One of the first things I made when I moved into my apartment was a memory board out of a pair of wooden shutters. The shutters are the perfect size to stick tickets, photos, and other trinkets in to display them.
I found the shutters at a thrift store for about two dollars and thought there must be something I could do with them. I painted them with two coats of blue paint front and back (if you skip the back, you can see it through the shutters). As you paint, make sure the shutters are facing the way you want them. The individual shutters should be angled up so that you can stick stuff in between them. When you paint them, the shutters will get stuck in that position, so make sure they are almost fully closed so there is just a little bit of space to stick a picture or ticket in. Check me out, using prepositions at the end of a sentence on.
After letting it dry, I attached them by nailing them directly to the wall. You could always add picture hangers to the backs, but I wanted them to be really attached to the wall so I didn't accidentally knock them down. Also, finding picture hangers required another trip to Michael's, and I was tired.
I added some tickets, photos, pins (including an amusing pin of a lady in a mink stole from my grandma), and jewelry to the boards, and voila! A super easy and cheap memory board.
