We all go on vacation and take tons of pictures. Many of our pictures include scenic viewpoints, famous landmarks, and family moments. Then, you get home and start to think “what do I do with these photos”? After you share them with family and friends or post some on social media, then what? Well, I’d like to share some ideas on what our family has done, and help you decide what to do with travel photos that will make you want to keep the travel bug alive.
Ideas of What to Do with Travel Photos
While there are thousands of ideas on what to do with travel photos, some of them are just too expensive or don’t really match the decor of your house. I’ve put together a list of what our family does and why we try to update some of our pictures every 2-3 years.
Travel Photo Map
We have a family bucket list goal of visiting all 50 states before our kids graduate high school. One of the things we do with our travel photos is find a family picture of us and place it in a personalized travel map. This map has outlines of each of the 50 states. When we visit that state for the first time, our job is to take a picture in front of something iconic that will represent the state well enough for our travel photo map. Check out how far along we are by reading my post on our personalized travel map. You can buy them on Amazon or Etsy.
Photo Coasters
This is the newest idea on our list of what to do with travel photos. These photo coasters are a great way to keep you smiling and reminiscing about your vacation. We only bought a pack of 4, but now that we’ve used them a few times, I want another pack because they are so darn cute! These photo coasters look like Polaroid pictures, and while Amazon has many varieties of photo coasters, we chose these based on price and highly rated reviews.
Memory Wall Ideas
We have a giant poster that we created online and had framed. Our first one had pictures of just my husband and me on our trips before we had kids. Then, we created another one to include family pictures. We even created a poster from our cross country adventure. We have so many personalized wall decor items that we’ve gifted ourselves in the last few years. It brings a smile just to walk past it every day.
Unique Photo Displays
There are so many ways to display your photos after a vacation. You can go simple, and buy a frame, or create a collage of pictures. Etsy has quite a few creative ideas for what to do with travel photos. We have made a few into canvas prints and posted them around the house. My daughter has some of her dance competitions, and we have a beautiful panoramic canvas print of when we were hiking in North Dakota. Here are some other ideas for unique photo displays around the house.
Travel Keepsake Ideas
Most people want to remember their trip in some way. If you are looking for more ideas for what to do with travel photos, here are some other unique travel keepsake ideas that can either be gifted to family members or to yourself to remember a specific vacation.
Sometimes for a big trip, we will decide to create a travel keepsake or a photo book. We did this on our Disney Cruise, as well as our summer road trip around the national parks including Grand Teton to Yellowstone. Other times, we just create photo collages of our favorite family photos when we see a unique photo display idea on Etsy.
Bottom Line: What to Do with Travel Photos
There are so many things you can do with travel photos, but many people just don’t make the time. Dedicate a day to start this project and consider how you want to display these photos in your house. You won’t regret it!
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This is my biggest struggle. I want to make video slide shows of our trips that we can have playing on the TV. I tasked my other half with this job and it hasn’t happened yet. I love the framed poster idea as well.
Do you have an Apple TV? You can add photos and it does this for you.
Great ideas! We make a photo book of our adventures every year but id love to try a travel photo map!
Wow! All such amazing ideas! What a great post!
I love the map idea! I also have so many pictures, I’m never sure what to do or how to narrow down which ones to print or keep. A memory wall display would help with that.
Great ideas. I personally make Travel books from every trip on Shutterfly and I am so behind. I’ll be using this time off to make a few.
I’m loving the map! Such a great idea – thank you for sharing.
These are great ideas! I love the photo map; I need to make one of those! Thank you for sharing!
I love these ideas. The ones where the photos are arranged in the shape of the places you’ve been are beautiful. I’d love to do something like that with mine. I hate the idea of taking all these amazing and meaningful photos then never doing anything with them
I love the custom canvas you are proposing, I heading to Etsy to try to have some use for my numerous travel pictures!
Terrific suggestions. I love all these ideas. I often do a collage from trips and have them printed on a big canvas to hang. I quite like the photos coasters. That’s a really novel idea.