20+ Ideas For Travel Memory Books and Journals

Here’s a list of travel memory books and journals to document your vacation in fun and creative ways!

Travel journals and keepsakes are wonderful ways to document your vacations so those memories stay with you after you’ve returned home.

20+ ideas for travel memory books and journals

One of the biggest mistakes travelers make is assuming you won’t forget the experiences or emotions of the places you visit.

To help keep those memories fresh, create a travel memory book, scrapbook or other keepsake idea to share your story and photos with family and friends.

travel journal for kids
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Travel Journal Ideas for Adults and Kids

20 Travel Memory Books and Journals

Travel Scrapbooks

Here's a list of 10 Travel Memory Books and Scrapbooks that provide a fun and creative way to document your vacations!

Travel Journals

Here's a list of 10 Travel Journals to record your thoughts and organize your trip!

More Travel Memory Book, Journal and Keepsake Ideas

We asked seasoned travelers how they preserve important details, memories and experiences of their vacations.

Hopefully these ideas will spark your desire to create a travel memory book in photographic or written form, or both!

Shutterfly photo books to document your travels

Photo Books

Carly “Wayward” Heyward, Flight of the Educator says: I’m honestly so addicted to making my Shutterfly photobooks, that I’m not sure if I love traveling and then I make a book that shows it… or I love making books, so I have to travel to make them! Either way, I have 16 books documenting most of my travels to 51 countries on 6 continents.

What I like most about them is that if they are ever damaged, I could just order a new one. I can also share a digital copy for my friends and family that are unable to see the physical one. And they make great conversation starters (especially for friends thinking of going to those places).

I enjoy crafting each page and making them all look nice and unique.  It’s also a wonderful way to reminiscence after a trip while cultivating the perfect pictures for the pages. Travel brings me joy planning the trip, during the trip, while making the book, and anytime I look at it for years to come.

To get the best possible deal (because they can get expensive very fast!), I go ahead and make my book. Then, when there’s a 40 or 50% off sale, I’m ready to go!

When you’re traveling, you often think that there is NO WAY you will ever forget these memories, but as time goes on the memories start to fade. There are plenty of ways to document your travels so you can cherish those memories forever. We will share our ten favorite ways to preserve your travel memories so you can relive them. Make sure you save these ways to remember your travels to your board so you can find them later.

Travel Diary

Lauren Cocking, Northern Lauren says: I always document my (long-term) travels in a travel diary, but because I’m notoriously terrible at keeping up with writing entries, I ‘force’ myself to write just one page a day about what I did.

In fact, this page-a-day technique worked really well when I did my year abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico and I ended up with three mini travel diaries full of my experiences that I can look back on forever.

HOWEVER, I really outdid myself when I got back to the UK and decided to turn these journals into three MASSIVE scrapbooks of photos, receipts, tickets, wristbands and memories.

It took me as long to put them together as it did to write the journals and I don’t think I’d do it again (it took an age) but I’m really glad I went the extra mile for my year abroad travels.

→ Check out these cool travel diary ideas at AMAZON and ETSY

When you’re traveling, you often think that there is NO WAY you will ever forget these memories, but as time goes on the memories start to fade. There are plenty of ways to document your travels so you can cherish those memories forever. We will share our ten favorite ways to preserve your travel memories so you can relive them. Make sure you save these ways to remember your travels to your board so you can find them later.

Vintage Posters

Pete Brahan, Just Go Travel Studios says: I’ve always admired vintage National Park art. Last fall, I decided to try my hand at creating a similar style poster as a Christmas gift for my wife Amy to commemorate our love for National Parks.

A photo from a memorable family hike on the Bumpass Hell Trail at Lassen Volcanic National Park was chosen. I invested hours into locating a good font and experimenting to get the style and layout just right.  My sister was enlisted for artistic feedback along the way.

When she saw what I was creating, she immediately requested I create a poster using a photo from her recent trip to the Grand Canyon. After testing the idea with a few other family, friends and National Park enthusiasts, I knew I had something special and showed Amy immediately (yes, before Christmas!).

We agreed to start a small business to share our passion for National Parks and allow others to have a unique way to document their travels. Just Go Travel Studios was born. Our mission is to help people plan, experience, and remember great vacations.

We believe that vacations are meant to be enjoyed before, during and after the trip, and we try to help in every area. We have also always given 10% of all profits to the National Park Foundation, as we feel it’s our way of giving back to the Parks that have given us so much.

For remembering great vacations, our most popular products are our custom, vintage-style travel posters and postcards created using photos from our customers. We work closely with our customers to add in personalized wording based on their trip experiences and accommodate their requests. We are dedicated to providing exceptional customer service from the moment the order is placed until the package arrives at their door.

The result is a memory that enables them to enjoy their trip forever.

→ Check out the awesome CUSTOM POSTERS using YOUR photos! – Use Coupon Code: PHOTOJEEPERS10 to get 10% off your order!

