The best travel souvenirs are often the ones that can serve a purpose. Add some colour or pattern to your tabletop with decorative bowls, pottery, or serving dishes. The hardest part will be packing this precious ceramic to transport home, but once you do, every time that you serve food on them, you’ll be reminded of your vacation.

Even though we now navigate using virtual maps and apps, annotating paper maps with the places you visited on your trip is still fun. Frame the map as a memento to show where you’ve been. Depending on the size of the map, it might work well in a larger gallery wall with photos from your trip.

Alternatively, many Etsy shops sell customizable map-inspired art.

Instead of collecting key chains or shot glasses, start collecting fabrics and textiles used throughout your home. Tea towels and decorative napkins can add colour and become a conversation story in their kitchen, or linens for your bed can help your dream of far-off destinations.

Vintage Country Linen Tablecloth, Angel Home Custom, $40.

Galleries and gift shops often have the best coffee table books with colourful illustrations of destinations. Instead of storing them on your bookshelf, place them in a prominent place in your home. Add them to the stack of books on your coffee table for visitors to flip through, or arrange them on a hallway console table.

Transform a cost-effective souvenir into something special by framing your favourite postcards. The retro-inspired illustrated ones can look great in your space framed⁠—either on their own or collecting multiple to make a collage. The best frame or photo insert size for a postcard is 3.5″ x 5.5″, but you can also play around with colourful picture mats to have it fit into a frame that you already have.

When it comes to decorating your walls on a budget, you can’t go wrong with woven baskets and bowls. Simply group them and hang them on your wall to become a three-dimensional art piece set above your couch or above your bed.

If you love to comb the beach to find the most pristine shells, then you’ll need to find a way to add them to your open-shelf display. Place shells or pebbles in glass bowls, jars or vases to keep them organized.

If you don’t have the right shelf to display your souvenirs, then a tray you can place on a counter, coffee table or night table is a decorative way to arrange your wares. Find a unique tray at a flea market or consignment store, or pick one up on your vacation to create a vignette of jars, canisters, vases, candles and more.

If the piece of cloth you’ve purchased is too pretty to use, you can always frame the textile you’ve picked up on your trip like a work of art. Tea towels, silk scarves and smaller fabrics often look best as framed works of art, but if you have larger linens, you can display them like a tapestry.

Add a few travel souvenirs to the display on an open bookshelf, floating shelf or console table where you add decorative items. It is a creative way to arrange vases, books, or other trinkets you may have collected in a space visible to guests in your home