The Best Christmas Shelf Idea Inspired By Anthropologie
by emily piepenbrink
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. You can see my Christmas paper chain tree here. 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 about 20 instagram 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.
Love a Christmas snowflake moment? Here’s how I styled more shelves with snowflakes!
More Anthro 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 2024!
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I believe we are called to a life of creativity, and I’m trying to show up for that every day. When I’m not designing website templates, brands or illustrations, I’m getting my glitter shoes metaphorically muddy with my own artistic pursuits. I’m a maker, a quilter, a Christmas enthusiast, a baker, and a truly abysmal (but passionate) gardener.
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