The Best Way To Create Keepsakes From Your Trip

Want a fun and unique way to remember your trip? I have the perfect list of things you can do to personalize the keepsakes from your travels!
More than ever, I've realized that my favorite thing about my trips abroad isn't always what I buy and bring home, but the memories and experiences I had while I was there. You might not believe it, but those memories fade quickly. So what can you do to help keep the little details preserved?

Have you ever thought about volunteering abroad?
See what volunteering with ILP is all about!

I absolutely loved my time volunteering abroad with ILP, not only because of the vacations but also because of the small everyday moments like taking the bus to get into town, paying for groceries in the local currency, or saying hello to the locals on the walk to school. These little details often disappear behind the big, picture-perfect vacations. That’s why I am so glad I came up with these easy and affordable ideas to remember my semesters abroad. 

New Ways to Journal
Photo Keepsakes
Map Momentos
Making Use of Postcards
Shadow Boxes
Video

New Ways to Journal

The best part about these journals is looking back through them - so many tiny details slip away if you don't capture them with a picture or a little journal entry. Luckily for you, there are tons of ways to journal, making it easy to find a style that works for you.

Bullet Journal

Bullet journals are great if you don't love to write but still want a keepsake of all your memories. The best part is you get to decide how you want the journal to look, and there's really no wrong way to do this! They are really easy to make — all you need is a smaller notebook/blank journal and some fun pens!

If you're into keeping things organized, a bullet journal will be your best friend. The main idea is that you make a bulleted list of whatever you want! Typically the list will have a "theme" such as your favorite foods, the people you met, or the places you saw.

Towards the end of one of my trips, my friend and I sat down with a piece of paper and just started jotting down everything that made us laugh throughout the trip. You know all those inside jokes that "you had to be there" for? Write them down because you won't believe how fast you'll forget them. It's so fun to pull out that list we made and remember all the little things.

This site breaks this style of journaling down into easy bite-sized steps, which is helpful in the world of bullet journaling.

Journaling Prompts

If filling out your journal with pages full of  "this is what I did today" sounds like a bore or you need to add some flavor to your entries, these questions are for you.

By breaking your journal up into different categories and questions, you'll have entries that are more focused on you + the experience, not just the facts of the experience. With these questions, you'll end up with a more personal and reflective style of journal without all of the work. This blogger has 100+ journal prompts broken up into different categories.

The Little Things

Journaling can be pretty time consuming, especially if you are trying to update your journal about the whole day. So, what if, instead, you let yourself only write down the little things? 

What happened that day that would easily be sent into your brains "archives?” Write that down — especially if you don't have a photo of it. Photos and videos preserve, but little moments or details when there aren't any cameras around often don't.

While you're right in the middle of your adventure, you'd never believe you'd forget your student's names ... but you will (that happened to me!). Do you think you'll never forget all those funny conversations you had with your students? Nope, best write it down.

Photo Keepsakes

My favorite souvenirs (aside from the memories) are images of the places I traveled to. If you're on a budget, this is one of my favorite ways to have keepsakes on my adventures! Photos keep the memories vivid!

Photo Book

If you find that your photos are getting buried in your camera roll or that you are running out of storage because of the thousands of photos you took, you might want to try out a photo book—especially if you're living abroad and traveling for four months straight through multiple countries like ILP volunteers do.

These books also will make it so you have to whittle down your 50 different angles of the Eiffel Tower. You don't NEED all 50, do you?

Check popular sites like Shutterfly, Snapfish or even Chatbooks. They all often have deals going on.

Map Momentos

There is nothing more satisfying and motivating than having a visual representation of where you have been in the world. Not only does this show you how much you have seen, but there is also how much there is left to see! What better way to do this than with a map of the world?

Scratch Off Map

You've probably seen these all over Pinterest because they're really cool and really popular. The idea is that whenever you visit a country, you scratch that part of the map off to reveal a colorful image of that country underneath. 

There's a huge selection on Etsy, and as a bonus, you'll get to support small businesses. I'm loving this one in particular.

