End of Summer Shelf Styling with Zinnias

It's always sad to see the end of summer come, but there is still so much beauty to be enjoyed before that happens! I'm sharing a creative waay to style your shelves using beautiful cut zinnia blooms and a few flea market or thrift store finds you might have around your house!

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Can we just make the sunshine stay for as long as possible? It seems like everywhere I look, people are sharing faux fall stems, candles, and pumpkin spice this-or-that. While it's easy to want to be lured into cozy season...it will be here before we know it (and hangs on for way too long, IMO). I want to eek out every bit of warm weather that I can, so I decided to get a little creative with some of summer's bounty in my home office.

A few years ago, I had a hair-brained idea to have the doors removed from the closet in my office and have a rolling bookshelf installed. While I do love it, if I had it to do over again, I would definitely make a few adjustments. First of all, the guy who built the bookshelf really built it to last. It weighs so much!! It's a bit of a hassle to move back and forth on the barn door track because of that, but it's still worth it in my mind. Also, at the time, graphic wood elements were all the rage. Looking back, I would have chosen a bit more of a classic design, but that's a life lesson for another day.

Overall, the shelves are a fun element to style with all my tchotchkes, found mostly at thrift stores and estate sales. I also love to add plants to the shelves too! You can see here that I always have a few plant cuttings propagating and also, an extremely long and wonky kelanchoe. I actually bought it at an estate sale for $1 at least a decade ago. It blooms every so often and keeps getting longer...I'd hate to cut it at this point, but it does look rather scraggly.

I was at the thrift store the other day and found another blue Ball jar. I have so many, yet not enough. You know the struggle, I'm sure. The price was right, so I grabbed it, knowing I would find a use for it. Around the same time, I had been scrolling INSTAGRAM, and saw two different accounts share late-summer cut blooms, displayed in jars or bottles, lined up on shelves. While the displays were very different in style and color, they were both so striking in the way they showed off the beauty of the flowers! I knew instantly that I wanted to use the blue Ball jar for something similar.

And so...the shelf styling project in my office started taking form.

All I had to do was find the energy and time to do it. You know how it goes... We have ideas, but actually executing them can be something entirely different. I decided that I needed to do something frivolous and creative and just for me, so I finally took the time to clear off all the clutter that had been collecting on the rolling bookcase, wiped off the shelves, and got to work.

After scouring a few different locations in the house, it turns out I have about 21 blue Ball jars not being used for something else. I removed all the lids (saving them of course), lined them up on a couple of the shelves, and then tried to fill in the gaps with items in a similar blue hue.

I forgot to mention!! The other piece of this project puzzle are the five vintage turquoise MCCOY PLANTERS I got at an estate sale recently!! When I saw all the McCoy pieces on built-in shelves in a breezeway sunroom in the listing photos...I knew I needed to go to that sale and grab some for myself. I wanted to buy more, but the larger ones were more than I wanted to spend and the smaller ones really aren't the best for planting...more just for display...in my opinion. So, I looked for the ones that I could find the most of in the same color. I knew they'd have the best impact displayed as a grouping. I had to ask a few people to help me get a couple off higher shelves, since most were too scared they drop them. Thankfully, a nice older man offered to help me.

Okay...back to the shelf display. I had the blue Ball jars lined up, the plant cuttings and kelanchoe I needed to accommodate, and the recently acquired MCCOY PLANTERS. After a trip down to my "crap room" where I keep all my extra decor, I came up with a few books, a stack of ironstone soap dishes, a seltzer bottle, and three corbels (I have a total of four) from my great-grandparents' farm house. Once I had everything arranged the way I liked it, I counted how many jars I needed flowers for, and headed out to the garden! I had eighteen jars total, but ended up cutting a few extra zinnias because they are definitely on their way out and I want to enjoy them as much as possible!

The other threat to the zinnias, other than time and heat, is goldfinches. And...I'm not even mad about it! I just learned recently that, goldfinches nest toward the end of July, which makes sense, since I've started to see an uptick in their population in our yard. They especially love the zinnia seeds and are eating their fill! I try to plant enough for myself to enjoy both outside and cut indoors...plus, plenty for the goldfinches. Although, once they get started, the flower beds really start to look messy. I don't care, though, because I enjoy the birds so much!

I absolutely love the way this display turned out. I love the simplicity of it, the color combination, and that the zinnias get to be styled in such a unique way! I didn't intend for it all to have a patriotic feeling, but it really does...with the reds and pinks of the zinnias, the white of the shelves, and the blue of the jars and decor! I'm drawn more and more to this color combo, both from the Americana standpoint and that it shows up a lot in French and British design as well. I especially love it when the colors have a muted and worn look to them.

I hope that this little creative project has encouraged you to think outside the box when you're styling your shelves. I know you might not have a giant sliding bookshelf to design with, but maybe you have a little spot open you could play around with. Look in your stash of vintage goodies or maybe visit a thrift store, estate sale, or flea market ('tis the season!). I'm always on the lookout for new (vintage or antique) pieces to add to my collections that I can group together for big impact. I think everything about this shelf decor styling says WOW...not because anything is overly special on its own, but because of the repetition of theme and color. Similar items grouped together will always have more impact than scattered around the house on their own.

I'd love to see your shelf styling, especially if you're doing something with fresh cut blooms! Post to your Instagram stories if you do something creative and tag me @hilaryprall!

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