HGTV Star Kristina Crestin Shares Her Secrets to Decorating with Vintage Collections

For Kristina Crestin, adding a layered look to her designs by using vintage collections is an obsession. On season three of Farmhouse Fixer, she brought old farmhouses to life by styling the rooms with collections of globes, seltzer bottles, and, yes, birds on sticks. Here, she shares here secrets to putting prized collections to use.

The Thrill of the Hunt

In the "Clam Shack Chic" episode of Farmhouse Fixer, Kristina brings life to an Essex, Massachusetts, home with a wall of vintage globes, which she has been collecting for more than 15 years.

The owner of Kristina Crestin Design says, "Let's call it my obsession. I love to hunt for things. I love to antique. But I find it's only a good time if you're actually on the hunt for something. It makes the process so much more fun. And then my mom gets involved and my friends get involved. So we're all searching for the same thing and it just makes it more engaging."

Kristina says she started with one small globe and collected them until she found the perfect project to put them on display. She says, "They had been sitting in a spare room under a table for years and years and years. Because I have a tiny house, I didn't have a place to display them."

She explains, "One of the thoughts with collections is not just loving the object, but thinking how are they going to go somewhere?"

Think Vertically

Kristina encourages collectors to think vertically and with an eye for layering when putting items on display. Her first thought with displaying the globes was, "Can we get a 100-inch console and just line them up? But then there's no layering and the heights are only so variable." Instead, she opted for inexpensive built-in shelving that allowed the collection to shine.

"Thinking vertically sometimes solves the problem. We didn't actually need a piece of furniture to do the job," she says. "We settled on two shelves and we held the globes up and figured out the spacing to make sure it wasn't too far apart and it wasn't too squishy. So the verticality there worked really well."

Kristina took on another collection with the now-famous "birds on sticks" (aka vintage bird decoys) from season 3. She says, "I like to decorate with objects, not just art. The bathroom was a space that I wanted to feel curated. I wanted it to feel eclectic and one big piece of art wasn't going to do that. So honestly, I don't know where the heck the birds on sticks idea came from. I wanted a bunch of something small."

She says, "I was antiquing one day and I like saw a little collection of them, didn't think anything of it, and then kind of came back to it later. I started buying one or two and thought, 'maybe this will be fun.' And then the next thing I know I've got like 15 of them."

For the objects of varied sizes, she decided to play with the asymmetry by putting the vintage bird decoys on small shelves. She says, "We started in the middle with three and then we started balancing it out from there. It was a little bit haphazard, but there was some balance to it to begin with." She found the shelves on the internet, and had them painted the same color as the walls, making the arrangement look intentional.

Making a Statement

Kristina put a collection of seltzer bottles on display in dramatic fashion in the "Berry Farm Charm"episode. She says the clients were wanting to use something vintage, and knew the bottles would bring a magical touch. Kristina admits, "The finding seltzer bottles in the basement was a totally made for TV moment, because I came up with this idea months ago and then told production about it."

Kristina says, "It didn't wanna feel like an accessory, it wanted to feel like a whole moment. Floating shelves just didn't feel enough like an integral part of the room, so we built out integrated shelves. These have so much texture with all the age and color." Then, she added lighting.

She decided she wanted a cohesive color palette, which made her search for the bottles more challenging. The window sill on her dining room at home is filled with aqua seltzer bottles, but she wanted a different color palette for the farmhouse. She says, "I did not want any aqua bottles on that wall. So I didn't want a hot mess of multiple colors. We could have found more aqua bottles—green were actually very to find."

Kristina says, "I spent months going to every flea market, tag sale, and antique stores, and I could barely find any. I knew I needed 91 of them. So we actually ended up buying some from other countries. We probably paid more for shipping than actual bottles."

Limiting Collections

The hunt for the seltzer bottles had a TV deadline, and it's not how Kristina typically approaches a collection. She says, "The interesting part is when you're trying for a moment, sometimes the joy of finding that collection goes out of the way."

She's on the hunt for a collection of paint-by-numbers to display in her own home office. She says, "The walls of my tiny half bathroom are covered, but I probably have another 45. But the problem is I don't have enough small."

Rather than buying any paint-by-number that catches her eye, she has started to look for what the collection actually needs. She says, "I only buy small paint by numbers now because I want to use them in a bigger room. I can't create that gallery wall without the tiny. I have bought a couple online that turned out to be photocopies, and I don't know if I can live with that. So I actually can't finish my install until I have all of the pieces."

Knowing When it Doesn't Work

Kristina says she has two "failed" collections (or, rather collections that don't have a home yet) in her barn: Bird cages and typewriters.

She says, "I don't know why I started collecting bird cages. But I thought it would be really fun if I had a really tall space and we hung them on the wall. For two summers, I collected interesting bird cages. And then I never found a project that had a wall big enough for them. So I have a stack of like 13 bird cages that I've spent money on."

As for the typewriters, she saw an installation at a hotel in Portland, Maine. She says, "They had typewriters all it fanned out in this really cool, artistic install." So she thought she'd try something similar in her Rock the Block house, but they ended up being too heavy to install. "So now I have probably 11 typewriters in my barn."

Kristina notes, "There's the joy of collecting and curating, and then there's the actual practicality of how you execute them, and it's not a successful installation unless you do both of those."

You Might Also Like

• 70 Impressive Tiny Houses That Maximize Function and Style

• 30+ Paint Colors That Will Instantly Transform Your Kitchen