When you’re traveling, you often think that there is NO WAY you will ever forget these memories, but as time goes on the memories start to fade. There are plenty of ways to document your travels so you can cherish those memories forever. We will share our ten favorite ways to preserve your travel memories so you can relive them. Make sure you save these ways to remember your travels to your board so you can find them later.

Travel Scrapbook

Georgina Goodman, Georgina Does says: My boyfriend always asks me what I want for Christmas so I usually know what I am going to get. Last year he bought me a surprise gift and it was such a brilliant one!

Since January of this year, I have been filling it with photos, notes, receipts, even chocolate wrappers from weird stuff that you can’t get back at home. I love it and already it is such a nice memory of what I’ve done this year. I’m looking forward to when it’s completely full – hopefully I’ll still be able to close it!

→ Check out these fun travel scrapbooks at AMAZON and ETSY

When you’re traveling, you often think that there is NO WAY you will ever forget these memories, but as time goes on the memories start to fade. There are plenty of ways to document your travels so you can cherish those memories forever. We will share our ten favorite ways to preserve your travel memories so you can relive them. Make sure you save these ways to remember your travels to your board so you can find them later.

Travel Postcards

Hannah Lukaszewicz, Getting Stamped says: My husband and I have been traveling for 4.5 years non-stop sharing everything along the way on our blog. Besides the blog, we also send ourselves a postcard from every country we go to.

We write a few notes about the country, our thoughts, and random things that are going on. It’s always an adventure to find stamps and a post office.

Our favorite postcard is from the Maldives, we were staying at a popular Maldives honeymoon spot and they turned this photo into a postcard for us. It’s fun to come home and find mail we sent to ourselves from the road.

→ Make custom postcards of your travels!

DIY shadow boxes are perfect for displaying travel memorabilia

Travel Shadow Box

Megan Johnson from Red Around the World shares: Every time I go on a trip, big or small, I always come home with a million little tickets, business cards, and maps.  I never knew what to do with them until one day I was perusing good old Pinterest and saw DIY shadow boxes.

I thought, “this is perfect!”  So off I went to Jo Ann Fabric to find myself a shadow box, or four. I think DIY shadow boxes are a fun way to show off all the little stuff that you’re not quite sure what to do with.

→ Check out these DIY shadow boxes at AMAZON and ETSY

When you’re traveling, you often think that there is NO WAY you will ever forget these memories, but as time goes on the memories start to fade. There are plenty of ways to document your travels so you can cherish those memories forever. We will share our ten favorite ways to preserve your travel memories so you can relive them. Make sure you save these ways to remember your travels to your board so you can find them later.

Memorabilia Scrapbook

Justine Cross, Wanderer of the World says: When coming home from travelling, there are a few things I get excited about: showing reams of photos to my family, recounting my tales on my blog and creating scrapbook pages of mementos from my trip.

My scrapbook is rammed full of trip tickets, airplane tickets, luggage tags, even small pieces of foreign currency! I find this to be a great way of keeping all the little mementos gathered from a trip in one place.

I try to (artfully) arrange them in my travel journal so that I can always look back on exactly what we got up to during each trip – the more colour, the better!

With so many travels happening all the time, I can sometimes forget the smaller things about a trip. But my memorabilia scrapbook is an excellent way of jolting my memory! Plus, it’s also fun to create the pages!

→ Check out these fun travel memorabilia displays at AMAZON

vacation planner

Vacation Planners

Bernadette Jackson, A Packed Life says: It’s not surprising that someone like me with a passion for planners is also an avid travel journal keeper. It began when I started to forget details of the magnificent places we’d visited (ah Australia, how I wish I’d journaled you!), and has become part of my traveling ritual.

In fact, my travel journal is there on my list of essentials alongside passport and tickets. Over the years, my collection of travel journals has expanded to embrace all manner of journeys.

There are the journals of Big Trips, starting from the moment we hatched an idea and began to plan an itinerary. Then there’s my little book of weekenders: easy to pick up and throw in a bag at the last minute.

In these journals I can connect again with all kinds of memories; meeting a full time RVing couple at the march of the Peabody Ducks in Memphis, delicate scrolled wrapping tissue from a pharmacy in Cagliari, a gift of ice cold red pears roadside at the Col de Tende, and the changing cityscape of one of our favourite places, Ghent. When I’m not on the road, I can escape happily into those pages.

→ Check out these travel planning journals at AMAZON and ETSY

get the free travel planner

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15 Comments

  1. Thanks for this! It’s inspiration to start the travel scrapbooks and compile years of iPhone photos in Shutterfly photobooks for my kiddos.

  2. Useful article! I was just thinking about how to organize my photos. So many photos just got lost in my phone among all the screenshots and random things people send it chats. Would definitely like to keep a journal of sorts!

  3. I used to have a travel scrapbook when I was younger but nowadays, it’s not practical anymore because I live in AirBnB’s and carry around all my belongings in my backpack. However, I use my instagram account to document my travels. Started only recently which is a pity. And my daughter gets a postcard from almost every place a visit (sometimes, I can’t find postcards) and I know that she keeps and collects them.

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