“You don’t use Pinterest?” she asked in amazement. “It’s so perfect for you!”
One of the students at our stained glass studio said this to me a couple of years back, and it made me curious about why she thought that. I had never visited the site, but many of my friends and students seemed to love it. So, of course, I had to take a look.
It was love at first sight for me – a virtual playground of information and fun right at my fingertips. While I have used Pinterest ever since, I have encountered one big problem with it: I could stay there forever and get nothing else done.
Since that first day, I have become somewhat of a virtual hoarder of ideas, quotes and recipes, among other things. I have used the site for work (to find graphics and quotes for my church newsletter and bulletin boards), for blogging (to get ideas of what I might write about), for crafting (to find patterns and tips) and just for fun (love those King Arthur sites).
It was a little strange at first since I had to pick boards created by other people as my starting point, but I soon found there were so many pins on the site that it was easy to find pretty much anything I liked or was curious about. If you haven’t tried it yet, let me give you a brief explanation.
The name “Pinterest” is a combination of the words “pin” and “interest,” which pretty much describes the site’s premise. You set up your own little patch of internet space where you create various virtual bulletin boards, each with a separate theme. For example, I have boards for stained glass ideas, articles about sand castles, cat pictures and info, ministry ideas and so on.
On these boards, you “pin” thoughts, photos and information you find across the internet, or you get from other pinners on the site. You download a little program that puts a pin icon at the top of your internet page, and when you see something online that you want to “collect,” you use the little program to “pin” it to your boards.
You also have the opportunity to see what other folks on Pinterest who have interests similar to yours are pinning. If you like their pins, you can click on “save” in the top right corner and it will go on your board. You can also get emails with new pin ideas if you like.
Recently Pinterest has been telling me about my “Pin Twins.” These are folks who have interests (and boards) similar to mine. Generally, they will have some pins that interest me, too, so I can add them to my boards. Since I have found Pinterest, I don’t do as much searching on the web as I used to, so most of my boards are full of these “re-pins.”
At the top of your Pinterest home page is a search bar that is perfect to use when you are looking for specific information. This is how I get many of my glass patterns: I type “Christmas stained glass” in the search bar and hit the arrow. Instantly, hundreds of stained glass Christmas items appear. The hard part is sorting through them all to find the ones I really like.
This often leads to something I call “Pinterest rabbit trails.” I will start by searching for a specific topic, them look through the pins and find one that interests me. When I click on it and bring it to a full page so I can read it better, Pinterest cleverly adds a plethora of similar pins below. Often when I follow these ideas, I find I am looking at a pin that has very little to do with my original search!
You also have a daily feed, which constantly updates and changes. This includes pins from other pinners, but is narrowed to the topics of interest to you. If you are mostly interested in a specific general topic (like fashion or DIY) there is a pull down menu with the feeds for those areas. I don’t use this feature much as I have more narrow tastes, but many folks get a lot of pins from them.
Pinterest is harder to describe than it is to use. If you are at all curious, drop over to Pinterest.com and sign up. You, too, may find a new interest or an old friend in the process. You are welcome to visit my page and take a look at my boards if you want to get a feel for how it works. Feel free to follow me, too. Here’s the link: https://www.pinterest.com/lemonbaylady/
You won’t be sorry you joined, but you may find it hard to stop pinning once you get started.