Tips for Decorating with Collections

Decorating with collections adds your own personal style to your room.  Choose items that personally move you.  Your living space represents your story.  Trips you've taken, antiques from past generations or photos of loved ones represent your family.

 Arrange your collections with a since of balance.  Decorating in odd numbers is a great tip.  I have three crystal candlesticks on one side with two on the other creating a group of five.

 Creating a collection to honor loved ones brings warmth to the room.  My mother passed on Valentine's Day and when I sit in my living room I can glance at photos of her when she was sixteen in Oklahoma City.  I can remember her as a loving grandmother to my two sons.  The Lord's Prayer in gold was her favorite scriptures.  When my dad passed she said it every night to calm her fears when living alone.  The blue flowered vase is a memory when we traveled to Birmingham. Alabama to revisit her first home.  We stopped at antique stores along the way from Dallas.  I put a feather inside to remind me of my beloved ducks.  God covers us with his feathers.

 A collection of artwork from my Uncle Alvis he purchased while serving in WWII brings a calm to know ancestors are a connection with the present.  Their stories give us a since of purpose.  He was the one who fixed the engine on the ship when no one else could.

 Royal Dalton figurines were my mother's favorite.  They tell a story of women from the past.  John Doulton founded Doulton Lambeth pottery in 1815 with John Watts and a woman named Martha Jones..  He produced the pottery in a factory in Lambeth, England.  The business specialized in stoneware products such as bottles and even salt glaze sewer pipes.  In 1871 John Dalton's son promoted the business by offering work to designers and artists from Lambeth School of Art.  He employed 300 artists who designed the decorative figurines from stoneware or terracotta.  They must have had their inspiration from women from the 19th century.

 One tip for collections is create a boundary.  I purchased this eterger in Temecula, California.  It provides the perfect boundary for mementos from our travels as a family.  When I look at each piece of my collection it creates a memory.

Unite the items.  I love to collect porcelain  that comes in blue.   Uniting the items with one color sends one simple message.  

  Whatever you collect, remember it tells what you love.  Choose your star items and display them in a curios cabinet.  I purchased this one at an auction.  It came from a family in Europe.  I love the gold swirls.  

Think about what your collection represents.  I chose to add photos with my children as babies.  It is an accumulation of history.