How to: 4 Ways to Decorate with Books

So…notice anything new? The blog got an update!

(If you are not actually on my site right now, you might not be able to tell. You should hop on over on a desktop when you can. Because design work is really hard for me, guys.)

I’ve been meaning to give the ol’ girl a little makeover for a while, but this week I finally got around to it. Not too shabby, eh? I also learned how to crop circles and overlay patterns in Photoshop. It was a big week.

Speaking of little updates, have we discussed my book collection? I love owning loads of books. One day, I hope to have a library or at least a giant wall of them somewhere in my home, but for now, I settle for two little shelves in the living room.

The problem? My book collection is often busting at the seams — and my sweet little shelves can only do so much.

Fortunately, I’ve found a few ways to incorporate the books into the rest of our apartment’s decor. This solves the problem of the shelves being too crowded, and provides me completely free decor ideas. Win-win!

Here are my four favorite ways to decorate with books:

Anyone who has been in my apartment knows that I am extremely efficient with the amount of space we have. Our apartment is by no means large (heyyyy, NYC real estate…), but we’ve made the most of what we have. A perfect example? Our kitchen cabinets. For whatever reason (cough…they’re cheap…cough), our building owners didn’t built our kitchen cabinets up to the ceiling. That means there’s about two feet of dead space above the cabinets. Dead. As. A. Doornail.

Rather than mourn the lost cabinet space forever, though, I instead choose to look at the tops of the cabinets as a long-lost display shelf. I use it to store my dutch oven, the crock pot, cake stands, and, of course, all of our cookbooks. The best part? The books add a bit of color to an otherwise bland (and dead) spot.

It has to be said: Our desk is really hard to photograph well. I feel like it looks nice in person, but it always comes across a little shabby in photos. But the point is, a few weeks ago I was on a mission to make our desk look a little more deliberate and involved in the rest of our decor. One way to do that (that was TOTALLY free)? Adding a few of our most colorful books to prop up our desk light.

Another great place for a colorful stack of books? Our coffee table. When we first moved to our apartment, I was totally bummed out that we couldn’t paint. As a result, though, I’ve found a bunch of other ways to bring color into this totally blank slate. (Besides, given how fickle I can be with decor, it’s probably better that I couldn’t commit to one color in the beginning.)

A few of my favorite hardbacked books make a great focal point for the room. Bonus: My bookshelves are starting to look at lot less jam-packed.

And finally, we mix a little nerdiness with a little bit of girlie-girl by using a stack of books to display perfume on our dresser. (And because I love a theme, obviously I tried to pick a few of my girliest books for this pile.)

How do you store your books?

Stop Me if You've Heard This One - One girl's attempt to use her words.
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