Last week I made a little day trip down to Indianapolis to do some decorating with my sister…Can you imagine a day more fun than that"!  She and her husband bought and renovated their home about a year and a half ago, and she wanted to focus on decorating some of the areas in her house that were still, well, undecorated.  The area we chose to focus on on that particular day was the open shelves next to her fireplace.  Open shelves can be tricky, so I thought I’d share with you how to style open shelves for an uncluttered look.
* Sources for most of the items we used to decorate are at the bottom of this post!
How to Style Open Shelves: 3 Tips for an Uncluttered Look
Here is a look at the shelves before we began.  These shelves are removable and adjustable, and I had actually already suggested that she remove one of the shelves before I took this picture.  Before she removed one of the shelves they were too close together, which really limited what we could do with them.  After she took one of the shelves out (as you can see below) we now had more height per shelf to work with.
 
Tip 1:  Balance smaller pieces with larger accents
My sister already had enough smaller pieces, so my goal was to incorporate some larger accents (like the wood corbels, wire baskets, blue vases, and wood dough bowl to fill the space.  If you use too many smaller decor pieces, it ends up looking junky and cluttered. By using larger pieces, you fill space without ...