Vintage Stacked Book Christmas Tree {inside our mantel}

Last month, I shared a project over on Jennifer Rizzo’s blog for an unconventional Christmas tree that I set up inside our mantel. I literally thought this up on a whim one afternoon while the little ones were napping. I had no idea how much it would inspire people. The images of my vintage book stack Christmas tree are some of my most popular on Instagram, and I am constantly hearing people say how much they love it. This was even featured on Country Living’s Facebook page and one morning I saw that the Junk Gypsies shared the image on Instagram (with credit to their Pinterest boards <—insert my sad face here).

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Today, I am giving you a sneak peek into some of my Christmas decor for this year with a stacked book Christmas tree that I set up inside our mantel.

I always love using old books in my decorating and vignettes. I was trying my darndest to come up with a good filler for our salvaged mantel, when this idea struck. I started by gathering up as many old books as I could find all around our house (I am a bit of a collector, I guess you could say).

I gathered books of all sizes, so that I had a lot of options for building my “tree.” To keep a consistent look, I put the spines towards the wall and the pages facing out.

It took some playing around to get the shape of a Christmas tree. I started with the largest and thickest books at the bottom and worked my way up.

I had to keep playing around with placement of the books, and occasionally, had to make another run around the house for more books! Our dog, Renoir, thought this was all very interesting.

It definitely got trickier as I worked my way up, trying to keep it balanced and finding books just the right sizes to fit. Eventually I got it there though!

Then, I just needed to make it look festive and Christmasy. I strung some pom-pom trim for garland to coordinate with my mantel decor above.

And also added a bottle brush star on top. I put a flameless candle behind it, so it would glow.

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around our house and filling me with all of those childhood feelings of wonder and whimsy. I absolutely love this time of year.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into my home decorated for the holidays and will come by to visit me to see the full reveal in December! I also have lots of creative projects that I am sharing throughout this month to get ready for Christmas. I do hope you will stop by!