an introduction to some of my collections

Most people, at some point in their lives, have had a collection of something or other. My Granny B was a sucrologist - she used to collect sugar packets. She kept some of them in a large jar on the highest shelf in her warm, cosy kitchen and sometimes she brought them down for us to look at together and admire. The majority of them were from when she lived in France, their paper wrappers were all beautifully illustrated and it was no wonder she collected them.

The first things that I remember deliberately collecting were butterfly things - anything with a butterfly on it. When GB was teaching me French at the age of 5, the first word I asked to learn was 'butterfly' and I was forever drawing them on absolutely everything. I wrote books about them, designed 'new' ones, and learned all of the different types with their caterpillars and everything. I could not get enough of them.

Then when I was about 6 years old it was owls. I kept the butterflies, obviously, but now I had a collection of owls too...

In fact, I had/have a whole bunch of collections... wanna see them?

//1989 - Sylvanian Families//1990 - fruit stickers//1991 - stamps//

//1992 - stickers//1993 - POGs//1994 - Take That memorabilia//

//1995 - pin badges//1996 - kinder toys//1997 - Star Wars stickers//

//1998 - drinks cans//1999 - candles//2000 - passport photos//

//2001 - lists//2002 - keys//2003 - discarded playing cards//

//2004 - discarded credit cards//2006 - snowglobes//2007 - nuns//

//2008 - travel tickets//2010 - Momiji dolls//2012 - dice//

I'm pretty sure that most of my collections are sensible. The only weird-ish ones were those I started during my university years - discarded passport photos, discarded lists, discarded keys, discarded playing cards and discarded credit cards. Basically, just any discarded stuff. I had a real fascination with the concept of loss, lost items and secrets and stuff, so they do kinda make sense.

I can't remember a time when I haven't collected something, and I still have almost all of the collections. Some of them are tucked away in memory boxes, some of them are safe in folders, and a couple of them are proudly on display. I'm thinking of a couple of new ways to display some of my currently undisplayed collections, and, of course, Pinterest is a great help...

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I really want to display some of my collections like this - how awesome do they look!?

Do you collect anything? Do you display any of your collections?