Crafty Ideas in a Pin-ch

Haaaave ya met Pinterest? (Those of you who enjoy How I Met Your Mother will be able to hear that statement in your head.)

I am ridiculously addicted to Pinterest. I will admit it. I love it. Obsessively. I could probably waste a whole day just looking at all of the fun things other people have found. If I'm on the internet, I have to go take a look at my Pinterest feed. (FYI...all of the photos used in this post are pins from Pinterest. So handy.)

When I first started using it, I had no idea what it was or what it's possible use could be. It took me a couple of weeks to really comprehend the whole of it.  I figured at first that it was just people posting pretty pictures. I didn't realize that each "pin" was actually a link to another website. Once I figured this out things just took off.

So what exactly is Pinterest? Pinterest is like a website for bookmarks. Instead of bookmarking things you like on the web and making a huge mess in your browser, you "pin" them and arrange them on boards. You create and name your boards so that the things you like can be arranged in a way that make sense to you. For example, I have boards including "Recipes - Desserts" and "Sewing Projects".  Pins are then stored as images so that you can remember exactly what an item is before you go to the page and you don't get lost in a sea of random websites and URLs.

In addition to being able to be used as a bookmark organizer, Pinterest can also help you find other things you might like (similar to StumbleUpon). As with Facebook, you have Pinterest friends and like Twitter, they can be followers. In this way, your Pinterest homepage will show a scrolling feed of pins from your friends (i.e. people you follow). You can also look at Pinterest as a whole or do a search for a specific item. You can then "repin" these items.

However...a word of caution...I always click the item first to check the source page. I have ran into items that are connected to a blog home page rather than the specific post and to items labeled as DIY that are really items for sale on Etsy. Check your sources before you pin or may find yourself angry later.
I have now been pinning for about a month. I'm up to 31 boards and 318 pins as of the time of this post. I have 19 followers and I am following 30 other pinners. I thought I was going a little overboard, but then I discovered something that made me feel a lot less self-conscious about my boards. One of the ladies I follow has 382 boards and 62637 pins. Whew! That's a lot of pinning. This is where the board arrangement comes in handy. I like a lot of her ideas and some of the same things she does. But not everything. So I don't follow her as a whole. I only follow those boards that I find interesting. It's a pretty versatile site.

This is where Pinterest can become a problem...an addiction. I have pinned a gob of recipes and craft projects. But it is so much fun to pin, that I don't get very many of them completed. I just keep adding to my pile because each page has new and interesting things. Try not to let it happen to you...if you love Pinterest it will just swallow you whole. It has no mercy. In fact, I've gone on just to find one item only to look at the clock and realize that an hour has flown by.

But I probably won't give it up. It's just too much fun. There are too many crafty and fun people out there and I love their ideas. Now...if only I could transition...

One of these days I'll finish some of the projects I've pinned...