Collecting on Shine

Displaying souvenir collectibles

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By Jean Nayar

Whether you spent your summer vacation on a lake, near the ocean, in the country or on the other side of the world, chances are you’ve brought back a souvenir or two to remind you of the journey. It might be a prized catch reeled in on a fishing trip, a vintage book or cookie tin discovered at a flea market, or a smattering of shapely shells picked up on a sandy beach. Whatever you bring home, these collectibles deserve a special spot in your home—where they’ll spark a conversation or elicit a happy memory. Here are six simple ways to show them off in style.

Would you do board game decor?

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Knowing my ongoing obsession with Scrabble (and no, I do not mean Scrabulous, which is completely different and inferior!), a sweet friend sent me the link to Los Angeles designer/artist Clare Graham's amazing Scrabble tile- and board-based constructions. (Graham also dabbles in collecting and stacking up and gluing together buttons, bottle caps, yardsticks, and paint-by-numbers art, which I happen to love and a lot of you happen to hate.) If you have a few minutes you were planning on procrastinating through anyway, spend them clicking through Graham's site—it's like a museum of childhood detritus-turned-sculpture, and some of the pieces will really surprise you if you let them.

Collecting: Something's Hiding In Here

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My love for collecting and seeing other people's collections evolved this year when I started a Collecting Series on my blog. I interviewed favourite artists, bloggers and shop owners I admired on what they collect and why. The response has been overwhelming and the series continues...

Collector's Edition: owl in the family

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Now that I’ve set up this post with a really corny pun, we can get right down to business. I was so excited to see everyone’s responses yesterday to the “What do you collect?” post—keep ‘em coming, people!—and then last night when I picked up my sister for dinner, I realized that I’m not the only Rains with a soft spot for hooters. (It’s like I can’t stop with the bad puns now; I apologize.) Anyway, here’s a peek at another parliament of owls—the last one is a print-out my sister made to plan out a patchwork quilt that is still in the, ahem, conceptual phase.

Call and Response: What do you collect?

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You could make that case that everything in your home says something about you—and to some extent, it does—but when it comes to the big purchases, it's normal (and practical) to go a little more neutral, and let the little things like throw pillows and table lamps do the talking. (After all,...

Collecting chairs: almost practical, completely satisfying

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People collect things for a variety of reasons, which are often difficult to articulate. How does one explain an amorphous but mighty urge to amass more and more wooden owls? Today, Poppytalk delves into Abbey Hendricksen's (of Here Now Design) lust for iconic chairs, plus her accumulations of vintage rubber ducks and old clipboards, which she uses to display prints purchased on Etsy.