Please be aware that I'll link a few helpful products within this post and that these are affiliate links; using these helps me out with a very small amount of extra income, but will not cost you anything.

Building a collection of bones and oddities can be immensely rewarding, as you get in touch with your inner goblin and add each new piece to your ever-growing hoard. But why just pile them up unadorned on the shelf when you could give them a glow-up? Here are a few tips for you to wow your visitors, impress your gods, and help any spirits residing in your resident bones feel appreciated:

1. Emphasize the size

Play off of the size of one item in your collection to emphasize the largeness (or smallness) of another. Display a little chicken skull next to (or daintily perched on top of) an ostrich egg. Pair a mountain lion skull with a domestic cat for contrast. Match up a predator's skull with its prey to show how large or small a meal they could take down. There are endless possibilities!

A tiny life-sized replica of a pied avocet skull displayed on top of an ostrich egg.

My line of unsettlingly large bat skulls are 3D printed at proportions dramatically larger than their actual size, and that makes them an incredibly unique piece in any collection; you can make their size the focal point by displaying them between different sizes of other skulls in your collection. In the video example below, I've displayed the oversized bat skull between the real skulls of a river otter and a sheep.

These bat skulls also ship with a display card showing the species name and a life-sized image of how large the animal's skull actually is. It's a great addition to your display to show your admiring guests the difference in size. If you have real bat or bat skull specimens those also work great as a contrasting display — though I'd urge you not to add any further specimens of real bats to your collection, due to the impact this has on bat species.

2. Make your skulls bite things

Putting smaller items in your collection between a skull's teeth is a great way both to show off little things that might be easily overlooked, and to help show off the skull's teeth! Objects like crystals, skeleton keys, coins, smaller skulls, and mysterious potion vials all make great additions to a display. In the last tip I mentioned contrasting the size of predator and prey; one way to do that is to put the skull of the prey animal between the predator's teeth! The video below shows a few examples for inspiration.

The little things can get lost in a collection of larger items, so use your bigger pieces to show them off!

3. Add botanicals

Plants, real or fake, can add a beautiful pop of color to an otherwise pale bone display, and bring the nature that those animals came from into their indoor display. Rest your skulls on a bed of fake leaves, tuck sprigs and buds around their jaws, even make them a little flower crown! Did you find your stag head tucked into a bed of ferns in your local forest? Recreate the look indoors with a fake fern garland twined around the antlers. Or add a display piece from my Deadly Botany collection of preserved carnivorous and poisonous plants!

This is a beautiful way to keep your bone display fresh, as well; you can change out your plants for the seasons or holidays, or switch it up to match your decor when you bring in a new paint color or nearby framed artwork.

Just be aware that real plants coming into contact with your bones can cause staining or damage. For instance, a freshly cut flower placed in an ocular cavity and leaking sap, or a fresh branch of leaves placed underneath bones, can both stain the bone through moisture and cellular decay. Dried and preserved real plants, like the kind you may be able to find at your local craft store, may be treated with paints, dyes, or sealants intended to keep the plants looking fresh, and those can leach into or rub off on your bones, also leaving them stained. You may never be able to get that color out of the bone again. (Although, if you're a collector who enjoys dyed or painted bones, maybe you could make an art project out of staining your skull with leaves, berries, nuts, and flowers!) In the video I stated that the artificial skulls won't absorb those stains, but though I haven't experimented with it, I've come to think that's probably not the case. So I don't recommend trying it.

4. Light it up

Lights can help make a display extra spooky (or extra cozy, or extra cheerful, depending on how you go about it), or give you some beautiful mood lighting when you'd like to turn off your too-bright overhead light.

There are a plenty of different ways to do this, but by far the most preferable one in my book is fake candles. They're particularly safe since you don't need to worry about fire risk, and there are many varieties that offer different options for realism. Some are made using real wax and have flickering lights to simulate the effect of a real flame. For my skull display, I use these rechargeable battery-operated candles which come with a remote. My collection's on a high-ish shelf, and I like to hide my candles away underneath the larger skulls (for instance, I have two of them tucked between the mandibles all the way underneath my horse skull, and another under my sheep). So having the remote to turn them all on at once, instead of having to break out a step ladder every time I want to turn them on, is extremely convenient. You can also use plug-in or battery-operated string lights. Some of these may also be remote operated or offer features like the ability to change the color or warmth of the lights. Those very small wire lights can also be easily fed into the inside of the skull cavity!

In holiday seasons, when the celebration includes specific types of lights, you can also incorporate those into your display. Whether you're adding a string of electric lanterns for Diwali or a string of tree lights for Christmas, you can incorporate your bone collection into the rest of your seasonal light decor.

Real candles are also definitely also a possibility when used safely! Be sure to bear in mind how near the candle is to other items, use a fire-safe container or tray, and give your candles plenty of room so they're not heating up or scorching your bones or other decor. A lot of heating and cooling can stress bone and eventually cause it to form cracks, and if candles are burned extensively they can eventually mar the bones with soot. If you want to get really gothic and decorate your skulls with votives or tapers on top of them, letting the wax drip down the skull, please both be very cautious that your candles won't tip over and also be aware that the wax will be very difficult to remove from your bones, if you can manage it at all.

5. Mix & Match

Consider all of these tips for your display and ponder how you can bring them together! For instance, you can arrange your bones on a bed of fake botanicals, and also nestle battery-operated pillar candles among them. Wrap delicate strings of fairy lights around your fake garlands, and place crystals with desirable energies between your skulls' teeth. Tuck a feather or a flower inside an ocular cavity, add a little fake leaf to your jar of tiny bones, and add a bit more of your own personality to your display.