DIY Travel Keepsake Boxes

Two years ago, as a graduation present, my parents took me to Europe for a month. It was obviously the most fantastic vacation I’ve ever been on, so I took thousands of pictures and came back with a whole wad of mementos. I’m notoriously bad for saving any kind of souvenir that I can get my hands on, usually in the form of sand and shells when I go to a new beach. So, in order to find some way to store these souvenirs in a visually appealing way, I made these travel keepsake boxes.

For the trip to Europe, there were a ton of tickets, brochures, maps, and of course sand, that I wanted to save. Normally, my souvenirs would just go in my memory box, but these ones were special because it was such a long trip and we went to so many different places (almost 20 in all!). So, I wanted them to have a special place among the decor in my home, and I thought that these boxes that I found on pinterest would be a good DIY to do for them.

The reason that I just got them done recently, is because I was looking for the boxes for so long. I wanted boxes that were fairly slim so I could stack them without creating a huge tower, but thick enough that I would be able to fit small jars of sand into my box for Italy. I ended up just going with boxes that I found at the dollar store. They didn’t have the plain ones that I wanted, but I wasn’t about to go to Michaels and spend over $10 on a plain wooden box!

I settled for ones with hinges on the front and just removed the hinges and sanded down the holes that were left, along with the entire surface of all the boxes. Then I painted them in a selection of cool colours and wrote the name of each location on the corresponding box once the paint was dry. I then filled them with all the travel mementos and displayed the colourful boxes on our TV stand!

I think these keepsake boxes are a really nice way to store your memories so that they are out in the open and don’t get forgotten. Also, it’s great to DIY them because then they can be painted in any colour (or pattern!) to match your existing decor.

I can’t wait to add more keepsake boxes to my collection as I keep travelling!

xo, tess.