Taking a cue from Penny's Thankful Thursday post from last week, Wonderful, Wacky, World Wide Web, I bring you my own experience with the wonderment that is Pinterest. Back in the day (my son always says that day was a Wednesday) before Pinterest existed, we had to make our own, tangible design/idea/color swatch boards (while talking on our corded landline phones, and getting up to change the channel on the TV). It was fun, but time-consuming, and unless you were okay with cutting up precious design magazines, or spending vast sums of money on printer ink, there was a limit to how many gorgeous, color images you would include for a given idea. Here's a board I did with colors, products, and ideas we had when we first purchased our home 11 years ago:
Yes, we did end up using some of these paint colors, and I STILL love that black vessel sink. Of course, it turned out to be WAY more than we wanted to spend on a powder room fixture, so we decided upon the much more reasonably priced one in the upper right photo. And no, we did NOT choose that purple sofa or red chair!
But now, all of that has changed with the advent of Pinterest, which allows you to virtually "pin" anything to an unlimited number of "boards". It has been an invaluable creative resource for me as I plan my kids' art classes, design my mixed media work, research African textiles, figure out what to plant in our first garden, do some daydreaming about travel to faraway locales, and many, many other endeavors, some of which I didn't even know I had until I started pinning. Here's just a sampling of some of my personal profusion of Pinterest boards:
Can you see I've pinned a whopping 1,402 items to my "Art Class Project Ideas" board?! That's a whole lot of paper plate and recycled products projects, but in my defense, I've been teaching for 7 years, and have had over 200 students come through my classes.
Did you know that Your Creative Connection also has Pinterest boards? Penny and I have been pinning some of our favorite "Visual Merriments," "Mixed Media Art Must Haves," and "Wise Words Written," among other things. As we find images we love, we pin them, in hopes you will take a moment or two, or thirty(!) to visit, leave a comment, or just meander through and find something you love, too. Start your journey with us, here.
Until next time,
~MDP
