Anthropologie Christmas Windows Inspired My New Shelves

I don’t window shop so much as I window display shop at Christmas time. I love to see the window displays and try to figure out what they’re made of and how I can replicate it! My favorite to see is always Anthropologie’s. I try to see at least two Anthropologie stores because they usually differentiate a little, and that’s aesthetically enjoyable for me. This year, my husband finished our living room blue bookshelves right before Christmas. I hadn’t prepared any Christmas decorations for them, but I didn’t want to leave them empty either! So I had a last minute, Anthropolgoie inspired, Christmas shelf idea that I knocked out in two days!

My Christmas Shelf Idea Inspiration

This isn’t my first Christmas project that’s Anthropologie inspired. But this one is a much more abstract decor project than I’ve done before. I also had no budget for this, I needed to keep it under $50. I was aiming for a lot of bang for my buck. I remembered several years ago Anthropologie had a Christmas window display theme of snowflakes, and each store had original snowflake designs. It was beautiful, and I think I have several Pinterest posts of that display saved. Here’s a couple to get an idea of what I was jumping off from:Now, again, I had a limited budget and time to get this done. So I knew my snowflakes would be on a smaller scale, but I loved the idea of it snowing inside my living room. 

How I Brought My Anthro-Inspired Christmas Shelves To Life

Luckily, I’ve got a little experience making oversized snowflakes, like I did for this previous Christmas project. This project was going to need to be out of different materials, but I had some idea of scope and size. 

This entire project made it under my $50 budget and two day timeframe! I purchased insulation foam and a hot knife and used white paint and my own DIY-ed fake snow to finish it off. I probably should share my recipe for my Greatest Ever Faux Snow, but that’s for another day. 

From the start I had planned to have my snowflakes separated by the shelves of the bookcase. You could easily attached them to the edges, but I think having them broken up by the shelves makes it more visually interesting. 

I started by drawing out my snowflakes onto the foam. Perfection is boring, so I wasn’t worried about everything being exact. After that, I cut the snowflakes out of the foam with my new hot knife. I am obsessed with this thing. It’s not the highest quality version, but it does a great job! I’ve got it saved in my Amazon Shop if you need one. For all hot knives though- only cut outside with great ventilation. To make sure I was being extra safe after I’m done I usually strip off and wash all of my clothes as soon as I’m done. 

After my snowflakes were cut out, I painted the front and back white. We had some remnants from our bathroom renovation, so I had some nice white interior paint. After the first coat was dry, I painted on a heavy coat on the front side again and covered it with fake snow. Push your fake snow into the wet paint a little to make sure it grabs it. Once they were dry it was easy to set them into our shelves! 

Christmas Shelf Idea Perfection

I am obsessed with how these turned out. And, because it’s snowflakes I can leave them up all through winter. This Christmas shelf idea adds a little bit of whimsy to the room. And, I kind of feel like I’m living in an Anthro store, which is not a bad thing at all. 

These built in bookshelves look incredible. I love that we decided to take them over the doorway. Our living room really needed some character, and these shelves add a lot. Plus, this blue (Behr’s Dolphin Blue) is blue without screaming “It’s a boy” or “I love the ocean,” if you know what I mean. It’s got some grey and cream in it that tone it down. 

The tree in our living room was a modern globe light and vintage tinsel wonder, and the scale and color of these snowflake shelves worked well with it.

More Anthropologie Inspired Christmas Decor This Year

What I love about my Anthro-inspired decor is that it feels less like putting little things here and there and more like a design installation. The scale and playfulness feels refreshing in my home decor journey. While I love shopping as much as the next person, I have some big things I’m saving for so these cost-effective DIYs are great. Here’s to more Christmas shelf ideas in 2026!