apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

You could buy something like these (http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=234&PRODID=10023239) in white (though you'd have to buy a fair few) and fill a whole wall with them.

On shallow shelves mounted on the wall...
...in the kid's room.

Get some acrylic cut in long narrow narrow shelves. Put 'em up in rows - I think it would be great to have a whole wall massed with these things. But I guess a hundred actually isn't that many...

Why not just line them up completely along the mantle? I think one should either be very minimal in little groupings with things like this, or go big with the sheer mass of them.

You could retire them to the children's playroom....

Lining them up, even very many of them, doesn't maximize this sort of collection. They're not really related to the space in aesthetic or scale at all. This set-up reminds me of those cottages or animal figurines people line up on a plate rail near the ceiling of their kitchen. This needs a case or a rectangular formation of row ledges to even appear to be a prominent collection. Something like this, only shallow, smaller and mounted to the wall:
http://www.geekologie.com/2008/03/tetrad_shelving_looks_good_tet.php
Here you go, like this: http://www.yourshadowbox.com/

The reason, imo, why the figurines might look a bit off in the room is because of the scale. Each figurine is tiny with respect to everything else in the room. Instead, find a room or a niche where people will be coming very close to the figurines by design. ie. if you have a small entry way, bathroom, desk, or maybe a wall that people face immediately when coming into a room.

That way, when you see the figurines, they won't seem so insignificant. The way you actually display them, on a shelf, in an arrangement on a desk, can be to taste.

Other thoughts: Under glass, at a work desk. Replace the top of a desk with drawers with thick glass and strap the dolls to the drawer bottoms. ala butterfly display. Balls, now I'll have to do something similar with my knicknacks

I would just put little groups of 3 or so all over the place. As a guest, I would have fun looking around for them. (Yes, I'm the type of guest who likes looking at people's stuff.) Maybe that would be too cluttered for you, though?

When I was apartment hunting I went to an open house that had thousands and thousands of vinyl toys EVERYWHERE. They were in the vanity, on the vanity, on the range hood, on the window sills, on the toilet bowl, everywhere. AND, when the broker opened the closets (and when I opened the kitchen cabinets), there were bins and bins filled with them.

Anyway, put them everywhere I guess is where I'm going with this.

I bet you can find CD "bookshelves" on Craigslist ultra-cheap (now that everyone has downloaded their music onto iPods). They're shallow, and the shelves are about the right height for your figurines.

I think KTG's and juice's comments above are excellent - a collection like this looks best when it's displayed in a cohesive way that looks intentional and organized. Your home looks so clean and clutter-free; in keeping with that, you could get a rack like the ones KTG linked to and put them all in a single place. I personally think it would look the coolest if you displayed them in a shallow shelving unit with a rectangular frame and short, evenly-spaced shelves. And I like juice's idea of putting it somewhere where people's faces are close to it. Maybe you have wall space in a hallway or something similar.

i don't know if this works for your place but alot of toy collectors use those Ikea display cases like this:http://www.flickr.com/photos/doc18/470338853/in/pool-collectionsondisplay

and then you can get acrylic risers as well for the case.

where did you get the baby's breath silhouette canvas?

DUNNY!!!!

Get some fun-tak and stick them to the walls in patterns of concentric circles.

(You can never have too many dunnys...)

I would get some kind of deep, hanging frame in white or clear acrylic with a little shelf/slot for each figure (kind of like this http://pics.hoobly.com/full/EVZ34K2CZWOF9GPHRG.jpg but not ugly as sin). That way, they will look like a single cohesive piece of art you can hang on the wall as opposed to clutter. Also, if you have a sheet of clear acrylic or glass over the front, they won't gather dust.

I may be the harbinger of bad news on this one, but i say pick out 10 or 15 or so of the ones that you have to have and sell of the rest, and display those ones in a great way.

A collection of small things, no matter how much loved, wether it be cherish teddies or vinyl figures all up looking the same eventually, like you have too many, that they don't fit your space, and they just look out of place. I have a couple kid robots, and although i want so many more I have restrained myself on them, and a few on my desk at work etc looks a lot better then an army of them watching you.

If you can live with the amount you have up right now and the rest have been in boxes since you moved in April (around 7 months...) then seems like you have found a number to work with and go from there.

You don't want to end up as one of those "collection people" and your house is over run by something that is unneeded. Is there a better way you could use that money, most likely.

I use my Ikea Expedit for this. Each square is small enough that the scale is right, and allows for display that's not completely in your face. I color coordinate them with books and other knick knacks, Trexis, etc.

i second the person who said up top to display them in a more intimate setting/room. it would be totally unexpected to have them in a bathroom or hallway, say, near the kitchen where folks might be prone to hanging out during gatherings. at the end of a wall, you could easily add a 2"-deep space with shelves that fit the scale of the collection.

Tara-
We had the same dilemma when we moved into our house and it seemed like there wasn't a good place to display them. We have tall ceilings and they just looked SO small.

We went ahead and devoted the guest bathroom to our toys. It made more sense to display the small toys in the smaller room On the walls in the bathroom we added artwork of robots and vampire candy corn.