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Showing posts with label diaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diaries. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Collecting & Displaying Souvenirs Such as cards, coins, spoons & Recording Travel Memories

 You can collect a paper or card memento of every stop on your trip for a scrapbook or to illustrate a diary.

If you buy souvenirs, or collect a type of item from every city or country, you can buy display cases. 



Postage Stamps

When I was a child I collected postage stamps. I bought stamp albums. 

Postcards

As a teenager I collected postcards. I bought albums for postcards. 

Coins

I saved coins from trips. I bought an album for my coins. 

Wartime Memories

In WW2 medals were given for participating in certain battles. Years later, it became possible to make a 33d frame of medals for one's own satisfaction, or for descendants to create as a memorial to their ancestors.

Scrapbooks & Diaries

You can buy travel diaries and scrapbooks . Paste in tickets, postcards, and other reminders of places you visited. 

I am a collector, a hoarder, and keep shoe boxes and box files for each country. You can also cover a notebook or shoebox or magazine box or old suitcase with brochures showing the country names and landmarks of places described in your diaries.

Thimbles

I used to collect thimbles.Many places sell thimbles decorated with local landmarks. Thimbles were small enough to go in my handbag, and did not take up lots of room in a suitcase. 

You can buy display cases for thimbles.



Display cases which are open are more likely to collect dust. But provide easy access if you want to take items out and read the detailed wording.


If you are travelling on budget airlines such as RyanAir, you need to buy small souvenirs, or look for a company which will ship to your home country.

Spoons

Some people collect decorative spoons.  You can buy wooden display cases for spoons to hang on the wall. 



Rugs

I met a pilot's wife who bought rugs and small carpets from every oriental country she visited. She had piles of them under beds in the spare room. The thin and elborate silk ones were hung on the wall. Others were scattered on the corridors and room floors throughout her apartment.

After you have collected a few you may wish to put them in order. Display them. 

Pens

A friend in Singapore collects pens. He visits a pen shop at every destination.

Books & DIcitonaries

When I went to countries in Europe I bought a dictionary and a phrasebook in each country. When I wnt to live in the USA, I bought a dictionary, which was an American Webster's dictionary. 

Maps

We bought maps for driving holidays. Eventually we had a collection of maps.

Wine Bottles & Labels

My husband is now a wine educator and wine writer and he visits vineyards and cellar doors. He buys wines from the regions which he visits, on a theme. 

Some kitchens have a horizontal wine rack, which stops corks drying out. Some bridges have bottle racks or sections. When you have a large number of bottles. and keep them from year to year, or save them for anniversaries, you might want to invest in a wine fridge which keeps wines at a low temperature. If you are in the tropics as an expat, you might need a wie friedge to keep wines out of the heat. 

I visited a relative who kept empty wine bottles on top of her kitchen and living room cabinets. I thought that was a good idea and started to do the same. 

Your policy could be to allocate some of your holiday spending money to collecting certain products on a theme, rather than bying souvenirs at random. 

Postcards

Or you might decide to collect free or inexpensive items, such as free advertising postcards.

Playing Cards

I used to collect playing cards from every destination. 

Puppets

Supermarkets had the cheapest puppets. I bought bathtime gloves which have finger puppet ends to the fingers. The styles change every season, so in the course of two years I had three or four different hand gloves.

 They are light to carry, for entertaining children at restaurants, and on long journeys on transport.

 I later found pupets at museums, often only one puppet of a local character. Puppets tend to appear at Christmas, on racks near the cashier counters.

Useful Websites

I also bought puppets online. And from toy shops. And from motorway stops. They take up a lot of space. And from puppet museums.

Acrylic display cases in all shapes and sizes, inexpensive from Temu.com.

Useful Websites

Wooden

Monday, October 13, 2014

Diaries and notebooks for travellers: + DIY maps, indexes, pockets

When I see an interesting museum I make a note of it in my diary.

Making Lists in Diaries
Maybe you'd like to make a list in your own diary.  If you've no space, find a blank page at the beginning of your diary. Pick a suitable heading to write at the top. Add that title to the diary index. If no index, next time you are waiting at a station with nothing to do, mark the pages of your diary with numbers in the top right corner and create an index at the front blank cover page, if necessary continuing on the back blank cover page.

Travel Diaries
Travel diaries on Amazon cost from about £7, plus postage. It's helpful to Look Inside and see what you get. I like a map of the world, a ribbon page marker, and a map of the underground railway in London or the MRT system in Singapore. (The way to get local maps in a diary is to buy a diary in the country you are visiting.)

I sometimes buy a diary out of season at half price. I did that the first time because I was overseas in midsummer and could not get next year's diary but had to make do with the diary for the current year.

Buying Maps
At the end of the year I could not find another diary with all the maps. I looked through the Filofax section but the maps available did not fit the size of diary I wanted. I thought, what a pity the maps for diaries are not in a separate section so you can transfer them. You can buy expensive hardback notebooks with a triangular or oblong paper pocket in the front cover or back cover or both.

Saving Maps
Then I looked through old diaries to try to find the printer's name and the trademark for that type of travel diary. I had a diary which had pages sewn in and tried to pull out a double page spread of a map or underground map. It started to tear, so I looked for a pair of scissors, a knife, a metal ruler. Success. I had a small size map from last year's diary to insert in a new diary. Two pieces of see through tape fixed the maps in place.

Now, before throwing away an old diary, I always check whether any front pages are useful.

Pockets
You can even create a pocket inside the cover of a diary, if the cover is strong enough to take the weight.

Sets
The cheapest mini-notebooks are a set of four from Poundland in the UK. Small enough to stick in a jacket pocket.