This shows all the stars that are within 100 lightyears of earth and are brighter than absolute magnitude +6. There are 928 such stars, including the sun.

You can see that the stars are definitely not sitting on a shell at some fixed distance. They are more-or-less randomly distributed throughout the 3D volume.

The size of the symbols is a rough indication of the brightness (not the size) of the star. Beware that the brightest stars are more than 100 times brighter than the dimmest stars shown here, which cannot be represented on a screen, so some compromises had to be made. The color of the symbols is a reasonably accurate representation of the star’s spectral type.

The data is derived from the Hipparcos catalog: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hipparcos/catalogues