Spring Mantel 2021

I love decorating the mantel. It doesn’t have to be a special occasion. As a matter of fact, I change something on the mantel just about every time I clean the house. I feel like our mantel is such a focal point in the living area that I have to do it justice. This year my Spring mantel features objects from around the farmhouse. I shopped our home to create pretty and feminine layers with lots of china and flowers. Why? Firstly, because I’m tired of buying new stuff and secondly, I love flowers! Here’s what I used and how to recreate a mantel like this in your home. (If you’d like to.)

Choosing a Theme for my Spring Mantel

Deciding on a theme for this year’s Spring mantel was easy. In 2020, I kept the accessories on the mantel to a minimum with a simple row of vases with white blooms. It was simple and netural so this year I’m all about colour and cottage style feels. I wanted to bring more colour in to celebrate the season so I decided to go all out and have a vintage floral theme with LOTS of pinks and white.

What I Used to Create this Mantel

My 2021 Spring Mantel is a look you can easily recreate. Just pick a theme you love, look around your home and get started. I had of the pieces I needed already and did not need to purchase anything to decorate.

The first thing I did was collect the items I needed:

• Vintage cups and sandwich plates with flowers on them
• Bird accessories from in my stash of bits and bobs. You’ll notice I reuse a lot of accessories from other areas in the farmhouse regularly. Shopping our home is not only free, it means I’m not buying more ‘stuff’ I don’t really need. Clutter and storage are kept to a minimum. I often move things from one room to another to give a different look.
• Camillea flowers from the garden.
• little vintage bottles
• Cloches
• two floral watercolours that were gifted to me by a follower. I framed these using the timber frames I used for my farm art work. (The other one is now on the buffet) I’ve never found a place to permanantly hang these pretty paintings but I love how they look in these timber frames and will deifinitley be finding a place for them somewhere now.

How I Did It

I began by adding the paintings to the lower mantel and the sandwich plates to the higher one. Because the mantel is in two pieces, it’s like two mantels but I wanted to keep the colour palette consistent to tie both mantels together. The looks are different, however. When adding these ‘base’ layers I staggered the heights to create interest. One of the reasons I put this layer up before I began was because the red brick of our chinmey breast is notorious for making things look invisible. Adding a white background meant pieces I placed in the foreground could be seen in their best light.

After making my background, I collected a number of camellia flowers from the garden and trimmed the stems to fit in the cups and bottles. We are so fortunate to have four different camellias in the garden. Their blooms are varying shades of pink so they coordinate with each other.

I deliberately chose a range of different sized vessels to put the flowers in. I wanted the heights to be varied to create interest along the length of the mantel. When I grouped them, I did this in a random way too so my display would look collected and informal.

The next step was to add the cloches. These have been on heavy rotation in our kitchen/living room since I bought them a month or so back. I love them! I stacked some plates, added a flower in water and covered the plates with the cloches. Then I played around with the arrangement of objects until it felt balanced and I was happy with the look.

The last touch was the little birds I scattered amongst the arrangement. These add to the Spring theme of my mantel.

How You Could Do It

To recreate a look like this

• Keep the colours minimal. I am using base palette of pink and white.
• Think of layers. You need a background and foreground.
• Stagger the heights of objects. I’ve put the biggest cloche on a stack of white plates to make it taller and balance the look
• If you don’t have flowers in your garden grab some from the supermarket. Choose one variety for continuity
• Think about quirky elements that will make your vignette come alive. I’ve mixed in vintage cups as vases and an antique ink bottle.