I recently shared this image – a collage of home decor inspo – on my ‘gram asking my community to guess what home project I’m working on next in quarantine – If you guessed the kitchen shelves, you guessed right! I love our DIY exposed shelves and styling them is an on-going process that I secretly really enjoy. I’ve gone through many iterations of my style via these shelves – From a modern black and white phase to highlighting my favorite glassware. Today, it stands as half functional and half decorative and I intend on keeping it that way. I love the extra shelf space to display my favorite dishware, which I’ve come to collect. (B*itches love bowls, am I right?)
We have two shelves to work with, the lower shelf is where I keep the more accessible items (bowls, plates) and the top shelf is where I get to have some fun. Someone asked me where I get my home decor inspiration. And someone else asked me how to not make your shelves look “basic.” I plan to hopefully answer both of those questions in today’s post and provide you with some unique and fun pieces I’ve come across recently to shop for your own shelf styling project!
In terms of inspiration, I love using Instagram’s Save feature along with Pinterest. Recently, I went back to my all of the saved photos I had in the home category and parred them down a bit – Deleting anything I didn’t really love anymore or that felt outdated. For example, I used to love boho decor but not so much anymore. Also, anything super feminine or pink had to go. And, while doing this, I tried to pay close attention to what made me love a certain image to the next. Afterwards I came to a realization – All of the photos left featured what looked like vintage or older, more rustic items in them.
See what I mean?
Then, I did the same thing on Pinterest. Pinterest is really cool these days because you can use the “More Ideas” function to select something you like in a photo and then find similar images, with similar items in them. If you ever have trouble figuring out the name or style of something in a photo it seems to help (Otherwise use ImageSource.com). You can also directly shop most images now on Pinterest.
SEE MY HOME PINTEREST BOARD HERE
In terms of what to buy, I mentioned vintage – I’ve been sourcing items for my shelves that either are vintage or look like they are. I much more prefer something wood or clay and textured versus glossy or gilded (or gold) these days. I found a bunch of cute things on Etsy and I’m also loving McGhee & Co. right now. Shop some of my finds below!
Let me know if you have any questions and stay tuned for an update shelf-styling feature on my Instagram – Coming soon!
