5 Creative Ways to Display Souvenirs

Collecting various items while on vacation is one of my favorite parts of traveling. Each city, state, landmark, and country has its own charm. Naturally, we want to bring home parts of the memorable places our feet have walked. We spend so much time browsing through souvenir shops, snapping photographs, and saving important documents, but are we finding creative ways to display souvenirs?

I came to the realization that we need to do more than just pull out our souvenirs every 10+ years from the attic. We need to do more with our best photographs than simply posting them once on Facebook and never looking at them again. I believe that cherishing our memories in useful, practical, and tasteful ways is the key to truly appreciating and re-living our trips.

Over the past 2-3 years, I have discovered my favorite ways to showcase treasures collected from around the world…whether it’s coins, receipts, tickets, photographs, maps, knick knacks, and more! Here are 5 creative ways to display souvenirs:

1. Scrapbooks

Yes, I do in fact channel my inner-future-mom when I scrapbook. Don’t judge! Scrapbooking is turning into a lost art and that saddens me. Why? Because I feel like it is one of the best ways to display almost anything from your trip. Can it be glued to paper? If so, put it in the scrapbook.

There are two ways that I scrapbook: digitally and manually.

For almost every trip, I choose to digitally design my scrapbooks. This means that I create each page of the scrapbook on the computer. It’s a pretty easy process – upload your images to a website such as Nations Photo Lab or Shutterfly, choose a template to place your photos (or design it yourself from scratch), add some text, and purchase! Designing albums digitally is my favorite method because it allows me to display full-page photographs and print in excellent quality. Technically, you could still glue tickets and other items into the digitally printed scrapbooks, if you leave some space!

For my trips to Ireland and Paris, I saved all of my boarding passes, receipts, tickets, brochures, etc. My plan was to manually create a scrapbook where I hand-glued photographs and miscellaneous items to 12×12 pieces of scrapbook paper. It took me a good month or two to complete each book. I genuinely enjoy crafting and love looking back on these memories. This method is awesome for anyone who loves crafts and wants to add personal touches to the pages.

Is scrapbooking still not your thing? No worries! Read on…

2. Travel Jars

If you don’t want to glue certain items in a scrapbook or don’t feel like stuffing them in a box under your bed, simply place them in a mason jar. Literally, that’s all you have to do! Travel jars might be the easiest method of showcasing souvenirs. After all, everyone has a spare mason jar lying around the house.

With each destination, I love collecting coins, maps, postcards, tickets, receipts, rocks, and other tiny objects that are meaningful from the trip. Placing these items into containers is such an affordable and effortless way to display my memories. The travel jars can go on shelves, desks, countertops, etc! Of the 5 creative ways to display souvenirs, travel jars might be my favorite method.

3. Ornaments

Even though I basically just said, “don’t keep your souvenirs hidden away for years,” this method of showcasing items is a little different. It brings me joy to pull out ornaments that I purchased from my favorite trips and hang them on the Christmas tree.

While ornaments are stored somewhere for 10-11 months, I highly recommend decorating your tree with these cute keepsakes!

Plus, it is really fun to start a collection ornaments from any place you visit.

4. Journaling

Have you ever come home from a trip, eager to share your memories with family and friends, and realize that you forgot some of the events that happened? Maybe you don’t remember the name of that delicious restaurant on day 7, or you can’t recall the attraction that gave you all those funny inside jokes. Whatever the case, journaling and documenting your trip is vital. It is SO hard when you come home to remember everything amazing thing that occurred, let alone remember in 5, 10, or 20 years from now.

On my lengthy packing list for every trip is this journal (Read: Travel Smart with a Packing List). It is one of my most-prized possessions because it holds all of my travel memories. I’d love to tell you that I journal every single night without fail during a vacation, but that is just not the case. One day, I had a 10-hour tour in Iceland that included 5+ hours of driving and about 4 hours of hiking. Do you think that I wanted to write when I got back to the hotel that night? Nope – I went straight to bed. The next day, however, I simply journaled what happened and went on with my trip.

Journaling doesn’t have to be a chore. Write whenever it’s convenient and fresh in your mind. Three-hour train ride? Write. Long layover? Write. Early night in? Write. Sitting in a cute European coffee shop? Write. Trust me when I say that you will never regret documenting the trips that you spent so much money/time planning. You can even type out your journal entries on your phone and then transfer them into a notebook when you get home. The travel journal is in fact something that you will pull out frequently to re-live the memories.

5. Wall Art

Photography is a huge part of my life and naturally I want to showcase photos everywhere. With each trip, I print photos and add the new frames to my wall display. You can find these exact frames here.

Wall art is not limited to photographs, however. Do you save all of your boarding passes for flights? Coins from various countries? Tickets from your favorite museums? Glue them all on a sheet of paper and put that new piece of artwork in a frame! The sky is the limit with how you display your memories.

I hope that these 5 creative ways to display souvenirs inspire you for future travels! Which one is your favorite?