Creative Ideas for Displaying Collections
Maybe your collection started out innocently enough. Maybe you travel a lot and picked up a snow globe or two. Before long, the word got out and everyone from the babysitter to Great Aunt Edna started giving you snow globes. Before you know it, well, you have a collection.Maybe you do not have room to display your collection or maybe you are wondering how you can incorporate your unique collection into a pretty display. Perhaps you are the kind of person that started a collection for a specific purpose. Maybe you love cats and you started buying cat figurines and you need room to display your collection. Now you have a lot of them and they are taking over your space. Whatever you collection might be, you can find fun and easy ways to display your collection.
One thing is for sure though when it comes to collecting “stuff”. Collections are a great way to express what you love and your personal style. By displaying your collections, you can let everyone see your seashells from all your trips to the beach or your Mickey Mouse ear hats from your Disney World trips. Collections can be anything you love and you should display what you love, proudly. The next time you want to display your collection, consider the following display tips for a eye-pleasing collection.
Before you display your collection, you can start by organizing your collection. Take out your items and take a good, hard look at what you have. If you have too many items, maybe you can consider paring down your collection. If you have limited space, you might not be able to find a place to display your whole collection. Sometimes, you may not be able to part with any of them, and that is okay, too. However, if you do not absolutely love one piece of your collection or maybe it is broken or does not really fit, you can find a new home for it or display it in another part of the home.
If you have stored away parts of your collection, now is the time to get it out of those dusty boxes and start enjoying the things you love. You can display your items because you started your collection for a reason. There is no reason why you should not enjoy it. You can find a place to put almost anything. Do not think that collections just belong on a shelf either. Think outside the box for new places for display purposes. Do you have old silverware hiding in a drawer? How about constructing a beautiful mobile to hang? Like hats? Get a nice hat rack and add them to your entryway for a welcoming look. Your walls can be a great place to display your treasures, too. Display your collection of baskets, hats, old quilts, clothing and plates by hanging on the pieces on your wall.
Now that you have taken a good look at your collection, you can separate your collection by color. This is an easy way to group your collection when you are ready to display. If you collect Fiestaware, maybe you can hang some of your more prized pieces on your kitchen wall by color. Find the ones that match your kitchen color scheme and start there. If you have several shelves throughout your home, this is also a good way to decide what to put where. You can make a nice display by grouping like-colors together. If you have a white bathroom, find a shelf and put all those white cat figures in there. Grouping your items by color give a unified look in a place where lots of color may not work. However, if you have several smaller collections to display, you can do the same thing. Say you have a few glass paperweights, a few perfume bottles and a few shot glasses. Mix and display your collection together and then separate by color. It works!
The next thing you can do to help display your beloved collection is to then you can group your items by size or shape. When you collect, you there may not be a rhyme and reason to what you collect, however, everything has a size and shape.This works well when you are displaying your collection on a shelf. Think odd numbers when arranging a collection. Three candles of varying sizes will be more visually pleasing than two candles that are the exact same size sitting next to each other. You can put taller items near the back with smaller pieces in the front.
If you truly do not have enough space to display your collections all the time, think about rotating your pieces according to the seasons or holidays. You may have a kitchen full of roosters, but why not use the darker ones in the fall. Use your lighter colored objects in the spring. If you have a big collection of rabbits, of course, the perfect time to bring them out of hiding is in the spring. Maybe you can bring out your teddy bear collection at Christmas and sit them under your tree for a festive display.
You should enjoy your collection, whether it is vacation treasure or antique quilts. Use a little creativity and you will find that you can enjoy what you have during the whole year.
