9 Ideas for Saving and Displaying Your Beautiful Vacation Pictures


I take thousands of pictures on each and every one of our trips. When we went to the Panama Canal earlier this year, I came home with 2,130 pictures. Our family’s first trip to Disney World? A modest 1,148. But the problem is that I rarely do anything with these beautiful pictures when we get home! After the suitcases are put away, I mentally move on to the next task or trip. And my picture memories are left to sit around collecting digital dust. Or worse! Sometimes bad things happen and a hard drive crashes and a computer gets recycled and your baby’s baby pictures are gone forever. More on that sob story later. For now, let’s focus on the positive. Let’s focus on how to get those vacation pictures off your computer and out where they can be seen and enjoyed.

Here are nine display ideas to get you started!

Engineering Prints. We’ve actually done this one! For just a few dollars, we printed and displayed ginormous (and beautiful) black and white pictures of our girls. Read the how-to here.

Smash books. Have you heard of smash books? I can’t keep up with scrapbooks, so I love how easy it sounds to create a travel smash book! Or if you keep a journal, you can creatively add photos to your travel journal.

Travel Collage. With just a little prep work, you can decorate your home with beautiful travel collages. I love the bold and beautiful colors in this post.

How about a “clothesline of memories” to hang over your bed?

Or maybe a personalized map with photos of each of the places you’ve visited! I’ve added this one to my to-do list, because I think it would be a fantastic way to document my kids’ travels.

At Christmastime, you can turn your vacation photos into Christmas cards or photo ornaments. Check out this DIY Suitcase Ornament for an easy and fun idea!

Personalized picture memory books. Some of the first books our girls loved were personalized picture memory books that we made using photos from our travels. You can see how we made ours (using free photo editing software) HERE. You don’t have to wait for grand adventures to make personalized books either. Check out this post for six ideas for making books about your child’s favorite park or playground..

 

What to do with vacation pictures

Shadowbox. You can make a beautiful holiday keepsake using sand, shells, and pictures! This post will show you how it’s done. 

Gifts. Grandparents love photo coasters, calendars, and memory books. 9 beautiful ways to display your vacation pictures!

Of course, there will always be some pictures that never get printed. In that case, remember the sob story I alluded to about lost baby pictures? This isn’t a hypothetical situation. This really happened, and sometimes it keeps me up at night. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BABY PICTURES?! HOW DID I LOSE THE BABY PICTURES? So when I was asked to write about cloud storage, I couldn’t say no. I need this.

The great thing about Amazon Cloud Drive is that if you are already an Amazon Prime member, you already have access to Amazon Cloud Drive with Prime Photos. You get unlimited photo storage as part of your Prime membership and 5 GB of extra storage space for videos, movies, music, and files.

My husband and I are already proud Prime members (we wanted the free two day shipping and the streaming movie options), so it makes sense for us to back up our pictures through Amazon. I’m kind of mad at myself for not doing this before…especially since I clearly need a better back up option.

My husband is an IT guy, and he uses cloud storage regularly. I was a little worried that I’d get frustrated, because I often get the “I want to throw this computer out the window!” kind of frustrated when it comes to technology. But it was super easy. You just go to Amazon.com/clouddrive or Amazon.com/primephotos to get started. Or you can use the Amazon Photo app which automatically backs up your camera roll. This frees up storage space on your phone, so you can take more pictures and videos!

Don't lose the memories! 9 ways to save and display your travel photos.

So now there’s no excuse for losing precious photo memories OR not having our vacation memories on display!

Have any ideas you’d like to add? Let me know in the comment section or on facebook!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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