up.
My goal was to balance the dark browns of the top shelf’s cat photograph* and my grandfather’s old musical liquor jug from the Prohibition Era with the creams of the books and the whites of the pumpkins and the resting angel.
*This is the first good photograph I ever took ~ Merry was our barn cat who would occasionally come inside the house but preferred to live in the barn (whose sister was Pippin) ~ back when I was 16 years old. I was just beginning to understand photography and the stories photographs could tell. I went out to milk our goats on a Saturday morning and had taken my camera with me to shoot the pretty sunlight (a little Kodak Instamatic 110-speed camera my parents had given me for Christmas, taken with color film). Merry turned her head towards me and I just lifted the camera to my eyes, aimed and snapped. She was a beautiful cat. <3
And here are the newly completed and arranged shelves in the center cabinet. The rest of the unit holds our many DVDs, Blu-Ray disks and even some old VCR tapes we took of our kids when they were small. It’s a mishmash but I am loving how the display shelves really add their decor as the main focus now! 🙂
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Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope you gleaned some new ideas which you can incorporate into your own little château. I appreciate any comments you’d like to leave!
Up next we have Carol from Bluesky at Home’s beautifully decorated book shelf! Carol always has wonderful tips for decorating and I know you will love what she has for you. Everyone’s posts are linked below.
Enjoy!!!
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Happy decorating, mes amis,
