Click the Pic

I'm not sure why, but there seem to be a lot of new faces on Pinterest who are having a hard time figuring out how it works.

In particular I've seen the following a LOT recently:

• Comments on food pins asking "Where can I get the recipe for this?" when the pin goes to the recipe.
• Comments on product pins asking "Where can I get this?" when the pin goes to the store.
• People putting recipes into their descriptions or commenting on their own pins with recipes.

None of this is actually necessary. If we're following the good Pin Etiquette we're already pinning the original source (e.g.: the product page for a store rather than a magazine article talking about the product) on a permalink (e.g.: a specific blog post with the recipe rather than the front page of a blog).

So if you see something interesting on Pinterest and you want to know the who, what, where, whens of it there's just one thing to do:

Clicking on a pin you like will take you to the source of the pin. 99 times out of 100 that means you're immediately at the recipe, shop, tutorial, etc that you're looking for. If it takes you to a main page of a blog or store, you've found a not-so-great pin. Most likely the pinner doesn't know the correct link so there's no real use in asking. When I come across a mediocre pin I'm interested in I scroll through the blog (or whatever) and find the post that has the information. Then I use my "pin it" button to pin the post itself rather than repinning. This means not only will I be able to find what I'm looking for quickly, but anyone following me will have a solid pin to repin from then on.

I hope this is helpful. I think Pinterest is an amazing source of inspiration and when we're all using it to it's fullest we'll be a much happier community!

Happy pinning!

Matryoshka Baby Shower: Invitation Reveal!

Yesterday I showed you all the inspiration I got from the awesome matryoshka invitations on pinterest. I put that all together to make A&O's invitations, which I have to say I'm really happy with.

It's not super-easy to see from these pictures, but the teal doll is slightly raised from the background using mounting squares. I double the thickness for the blue doll to raise her a little higher than the teal one. In person the invitation has a lot of dimension.

I used a tiny brad to secure an oval over the pregnant mommy's tummy. After putting a few together I went back and loosened the brads- folding back just the tips of the ends- so that the oval swung more freely. I was worried that otherwise no one would think to move it and see the little bun hiding inside.

Although the graphics I purchased were lovely, I wanted the faces to be more feminine like the original inspiration. I don't have any fancy editing programs, nor do I know much about graphic design. This is where I tell you my big shameful secret: I do all my photo manipulation in Paint. That's right. Paint. The old school little program that comes standard on any PC. I just made little circles for the eyes, added a curved line for the eyelashes, fiddled with some lip shapes for a while and there you go. Oh, I also changed the color of the hair and changed the hairline on the baby to look more like a little boy.

So there you go, friends. You don't need to spend lots of money. I paid $4 for the original clipart. The background papers were $7 for two packages at Joann's. They were precut in the two different sizes. Brads were something like $2 and the little bling we added was just a $1 pack of stick-on rinestones from Michael's. The cream paper, embroidery floss for the bow, mounting squares, glue sticks and the photo paper I used for the dolls were all from my stash. Probably the most expensive part were the envelopes we got from PaperSource. The invitations were 4.75 by 6.5 or something, so we had to use 5x7 envelopes.

Has pinterest inspired any of your crafty endeavors?

Matryoshka Baby Shower: Pinterest Invitation Inspiration

Are you on pinterest yet? It's a great source of inspiration. I'm using it for lots of ideas for A&O's baby shower (which is happening in a couple weeks). I can't wait to show you all the details, but I'll start with the invitations since they've gone out.

O is Russian and since it's a two-mommy baby shower we decided on a matryoshka theme. There were several matryoshka themed invitations that we looked at on pinterest:

This was an early favorite:

Source: Pinterest via Minted

Then there was this, since they're having a boy:

Source: Pinterest via PaperCrave

So I was all settled to do something like this:

Images purchased from LilyBimble & heavily modified

But then I saw one more pin that totally sealed the deal:

Source: Pinterest via melstampz

Holy cow.

Stay tuned for how it all came together!