Easy Holiday Decorating: Cover your books!

No time to decorate for the holidays this year? No worries, Ellenor has some tips on easy, quick decorating that can have a big impact on your space...

Go back to your high school days and cover your books! Paper bags, holiday paper, or even just white paper can make a huge difference to your space. Bookshelves create a great design opportunity in any space, and if not done carefully they can be an eyesore. Covering your books will instantly make your shelves seem more chic, well designed, and will mask any faux pas!

Covering just a few or all of your books you will create a big change in your space. By eliminating all of the contrasting colors of the books, you create a uniform and neutral backdrop that will allow the holiday decor you place in front of it to really shine!

You can also cover just a few of your books and place them in a way that will create a holiday shape, or outline. Just a few covered books can create the shape of Christmas tree on your bookshelf!

And if the idea of breaking out the tape and scissors scares you away, you can cheat a bit by just slipping a piece of paper around the spine of the book. That's how the bookshelf tree was done in the photo above! It's a huge time saver and still looks great!

Until next time... happy decorating!

How To Arrange a Bookcase

Bookcases can be a blessing and a curse to the overall design of a room. A blessing because, when done properly, will add beauty and comfort to a room. A curse because, what is the “proper way?” Here are a few tips and tricks to arranging a beautiful bookcase and containing the clutter:

1. Take account of what you have. If you don’t have a lot of books, plan on putting the books you have on the bottom shelves and leave the upper shelves for accessories. Bookcases should visually be heavier on the bottom and lighter on the top.

2. Think about how you’ll use the bookcase. Arranging the books by genre, subject, or author may be the most useful. However, if the bookcase will be more of a visual piece, then arranging the books by color looks great. You can also do a combination of these techniques. Whatever is most useful to you and looks good!

3. Start placing your books. Put your best looking books at eye level and try to hide the most ragged ones. Remove the dust covers (unless they are collectable) to display the books in all thier gorgeous glory. Sometimes books have beautiful leather and gold embossing which really add beauty and warmth to the bookcase.

4. Paperbacks need a place too. Mix these in with hardbacks and don’t group too many of these together because they tend to all be a similar small size which does not fill up a shelf very well. Be mindful of book sizes when placing books on the shelves together and try not to put really tall books next to short ones.

5. Mix up the orientation of the books. Place some upright and lay others on their side. These stacks of books can serve as ‘bookends’ to the rows.

6. Don’t over crowd the shelves, leave a little bit of breathing room on each shelf. And never pile excess books, magazines, or papers on top of a row of books.

7. Accessorize with some non-book items: picture frames and other knick-knacks work great as bookends, sitting on top of a stacked pile of books, and breaking up a long row of books. You can also hang a framed artwork over some of the shelves if you have enough space (or too much!)

8. Put telephone books, loose papers or magazines out of site. Use nice looking magazine files or storage boxes to hide these items.