The Pinterest Predicament

Are you on Pinterest? You have to have heard of it…or been living under a rock.

Pinterest is like an online bulletin board where you can organize your ideas into categories and share them with friends. When you are surfing the web or browsing blogs you can “Pin It” to your Pinterest and choose which picture to feature. And the beauty is the picture you pin will link back to the website where you found it! I used to try to add pages to my favorites so I could find them later. I can’t tell you how often I would get inspiration from something I’d seen online, and then when I tried to make it I would need to look back for a detail I couldn’t remember. And inevitably I wouldn’t be able to find it. So frustrating!

And then, about a year ago, I started hearing about a website called Pinterest. Like “interest” with a “P”. But I couldn’t actually get on it. You have to have an invitation! That was marketing genius – we always want what we can’t have. I reached out to some bloggers I had been reading who I knew were on Pinterest. I begged for an invitation. Yes, I’m not proud, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

And then my invitation arrived! I was in! And the adventure began.

No one I knew was on Pinterest back then. Kind of like when I joined FaceBook. There was so much to explore, so many creative ideas just waiting to be tried. Interesting blogs waiting to be read. It was heavenly. But it also existed in some kind of alternate dimension. I would log on, look at a “couple things” and look up and an hour had passed! I don’t know how it happened, but time was in fast forward when I browsed Pinterest.

One of my many favorites from my Words board:

Thank you Pinterest
for making me feel creative
when I’ve really just been
staring at my computer
for 3 hours!

It’s so true! Pinterest is full of creative ideas, upcycling projects, nifty tips and all the things I love. I could literally spend hours looking at ideas, dreaming about what I could do. I have to be deliberate in walking away from the computer and getting to work.

But I’ve also found so many new blogs to read and follow. And now friends are joining pinterest in droves. You can follow my boards by clicking the red “follow me on Pinterest” on the right.

 

I will say it has changed a bit. There is much more about fashion and fitness {neither are really my forte or what I’m on pinterest for}, but to each his own:). It’s a bit more challenging to wade through the stuff that doesn’t interest me to get to the meat. The juicy new ideas, clever tips, simple techniques that drew me to pinterest. I guess that’s the way it is when things grow and gain popularity. They are bound to evolve. Don’t get me wrong, I can still waste plenty of time browsing ideas. I just have to work a little harder to find “my” niche.

 

Next week I’ll try to post some of the things I’ve actually made with inspiration from pinterest!