Decorating for Valentine's Day is such a sweet holiday to display your specially curated pieces and using differing heights can help with that.
The main spot that I like the decorate for holidays is my fireplace mantel, but if you don't have one, you can still use these ideas to decorate on a bookshelf, buffet, or console. Besides using my wonderful Homemade Heartfelt banners across the mantel, I like to utilize cake stands, to add differing heights to my display.
Let's start with the top, eye-level mantel. Here I displayed my Valentine's Day village that lights up at night. I use those amazing LED tea-lights that have a timer so I don't have to worry about lighting them each night (I would forget and get lazy as well!). At Christmas time I dedicate a larger area to a different village I have but I usually lay down boxes for different heights and cover them with snow, a.k.a. batting. But for Valentine's Day its a much smaller collection of houses and bottle brush trees, so using this oblong cake stand that I found at Hobby Lobby, works perfectly on the top mantel. I like how it gives height to the left side of the fireplace and makes the trees even taller. I am creating this invisible triangle shape on the top of the mantel between the village houses and trees, but also among the tobacco wreath on the wall, the left display and the right display. Creating invisible triangles is a popular way to break up space for painters, but it works in decorating too, and using the cake stand helps aid in that.
Another reason, I love using these cake stands or "risers," is that not all decorations are large and putting them up on a pedestal, can draw attention to them. That's what I did with the little red mug of faux whipped cream on the right side of the mantel. It's so cute and makes me feel like it's filled with hot cocoa!
You may be wondering how I manage to hang things on my stones? It's using these handy claw clips: https://a.co/d/0wEYZSr
Lastly, the hearth at the bottom of my fireplace gives me additional space to play with height. I added two more risers on each side there to allow me to stack more items and vary the path the eye would travel through the vignette.
Don't have any cake stands? Try empty decorative boxes, wooden crates, tiered trays, or decorative trays. I've even used small wall shelves as risers before that were like hollow squares, but I've also seen them in octagonal shapes. Get creative using differing heights this February!