Photo Collage

When you get home from a trip, print out one of your favorite photos from that country and cut it out into the shape of the country to the size of the map (do a little tracing so you can get pretty close to the right size). Paste it over the country on the map so that your photo replaces that area altogether. The more countries you visit, the more countries that will be replaced by your pictures.  This also works great for stateside trips, and if you don't feel like printing anything out, you can even use postcards you've collected.

Put A Pin In It

After purchasing a map, put it in a frame without the glass,m and hang it up on your wall. From there, you can just put push pins in all of the places that you have been over the years. I love seeing the bird's-eye view of all the adventures I've been on.

Making Use of Postcards

Instead of spending money on souvenirs from every place you visit, grab a postcard. They're slim, don't take up precious space in your backpack, are crazy cheap, and you can find them just about anywhere.

Postcard Book

All you need to do for this keepsake is collect a postcard from each city or country you visit and find a way to bind them together. You can do this by gluing them into a little journal/ booklet or by grabbing a 3-hole punch and compiling your postcards together that way. You really don't have to add much because the photos totally speak for themselves.

You could also add extra pages where you tape in keepsakes like your bus ticket to the cute little town in Mexico, the menu from your favorite cafe in Poland with your go-to order circled, or even have friends that you meet on the trip write you a little note. I also love the idea of organizing by adding tabs so that you can easily flip to particular trips or parts of the world.

Note to Self

Another idea? You could write a message to yourself on the back of each postcard with a summary of what you did in that city and what stood out to you to look back on years later. You could even give it a rating out of 10 on the back! 

Personalized Postcards

There is this app I absolutely love, especially if you're planning on making a postcard journal.  MyPostcard lets you choose a picture from your camera roll, write a message, and send it off — meaning you can make postcards from the pictures you take! The company prints and sends it off, with shipping around $3.50ish. I love this idea so so much. Learn more on MyPostcard's website.

Shadow Boxes

Shadow boxes are picture frames that are extra wide, so you can fit more than a piece of paper inside. They're kind of like jewelry boxes that you can hang on the wall. 

If you are a collector, this is perfect for you. You can make cute collages with photos, extra currency, postcards, train tickets, pressed flowers, receipts, polaroids, bottle caps, and whatever else you collect all into one place that hangs perfectly on the wall. It’s like a little sneak peek into what your life was like in that country or city.

Video Blogs

Like journaling, this is a super easy way to see your growth and progress, without all the writing. Keep a consistent video log of what you are doing, how it is living abroad, and all the things you are learning. If you're consistent, you'll have a record of what your thoughts were like before and after an entire semester of living abroad. We're betting you could really see yourself really change.

You can also be your own personal "influencer" and create content for yourself. Things like a "day in the life" video, a vacation highlight reel, a "come with me to go grocery shopping" vlog, or whatever else seems fun! These videos will capture not only your lifestyle but also the personalities of the people you are with. 

iMovie

iMovie is a free video app made by Apple that tons of ILP volunteers have used in the past with their iPhones (it's also great for desktop if you have a Mac). It's easy to look up a video tutorial on YouTube that can show you how to import your clips, edit them to be the right length, piece them all together, and add music. As a heads up, clips taken horizontally work best for iMovie, although you can still use those vertical clips you took for your Instagram.

1 Second a Day

1 Second A Day is a favorite app used by a handful of our volunteers to remember every single day of their semester. Through the app, you upload video clips that are each 1 second, and the app puts them together in a chronological video. You can add music, and the date is found in the bottom left corner of your video so you can remember when everything happened. 

Capcut

Instagram and TikTok

Don't overlook the apps you're already using. Instagram and TikTok are both super easy ways to edit your video content. It also allows you to exchange the content from one app to the other in order to post. These are very user-friendly and are typically only for vertical content. Also, these do leave a watermark of your Instagram or TikTok username on the video, so it's up to you if you want that on your video blogs.

Want an easy and affordable way to see the world?

Introducing ILP! We are a nonprofit program for college-aged volunteers that helps teach kids English across the world. And get this — no previous experience is needed to be a part of our program! Come see what we're all about!