Souvenirs always seem like a good idea when you are on a vacation – but incorporating these treasures into your home aesthetic can sometimes prove to be a challenge. Take heart, though, there areways to enjoy those finds in fun and tasteful ways, well after you find yourself back on home soil.
Be it kitsch finds, cultural artefacts or maps of where you have travelled, there are a number of savvy solutions to keeping your treasures on display and your holiday memories close at hand. Little or big mementos of your travels can add interest to your home – not to mention become a talking point when entertaining guests. They also help us to remember the distances we have journeyed in our lives and the different experiences we’ve had.
The key to enacting tasteful souvenir display ideas is to buy tasteful souvenirs. While you’re traveling, try to look for a jewelry store or a shop that has products with screen printed items. A jewelry store that has products relevant to local culture or aesthetics is a great way to find a piece that you may be able to wear routinely, and when you’re not wearing it, you can easily store it away or even hang it as decor.
A store that offers screen printed items could have products such as clothing, scarves, or other kinds of textiles that you can easily display in a few different ways. You can create a blanket or pillow out of the various designs, or you can use the material as the backdrop in a picture frame or shadow box. You can even take shirts from your various travels and create a patchwork quilt. A quilt like this has both a practical use as well as holding sentimental value.
If you aren’t up to creating your own, purchasing a beautiful throw blanket is also the perfect item to bring back from your travels and while keeping you warm on the plane. They can add a pop of color to any couch or bed, and they will definitely be used. When shopping for throws abroad, avoid shopping malls and visit locally-owned markets where the textiles are made by the people who are selling them to you.
If you are traveling overseas, there is such an exquisite array of textiles to be tempted by. Selecting a beautiful fabric allows you many options either to create pillows, wall-hangings, throws or even matted art work. If you have taken the time to bring it home, you may as well go the extra mile and get it professionally framed to make sure it lasts the test of time.
Another type of item to look for is homeware items like bowls, plates, and trays. For items like this, it’s a good idea before your trip to think about what you could use or have room for in your home. For example, if you know you have more than enough plates, but you could use a serving bowl, you can look for one while abroad.
You should also look for items that are both display pieces and usable, such as paperweights or bookends. These things can easily be added to a desk or bookshelf without creating unnecessary clutter.
I always seem to pick up a piece of art from each new city we visit and add it to our evolving art collection. Mix it up and choose different pieces, mediums, and styles from the locations you travel to or try to keep things more similar and choose the same types of art (all black-and-white photography or all line drawings). Display your art on a beautiful gallery wall in your home to help remember all the amazing trips you’ve taken through the years.
Pictures are frozen memories. Apart from uploading your travel photos on social media, consider printing, framing, and displaying them at home. You can present it in any way that you like, but we find these greyscale photos in identical frames fascinating.
Often, we return from a trip with one or two extra paper bills from the visited country. These can be colorful, small art pieces to be framed. Layout those which complement each other. If both sides of a bill are interesting, stager them, displaying each surface.
Maps are also great items to collect while traveling because you can easily carry them, and they are very affordable. Create a gallery wall in your home by framing the maps you’ve collected. If gallery walls aren’t your thing, give your old coffee table books an update and use your maps as book covers. You can even decoupage the maps and create your own coasters or paperweights.
For any travel addicts who also like to mix up their daily scents, perfumes are a special item to collect from each country you visit. Not all perfumes formulated in other countries are exported to the United States. Many family-owned perfumeries make limited batches only sold locally. Just as food and traditions vary by region, so do fragrances. The Middle East leans towards aromatic blends with oud. South Pacific islands distill florals for a light scent. Olfactory souvenirs are equally as evocative as visual. Fragrance takes us back to strolling an Italian piazza or sun-bathing on Bermuda’s beaches. The bottles are beautiful, easy to pack, and a unique way how to decorate your home with travel souvenirs.
Trying to purchase items that fit within the color palette of your home is another great souvenir display ideas. Some cities or countries are known for a unique color palette, which may make this more difficult, but many others are known for a specific style that can exist regardless of the color of an item. In this case, it’s a good idea to think before your trip about what exactly you’ll need.
A great way to keep clutter away but still have a display of your travel mementos is to put them in frames or shadow boxes. You can find unique shadow boxes at your local craft or department store for a very low price. These attractive shadow boxes do triple-duty as a unique piece of wall art, an organized storage, and an excellent conversation starter. If you line them along your staircase, both you and your visitors will always get the chance to see them.
A collection of souvenirs dispersed among family photos and house plants is a fun way to create a vignette. Coordinate color and textures. Use only a handful of pieces so it doesn’t look cluttered. Another fun nook design is to compile a stack of books amassed from your travels. Coffee table tomes, local author novels, a museum anthology, an atlas. Start with the largest book at the bottom and finish with the smallest for good symmetry.
When you’re buying a souvenir, you don’t necessarily have to use it for its intended purpose. Upcycling and repurposing items are a significant trend right now and there are countless tutorials online on how to reuse items to give them a new life.
And remember, you don’t need a grand collection of souvenirs for display. Sometimes, less is more.
