It seems like there is always something new out there to try and catch up on, doesn’t it?  I don’t personally feel compelled to always keep up with the latest gadgets or social networking, but I will put in a plug here for the website Pinterest.

Quite a few people have mentioned to me recently that they have heard about it, but “just can’t figure it out”.  I thought I would take today’s post to give a quick overview on how you might like to use this website.

You might like Pinterest if you:

1) Are creative and want to get visual inspiration for any area of life- food, photography, travel, home

2) Are not creative but need ideas to try to accomplish something- for example, you are building an outdoor fireplace and want to find pictures of examples you can use to show your designer or contractor.

This is a quick view of what it looks like when you are on the site:

The first thing you need to do is to “request an invite” (unless you have a friend who has already emailed you an invite”).  This isn’t a big deal, but it might take a day or so for them to email you to sign up and access the site.

You then set up your id and password.  You can choose to log in using facebook or twitter, but  I just use my personal email account.

Once logged in, the best thing to do is to build your boards.  A board is like your personal file folder of your favorite pictures.  But just as in real life, you don’t want to file your travel ideas with your favorite food recipes, you want to create separate boards (or file folders) for each concept- i.e. a board for travel and a board for food.

This is what a board for travel could look like:

I have to admit I am a bit lazy and dump almost all my pictures into a default board Pinterest gave me when I signed up called “favorite spaces and places”.

In the new year I am going to get better about filing all these pictures in specific boards, such as Bedrooms, Dining Rooms, Millwork, Exteriors.  But it might be a little while until I get that organized.

Once you have your boards set up, you can look at pictures other people have put on the site.  These are good, mostly professional pictures of beautiful images.  They generally aren’t low budget pictures someone took of their ‘do-it-yourself’ room makeover for under $500.

You will click on the “pinterest” logo at the top of the site to get started.

Then choose what you want to explore- I like to choose “Everything” and then pick a sub-topic such as “Home Décor”.  All the pictures you then see are related to Home Décor.

If you see a picture you like and want to remember it, you can click on the picture to see it larger- it will look like this:

See in the top left where it reads” “like” or “repin”?  If you click “repin” it will save the picture to your ‘board’.  You can rename the picture if you want to be more specific.

This image of a home exterior was posted by a person whom I do not know.  But, what if you and your sister just love the same things?  If you like it, she’ll like it and vice versa.  You can ‘follow’ her boards and she can follow yours (kind of like Twitter, only with pictures).

Instead of choosing ‘everything’ on the home page, you can choose the first option on the left titled “pinners you follow”.  It is a fun way to keep up with friends and family.

Now, here is where Pinterest can be amazing… you know sometimes you go to a website and see a picture of something you love, but when you try to find it again later you can’t remember where you saw it?  Problem solved: The “Pin It” button.

While still in Pinterest, look at the upper right and select ‘About’.

From the drop down menu, choose the second option “Pin It Button”.  You can install this in any browser.  

Once installed, it sits on your bookmarks bar and you can be on just about any website, click on a picture you like and it will ‘pin’ that photo to the board of your choice.  Here is an example:

Let’s say I am looking at the website for one of my favorite magazines, Traditional Home (www.traditionalhome.com) and I see this picture of the a dining room which I really like and want to remember.

I can press the ‘pin it’ button on my bookmarks bar.  Then I will get an image like this:

The far right picture is the dining room I want to save to my board (not the ads).

Once I click on the dining room image, this screen pops up:

Pinterest has already defaulted to my main board ‘favorite places and spaces’ but you can see the drop down arrow where I could select a different board, such as ‘dining rooms’.  I can describe the picture as I want- such as a generic ‘dining room’ or ‘gorgeous drapery’- whatever it is that inspires me to want to save the picture.  It is good etiquette to note where the image came from whenever possible.

If you have done it correctly, you will see this message.

If you decide one day you don’t want to look at the picture anymore you can edit your board and delete the photo.

For years I have saved ‘inspiration’ images I love to blank PowerPoint presentations.  They take up a lot of memory and I can only access them on my personal computer.  Pinterest allows you to store all these images virtually and you can access them from any computer at any time.  It is a very flexible tool.

Almost all my images are for home décor, but you can use the site for ideas to help plan your wedding, your holiday decorating, your fashion style or even your future pet.  I encourage you to check it out.  If you want to, feel free to ‘follow’ me and you can look at all my pictures.

Happy Pinning!