From Adelaide Prentice:
Keep background patterns in walls and furniture neutral so the collection stands out. | |
Group like colored hippos together. | |
Keep themes together, like teapots or mugs or salt $ pepper shakers. | |
Use furniture creatively for displays; for example, display a collection in a wagon, cover with a piece of glass and use as a coffee table. | |
Use window ledges as effective display surfaces. | |
Custom build ledges above kitchen and dining room windows for displaying cookie jars. | |
Fill baskets with small plushies and place them bathrooms or any other interesting little nook. | |
I loved Sharline's display: A Noah's Arc filled with... why, only hippos, of course. :) | |
Hang a hammock in a child's room and fill with plushies. (Hint: for cleaning plushies, throw them and a tennis shoe into the dryer--set to COLD--for a few minutes. That will free them of dust without ruining them.) | |
Get shadow boxes for all those small hippos. | |
Keep a scrapbook with postcards, hippo articles, pictures, etc. | |
Take a picture of your cutest hippos. Enlarge the picture and mount on wall. Put all the hippos in a box. Send them to Ade. She will take care of them for you. :) Okay, maybe this tip won't work for everyone, but at least I tried. <g> |
From Pam Johnson:
Mount some corner shelves where space is available | |
If you have space between the top of your kitchen cabinets and the ceiling, why not fill it with hippos? | |
Shelves with glass doors = less dusting! (and better childproofing) | |
If your display shelves are deep and spaced far apart, you can make "risers" out of fabric-covered boxes or wood to raise up the hippos in the back and make the display look fuller | |
Buy or paint a peg rack or horizontal mug holder and mount it on a wall for hanging backpacks, purses, crib pull-downs, etc. Or mugs, of course. | |
You could build a shelf about a foot below the ceiling line along a wall or around an entire room for a "decorative border" | |
Hang shelves or a display cabinet on the wall in the bathroom.... picture attached of one of my new cabinets (I have one in another bathroom that is crammed to capacity with hippos, which I'm sure will be the fate of this one eventually). |
From Laura Simpkins:
As most of my hippo collection is confined to my bedroom in my parents house, I have had to be creative when storing them, and these are a few of the ideas I have come up with, in addition to those already suggested.
Have a bunk bed, and use the unused bunk to display plushies. | |
The step ladder of the bunk bed could be used to hang items from (hats, bags etc.) | |
Display a collection of hippo books on the tops of shelf units in between... hippo bookends of course! | |
Pin badges / broaches / pins onto a plain coloured scarf or piece of material and hang from an appropriate place. | |
Use wardrobe and cupboard handles to display small hippos (pegs / keyrings etc.) | |
Put a shelf next to a staircase to display small ornaments. | |
If you have small ornaments from a collection or group, display them on a wall ornament rack. |
Here is an article from the Online Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, about a couple who collect hippos. Not only is it an interesting article, it has a variety of tips for decorating and arranging hippos.
(You need Adobe Acrobat to read the article--click here if you need to get/download Acrobat)
From Cheryl:
I put some of my smallest hippos on the top of the backsplash behind my bathroom sink. | |
Since I also collect old jars once used in stores for don't know what, I put some of hippos in the jars. | |
My keychain hippos I hang from (the obvious) a hippo key change holder. |
Never too many hippos!!!!! Cheryl
From Susan:
I have so many hippos that I started rotating displays. I started with the easiest way - holidays and seasons.
Buy seasonal/holiday children's sweaters and put on a large plush hippo (I use the Thurgood hippo) | |
Create seasonal or monthly hippo displays - all hippos with hearts, hippo couples, and hippo cupids go on my desk in February. The Boyd's Noah's Ark couple and the Hallmark inner tube hippo are good for summer. | |
Finally, I bought an artificial Christmas tree just for my hippo ornaments. Small white lights work best to show off the hippos. I also made ornaments from hippos to add to it by using hotglue and some ribbon, or twisting in a small round ended screw. Hippo beads make great hippo garlands when strung with other more traditional type beads. I also put Santa's hats on many of my other hippos that sit under the tree. |
From Elaine:
I have a ledge in my upstairs room....so i put all my big hippos on that ledge. it looks down over the downstairs family room...so i make them looking down...kind of like a mounted hippo!!! | |
Over a railing upstairs i hung a quilt and pinned some of my smaller
hippos from the quilt. Then i stuff some of my stuffed hippos in the railing coming down the stairs. | |
I have a 3 tiered shelve just for my hippos in my family room...I guess it is my hippo room...:) above the top shelve i hang key chains etc.. | |
I guess the best suggestion is not to let your hippo collection look "cluttered" arrange them in places .....and keep them clean. | |
I think the best thing is to be able to have a room where most of them are. |
From Linda Noel:
Arrange in a colorful family collection on the floor in front of your desk at work. This is really eye catching for all who drop in! |