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With a new year comes new dreams, and I’m sure you’re as eagerly anticipating future adventures as I am. But why wait? You can start dreaming and planning right now, both for this year and beyond, with our travel vision board ideas.
A travel vision board is a creative tool used to visualize and manifest your dream vacations and travel experiences. It typically consists of a collage of images, words, and visuals that represent your desired destinations, experiences, and travel goals.
To create one, you’ll need to gather inspiring travel photos, maps, and brochures, and arrange them on a board or digitally. Add motivational quotes and personal touches, categorize your travel dreams and display it prominently to keep your wanderlust alive and inspire action towards your travel goals.
I like to make one every year to visualize my goals, both in travel & my life. So I have put together some easy tips to help you make your own.
Ready to dive into the step-by-step guide to designing your own vacation vision board? Let’s make sure your travel dreams come alive this year.
Table of Contents
How To Make A Travel Vision Board
A vision board uses the idea of the law of attraction, and the belief that what you focus on, you attract into your life.
Just remember “A dream without action is just a wish.” Without taking action, your vision won’t come to life magically. I like to think of this as the first step to making my dream vacation happen.
I love that this activity allows me to tap into my creativity, and keeps me inspired & motivated every day to work towards my goals. Plus there are great benefits:
- Keeps you focused on your goals
- Gets you excited about your plans
- Provides clarity around what is really important to you and your family
- Gives you a starting point to take action on your dreams
- It’s creative & fun
1. Gather Inspiration & Choose Your Focus
Decide what you want the focus of your vision board to be. It can be used for a single dream vacation, highlighting tours, attractions, foods, and experiences.
Alternatively, you can use a bigger one to plan for one or more years, detailing multiple trips.
I like to start with a destination I have in mind and look at travel blogs, magazines and social media for ideas and inspiration.
Write down all your ideas. There are no rules. They can be anything from a specific feeling, or mood, to activities like drinks served on the beach, to luxury accommodations with a kids club. Anything goes!
EXAMPLE: When planning my family beach vacation to Cuba I started with ideas like these:
- Playing in warm ocean waves with my daughter
- Sunset walks on the beach
- Mix of relaxing & fun active adventures
- Walk the Malacon
- Havana, Varadero
- Practice & learn more Spanish
- Eat at local paladars
- Old car tour
2. Decide The Format For Your Travel Vision Board
There are 3 main ways I like to make my vision boards; physical, digital and Pinterest boards.
There’s no wrong answer. You may even come up with another cool idea, like a slide show, video, sculpture, the sky’s the limit.
- Physical Vision Board: Uses a piece of poster board or paper, and cut out pieces of paper, words and quotes to glue onto it. You could also use a cork bord & pin pictures to it.
- Digital Vision Board: Uses your computer, or a program like Canva (what I use) to create a digital collage with pictures, words or quotes.
- Pinterest Board: Make a specific Pinterest board for your trip. Search for ideas, and save them to your board. You can make folders or just throw them all in.
When I’m feeling creative, a physical board is so satisfying. But Canva is super easy as they have plenty of digtal templates already you can use to just put your photos into.
The only downside to a digital copy is you’ll need to keep in on your phone / computer which may not be as regularly visible. Or you’ll need to find a way to print it out.
3. Gather Your Materials
Once you have your where and the format for your board, you’ll need to gather all your materials.
- Source your photos, quotes and words. You can find these in magazines, postcards, brochures or online with free photography sites like Unsplash, Pixabay, PicMonkey, or my favourite Canva. Google “travel quotes” or “family travel quotes” to get ideas for those. Check out our fave 150+ road trip quotes here.
- Grab physical materials & tools. For a physical board you’ll need poster board or paper, your pictures, quotes, scissors, glue or tape etc, depending on how you’re planning to make your board.
- Create a Pinterest Board. Name your board whatever you’re calling your trip (ex. Africa 2024, Summer Vacation, Rockies Road Trip etc.
4. Arrange Your Vision Board Content
Now comes the fun part where you dial up your creativity and arrange your content.
Invite some friends or family members to take part, and make a little party out of it. I’ve done this with friends on New Years to start the year off right. But you can do it anytime.
Some tips that have helped me to make trip collages more pleasing include:
- First start with a focal photo. Sometimes I use a picture of my family, sometimes it’s specific place, animal, quote or activity that is driving my travel desires. Arrange everything around it.
- Next choose your color scheme. Coolors is a great free tool to help you choose an overall, cohesive look. You can even upload one of your travel vision board photos and pick out colors from there to use.
- Mix up the size & positions of photos & words
- Mix up mediums. With a physical collage, use different types of paper (magazines, newspaper), paint, pencil crayons, cut out words or individual letters, different fonts, hand drawn pictures or stickers. Thrift stores or Dollar stores are great places to get cheap magazines, stickers, poster boards & other materials.
5. Display Your Board Where You’ll See It Everyday
Once you have your masterpiece, hang it somewhere you can see it everyday, to remind you of your focus for the year.
While this is easier when it’s a physical thing, you can always save it as your screensaver or background on your cell phone or computer.
6. Take Action
Without taking small actions every day or week to reach your travel goals, you may find yourself disappointed at the end of the year.
Maybe it’s learning how to save more money for travel & choosing one or two things to do.
Maybe it’s making a travel budget or finding ways to travel more affordably so the trip is more doable for you or your family.
Whatever your actions are, make sure they align with your travel & life goals.
Hey life happens. But do you want life to just happen to you, or do you want an amazing year accomplishing your travel goals?
My partner & I like to sit down every couple of weeks or so and review our budgets, goals, and actions to see if we are headed in the right direction. That way it’s easier to adjust if we get off course.
Final Thoughts: Travel Vision Board
Your beautiful travel vision board is your ticket to turning dreams into adventures.
Whether it’s a single destination or years of travel plans, this creative tool keeps your wanderlust alive.
With some inspiration, creativity, and a dash of motivation, I know you’ll be well on your way to making your dream vacations a reality. Start envisioning your journey today and let your travel dreams take flight!
