Bring The World Into Your Home – Simple DIY Ideas

Add a splash of travel to your home décor with these simple DIY ideas. These projects squelched my Wanderlust during quarantine and continue to make me pause in my day and reminisce on the beautiful experiences we’ve had.

1. World Clocks

Order, set, and hang three matching clocks. I highly recommend no tick clocks like these otherwise the three clicks per second will drive you batty.

Second, select 3 meaningful cities. In addition to local time choose two of your favorite cities; ideally falling in different time zones.

Third, add vinyl city names under each clock. I didn’t have a Cricut when I hung these clocks to fill a hallway wall, so I purchased the vinyl from an Etsy seller for $3-4 per city name.

Fourth, remember daylight savings. Or, move to Arizona or Hawaii.

2. Display Colorful Foreign Currency in Glass

Why does America have the dullest currency?

When we travel internationally we inevitably end up with a few spare bills not worth exchanging back to USD.

They make beautiful décor and this may be the easiest DIY I’ve ever done! Grab any glass vase/container, we used carafes, and assort your foreign money inside. I used only paper currency, but you could do something fun with coins too!

3. Latitude Longitude Decor

I’m not sure what it is about them, but I love the aesthetic of a latitude longitude address.

Print your favorite lat/long onto a pillow whether it is of a favorite memory or your own home. I used my Cricut to cut this design onto Heat Transfer Vinyl and ironed it on to the reverse side of this bicycle pillow case.

4. Turn Postcards Into Wall Art

A quick visit to Hobby Lobby will provide ample options for wall décor with clips. Choose any of them and mount your recent travel postcards.

If you don’t have a collection of your own, hang postcards you’ve received from others. A bit of travel inspiration never hurt anyone.

5. Wine Cork Memories

Calling this DIY is a bit of a stretch as I had to order the globe cork holder, however it is filled with corks from our travels or special locations.

We always travel with a sharpie so that we can label our corks and bring them home for our collection.

6. Christmas Ornaments

Since we had kids, we’ve been trying to pick up some type of Christmas ornament each time we travel so we can fill a “Travel Tree” around the holidays. Sometimes nothing strikes us and other times we forget.

Not to worry though, its easy to repurpose a random souvenir or even a collected seashell into a keepsake ornament.

Magnets work great as ornaments and are available in many more styles. Attach a string and voila! (Tallinn and Cuba’s ornaments below were repurposed from magnets.)

7. Series Photo Frames

In writing this post, I realized I have a thing for groupings of three. I believe they fill large walls nicely.

Hook and Loop

These are copy-cats of Pottery Barn Weston Frames made with coat hooks and I used rings made for holding planters. We had to saw off the wall mounts of the planter rings.

Pipe & Chain

Equally as involved as the DIY above, the steel pipe wall hanging turned out great! We bought black steel pipe from Home Depot as well as two elbows and two 3″ flanges.

We bought Black Jewelry Making Chain from Michaels that attached to the back of the frames after slip-knotting them around the pipe.

8. Travel Quote Canvas Prints and Wall Decor

Again, you can use a Cricut or order custom Vinyl to cut your favorite travel saying(s). Apply to any board, wood block, canvas print, or frame.

Travel quote wall décor is readily availability though at a low cost, so for $10-$20 you can probably save the time.

9. Not Your Mother’s Photo Album

OK, photo books are an obvious keepsake, but this is the coffee table book to end all coffee table books. I couldn’t be happier with how this 220 page travel book from MixBook turned out.

Don’t get me wrong, compiling photo books is a major time investment, even with the slick editing tools and templates offered online. That said, having this memento is worth the ~3 days of my life I invested in its curation. The quality of the binding, pages, and cover is phenomenal – I cannot recommend MixBook enough.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links on which (at no additional cost to you) I may earn a small commission. I promise to use any kickback to explore more of our incredible world. Read full privacy policy here.