Spring Coffee Table Vignette

If you follow me on Instagram you got a little sneak peek of this 'project' earlier this week.  It's not even really a project as much as it is an experiment.  I'm experimenting to see - for the first time in five years - if I can successfully keep coffee table decor in tact for more than five minutes.   My kiddos have kept hands-off so far and we're working on day four here!

Every time I flip through Pottery Barn or West Elm or Ballards I notice how nice their coffee tables look. I wanted something to add a little pop to my living room and this did the trick.  I gathered some items I already had pulling from various rooms, holiday decorations, storage boxes, and the bookshelf. 
I am no design expert, but apparently the rule of thumb is things should be in groups of three or five so I tried to keep that in mind.  I am also a firm believer that a little greenery goes a long way, which is why I added the faux boxwood to my vignette. (I snagged it from my birdcage, but do not worry,  I gave the birdcage a makeover and it will be making an appearance on the blog soon).  Have you ever noticed many of the photos I stage for the blog have a green plant in them? 

For my coffee table, I started with the plain white tray. I have temporarily updated this tray for many seasons (see my trick here), but this time I wanted to keep it simple.   I first added the lanterns with one candle each.  The larger lantern needed a taller candle, but I didn't have one. What to do...what to do. Stack two candles.  But then it looks like I have two candles stacked and we can't have that.

No worries - I just wrapped a piece of burlap around the middle to hide the fact that it's really two candles.  Burlap saves me every.single.time.

The smaller lantern needed some height so I placed it on top of two books. I intentionally picked the bottom book because of the bright color of its spine.  

The lanterns and the books count as one item each.  My third element is the boxwood.   To me, it pulls it all together.

The best part about making a vignette on a tray - this one was on clearance at Joann Fabrics several months ago - is that it can easily be moved to dust out of the way of grubby hands, but still the vignette is still kept in tact.

I created another vignette on the dresser in the master bedroom. If you're interested, in some tips and ideas on creating master bedroom vignettes click here.

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