You invest a lot of time and money into travel, so why not get more bang for your buck and make your travel experiences a bigger part of your everyday life? It’s a waste to keep your best photos hidden in your computer files       – I like to see them as much as possible, to keep memories alive and to inspire my next trip! It also makes the work day more bearable when you can remember why you go to work in the first place – to fund your next big adventure!

I’ve thought of five ways to use your travel photos, arranged from cheapest to most expensive. Pick at least one and give it a go!

1. Brighten up your digital world

Cost: Free, 10 Minutes

Take your happiest travel moments and put them somewhere you’ll see them every day. Your desktop, tablet & smartphone wall papers and lock screens can remind you of your travels 10,0000 times a day if you’re constantly glued to your screen (like me).

My desktop is of my best friend and I jumping off a boat into the Mediterranean ocean, my iPhone lock screen is of my boyfriend & I in Melbourne, the wallpaper is of delicious Berthillon ice creams held up against the Seine in Paris and my iPad has a photo of the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in Levanto, Italy.

2. Go crazy with a photo wall

Cost: Around 20 cents per photo, a couple of hours

Load up a USB with your favourite hundred travel photos and take it to Officeworks. Printing photos is super cheap, like 20 cents a photo! Print them all out and blue tack them to a big blank wall at home. Maybe it’s beside your bed or above your desk – somewhere where it’s okay for things to look a little more messy or creative.  I probably won’t do this on my living room wall in my new apartment, but if I have a study nook or an office (!) I’ll definitely put some up.

Warning! It’s easy to get very distracted and lost down memory lane with so many travel photos around.

3. Make posters

Cost: $12-43, Printing takes 2-7 business days

Pick one or even a few of your favourite travel photos and get them made into posters at Officeworks ( or at home if you have a good printer). A3 size or bigger is good. Frame them and stick them up. I think photos without people in them work best for decorating with such big posters – for example, the photo below.

4. Make a photo book

Cost: $40-$150 dollars depending on style of book and number of pages, many hours (depending on length of book)

One year of Christmas I made my Mum a photo book of our family’s trip to Paris & London. It took a really long time, and being a photo-lover I found it really hard to edit out photos, so the book was quite long (and expensive). However, I’d rather pay a little more at the start and have every photo I want in the book, forever. It’s on our coffee table now, and she adores it.

I’m in the process of making my own photo books for other trips, but it does take a long time! I make my books with Officeworks, they have a program you can download to make the photo books with.

I love photo books because I like to be able to HOLD the photos, not just flick through pictures on a computer screen. I like to flick through at my own pace and dip into past adventures whenever I want. I like modern photo books better than a classic photo album, because you can have pictures in lots of different sizes on one page – so you might blow up a nice group photo or gorgeous landscape, and fit five smaller photos of some meals on the next page, rather than wasting lots of space on photos that are nice to have but only need to be small.

5. Blow up your best photos on a canvas

Cost: $60-$170, half an hour + company’s printing time

Choose your favourite travel photo and get it immortalised on a big canvas. A more expensive version of poster, basically. I would love to do this with one of my favourite travel photos!

Do you have any other ideas?