{How To} Style a Bookcase

Since my brothers were coming to visit I thought I should do something about this:

Remember when I fancified my IKEA Billy bookcases? I used neato faux bois paper from Paper Source to make them a little more special. Here's what they looked like before I filled them...

And here's what they're looking like now!

I'm not sold on the tops of the bookcases yet -- just needed a place to throw stuff before the baby brothers arrived -- but the INSIDE of the bookcases I LOVE. Tricky Trick: Do you see all my paperback books? They're mostly ugly and we've mostly read them -- meaning I almost never need to find any specific one and I don't want to look at their yucky cover designs. (Recall, design is life and death.) So I turned them around! I think the look of the different papers is pretty cool. Then I added all the hardcover books The Scientist and I collected before our wedding to use as centerpieces (more on that later), some of our favorite tchotchkes from around the world, a few special wedding photos and -- VOILA! A wedding shrine disguised as storage. My favorite magic trick!

So what do you think of our new bookcases? Definitely an improvement over the previous storage solution, which was brown cardboard boxes. Do you think they fit in with my inspiration images? Do you have any pretty bookcase photos you want to share?