In the spirit of trying new things, once again I have asked a friend to guest host for today’s blog. Our blogs differ greatly, but her blog has some really great content I highly suggest you check out. 

Recently one of my roommates turned me on to Pinterest, a Virtual Pinboard that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find in your life. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.I find it to be quite entertaining and useful.

For example: one day, I hope to own my own home. As I see cool images/ideas on the web, I pin them to my board for future reference. You can check out my boards here: http://pinterest.com/onegayatatime/.

My good friend J. Rothman is going to tell you all about Pinterest and the magic you can create.

Enjoy!

Hello y’all. My name is J. Rothman from the wonderful world of www.design-newyork.com, and I am filling in here to inform you on the very popular website Pinterest. Here’s the definition of Pinterest on Wikipedia:

“Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social photo sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. The site’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”

Honestly, I wasn’t that excited about Pinterest when it first came out, specifically for two reasons — One, I am leary of anything new, especially technology-based things (I got my first cell phone when I was twenty-seven, joined Facebook at thirty, etc.), and two, I’ve been keeping something along the lines of Pinterest in a tangible Luddite form for years. Every time I see something on the internet I drag it to a folder on my desktop. When the folder has thirty or so items in it, I print them out on pages, three-hole-punch them and put them in a binder. I use this predominantly for design purposes, and you can see it here:

The only problem with this is you cannot organize this into subgroups, like “posters” or “calligraphy” or “color palettes”. This is one of the places where Pinterest is superior to a scrapbook. You can catalog the images into collections. Here’s how it works.

1. Once you’re signed up, you can do a variety of things, all of which are very fun. You can look through what other people have pinned already and “like” it or “repin” it, or you can pull images yourself off the internet. Underneath the “About” button at the top right is the “Pin It Button” option. You can drag that to your bookmarks bar at the top of your browser window, and whenever you’re on a page that has an image you would like to pin, you click the Pinterest button and — Voila! You see all the images on that webpage. Roll over this image you want, click “pin it” and it’s yours. It’s amazing.

2. You can organize your pins into groups. Under the “Add +” button on the top right corner, there is “Create a Board” button. For example, let’s say you want to make a super kick-a$s cupcake. You find your cupcake inspiration, pin it, and put it in a dedicated “Awesome Cupcakes” board. Want to assemble a collection of pictures of Rio de Janeiro to keep you motivated until you can travel there? No problem, make a board for it.

3. You and your friends can share pins. You can search for your friends, follow their board, and then an email is sent to them asking if they want to follow you back. Here’s what my homepage looks like. I can see what all the people I follow are pinning. It lets me know what they are interested in right now. It’s another way for me to understand what they are thinking about.

4. If you want people to follow your pins from your blog, you can do that. Also under “About / Pin It Button” is the option to add a link to your blog and encourage people to follow your pins.

5. And there’s an app! You need not be tethered to your laptop or desktop. You can pin with wild abandon while sitting in a restaurant or the library or wherever it is that you find yourself.

Remember, the point of Pinterest is not to advertise yourself, so it is recommended that you do not pin your own work. The point is to collect pieces that inspire you and to share those things with your friends. The link below will give you some ideas. Happy Pinning!
http://pinterest.com/about/