How To Display Your Postcards At Home [Decor Guide]

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I miss my vacations when they’re over. I actually pine for them like a lost love. That’s why I adore postcards. These budget souvenirs are not only beautiful, but they remind you of those adventurous, carefree days before you were forced to return to planet reality.

Unfortunately, they build up with a lot of other stuff in your life and often end up buried in a drawer somewhere. Well, it’s time to resurrect those postcards, fellow travelers because there are lots of ways to display them around your house.

Displaying postcards in your home not only adds an artistic touch to your decor, but it also helps to keep the experience of those glorious vacation days present and alive. 

Here are some ideas on how to display postcards in your home. 

They range from dead simple to more elaborate. Whatever appeals to your taste, surrounding yourself with these miniature pieces of art is food for the traveler’s soul.  

Start Simple

If you’re not up for a big DIY project, there are still creative ways to display your postcards. This artistic yet straightforward uses florist wire and a river rock. Easy to make and easy to display; this lovely idea can be used just about anywhere in your home because it doesn’t require much space.   

Want something even simpler? 

A great idea for a desk or side table is to use shells to create a natural frame for the postcard in keeping with its great outdoors theme. Rocks, twigs or sand (in a small, shallow bowl) could also work. No hot glue gun required!

Clipboards and Cutting Boards

Clipboards are another way to show off your favorite postcards. Instead of going for a standard office type, try something more unusual. 

These rustic, wooden clipboards make an excellent backdrop for any postcard and are easy to place throughout your home.

Or, you can pick an unexpected piece and simply use push pins to attach your postcard.

A cutting board, push pins and, voila! You’ve got kitchen art!

Want each postcard to stand out on its own? Instead of mounting them against a clipboard or a cutting board, display them on a wall by clipping each on to a simple bulldog clip.

To do this, you’ll need one bulldog clip per postcard. Mount the clips in horizontal rows on a wall and then clip one postcard to each clip.

You can put them side by side or space them out to reveal more negative space between each postcard. 

There are endless ways to make it work!

Frame Them Up

Framing may seem like a standard approach to displaying your postcards, but it depends on how elaborate you go. A pretty postcard with a lovely matt and frame always looks elegant.

But if you go big, you can even bring more of an art gallery feel to your project. 

This Umbra frame is a great circular option that gives you the opportunity to display postcards horizontally and vertically without it looking messy or uneven. 

But really, any frame will work to display postcards! 

Out Of The Box

Frames are a beautiful way to show off your favorite postcards, but push pins, glue and a little creativity can go along way. These ideas don’t require a lot of tools, and yet they feel like works of art. 

One of the best things about putting postcards directly on the wall is there’s no need to get in a fight with a level like you might when trying to hang a frame. We love the idea of using all of your postcards as an accent wall in your home to really liven up a space. 

Have fun experimenting with different shapes and groupings. 

You can even make a heart-shaped grouping. Awwww. 

As you can see, by playing with shapes and wall placements, you can create a truly unique piece. You can also mix in some of your trip photos to make the display even more personal.

Related: How To Make Your Own Candles At Home [Home Decorating Guide]

String Them Up

Stringing your postcards together also seems like a basic approach. And a simple display can look lovely. But with a few creative twists, you can make some truly awe-inspiring pieces. 

This Love-KANKEI Wood Picture Photo Frame comes with 30 clips and can help bring any space to life and add a touch of color to your room. 

This simple grouping of postcards on twine looks clean, modern and elegant.

Want to take postcards and twine to the next level? Add a tree branch, and you have a more organic feel.

This vertical grouping uses various strings of postcards to create a singular piece of art. 

The TWING Hanging Photo Display Picture Frames Collage also comes with 30 clips to arrange your postcards easily. This design makes it simple to mix and match postcards and update your collage at any time.

But display them on a string of LED lights, and now you’ve got postcards with pizazz!

String Light with Clips is a great way to set the mood lighting in any space as well as display postcards. This pack comes in packs of 50 or 100 lights, so there’s plenty of room to display any photo you have stored away! 

Or how about a string of postcards with stars?

This is a super creative way to string your postcards together. And it’s not something you’ll find at Ikea! 

The Mkono Hanging Photo Display Wood Stars Garland is great for kid’s rooms, nursery’s, dorms, or a home office! 

Don’t want to decorate your walls with postcards? Hang them from the ceiling instead!

All you need is a hole puncher to make holes in each card, some clear fishing wire to attach them, and some hooks to suspend the fishing wire from the ceiling.

You can hang multiple cards vertically on a single piece of fishing line. Or, you can hang one card at the end of each individual fishing line. To make the biggest impact, stagger them at different lengths and heights for a fun, whimsical look. 

This display looks especially cool at the top of a stairway or at a high point in the ceiling.

Turn Them Into Wallpaper

Have you been collecting postcards since you took your first road trip in college? The more you have, the more of an impact you can make with them! 

With a tiny bit of sticky tack, you can turn your postcard collection into a wallpaper art collage. Cover an entire wall in your living room or bathroom or choose a small focal wall to your display. Whichever wall you choose, be sure to cover it from top to bottom! 

Don’t have enough postcards to cover a wall from floor to ceiling? You can also use them to decorate around a door frame. 

Go up the sides of the door and across the top ledge. As you get more, you can easily add to the display.

A Few Random Ideas

Almost any random item can make an original rack to display postcards on. Like maybe something you picked up on your last beach vacation?

If you aren’t feeling super crafty, but want something that looks a little more DIY. This Umbra Trickle Photo Display is a great option. The design inspiration came from rain clouds and rain, but we think it can brighten up any space. If you are feeling really nifty I bet you can recreate this display yourself with a few hangers and floral wire. 

A little fun wire rack can be a great canvas for displaying your postcards. 

It also makes it easy to switch them out for new ones when you want a fresh look. This Cevillo Stylish Wire Metal Wall Grid Panel is very versatile. Not only is the framework a piece of art, but you can organize postcards, photos and more on this frame. It also comes in other fun designs like a monstera leaf, a bunny and King Kong. 

You can always put them on a shelf. How’s that for an idea?

You can also add other travel knick-knacks that you’ve picked up over the years and create a full travel shelf! 

Want to give your desk a one-of-a-kind look? Take a simple piece of plexiglass cut to fit the top of your desk and display your collection of postcards underneath. This is a great technique that you can do at home or in your office.

You can organize them by color, by location, or in chronological order of your travelers. And every time you sit at your desk to work, you’ll be reminded of all of those great memories!

As long as the plexiglass fits your desk, this method doesn’t even require any glue or tape. You can simply lay the cards down and cover with the glass when you’re done. 

If you do want to make it more secure, you can use double-sided tape to attach your postcards to a piece of poster board, then put the plexiglass on top of that. 

Don’t have enough postcards to cover the entire surface of your desk? You can use this same display method on a coffee table, an end table, a nightstand, or an accent table.

If you only have a few postcards, a shadow box is a great way to show them off. Shadow boxes are versatile – you can hang them on the wall or prop them up on a shelf.  

To create a shadowbox display, you can place your postcards neatly inside or toss them in haphazardly. The haphazard method is the way to go if you’re looking to create a unique collage effect.

P.S. You Should Do This

As you can see, travel gypsies, there are lots of reasons to pull your postcards out of that junk drawer and make them a part of your everyday life. From a simple single postcard display to an elaborate collage, they bring a truly personal touch to your home decor. 

They’ll remind you of the good times and may help tide you over until you can hit the road again. 

And for those of you who like to dream about DIY projects more than you want to do them, don’t worry, we just provided you with plenty of options to show off those postcards and reminisce about your travels.

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