Today’s tutorial is a little review of the latest sensation, Pinterest and a few helpful hints for those of us who are already pinning away!

What is Pinterest anyway? For those who are new to it, Pinterest is a fun website that acts as a virtual pin board.  You get to Pin the things that you are Interested in. Think of it like spending time browsing magazines and books and taking clippings of all of your favorite things. What you end up with, is a log-in page that looks like this:

To the left you can see people that Pinterest suggests that I should “follow.” These come from suggestions made by Pinterest that generates from things like my Facebook friends’ list, and my interests in general. There is also a list of recent activity… people that have “repinned” things that are on my boards, and people that started following me.

The photos that you see, of chairs and dresses and handbags and whatnot, will change every time that you log in, and can be sorted by choosing categories, sorting by friends, or seeing what is “new” or “popular” on Pinterest. Each photo thumbnail is called a “pin.” Pins are photos that can come from ANY website on the internet, including blogs and company web sites.  Every time I log in, I see what my friends have pinned recently, and vice versa. As you can see, a lot of my friends are into home decor or fashion. Instead of browsing tons of different sites or blogs, I can instantly see a whole bunch of thumbnail images, or pins, that I can click on if I want to see more.

Worry not! There is a plethora of papercrafting goodness on Pinterest, including loads of card ideas, sketches and examples! (Although handbags and couches can be fun too…)

Operation Write Home has several Pinterest pages for you to follow… including:

• This page by Kate – with lots of OWH quotes and hero photos!
• This tutorial page – by Kate – with photos and links to every OWH tutorial that ever was!
• Another OWH page by Sandy, with loads of Ciara goodness!
• Here are some OWH sketches…
• The “Before and After” collection! I love these!
• Our World Cardmaking Day blog hop cards!

In addition to following OWH boards, you can also follow some of your favorite companies like:

• Lawn Fawn
• Hero Arts
• Basic Grey
• Authentique
• Tombow
• Cricut

And many, many more!

So how do you get started Pinning? Log in and create an account, just like any other website. You can then create separate “boards” for things that you are interested in. I have boards for cards and paper ideas, sketches that I want to try and a “Geek” board where I keep track of techy blogging  ideas and. . . aherm… a lot of Star Trek stuff. Back to the tutorial…

You will find a lot of “help” on Pinterest for doing more advanced things like adding “pin it” buttons to your own website or blog, downloading the Pinterest app, how to edit/delete boards and how to “follow” other people or companies.

You’ll find that there is good etiquette to follow when using Pinterest. You should always credit the source when you pin something new, or “repin” things that only link back to credible sources. You also shouldn’t be one of those people who pins hundreds of things per day! Nobody likes a spammer. Doing so, may cause you to need a Pintervention.

That brings me to tips for those of us who are already pinning away. If you are blog hopping, or just surfing the internet and you see something that you want to share or keep on your board, learn how to pin it. Here is a great collection of videos by Pinterest if you want to learn to use your browser to pin things easily.

I’ve also learned the hard way, that it is a good thing to watermark the photos that you put up on your blog with your blog address, especially cards or projects that you are particularly proud of. Sometimes, even with good intentions, the link back to your blog can get lost along the way. Then you end up with hundreds or thousands of pins of your card floating around Pinterest without any credit back to you. No bueno!

If you want people to pin things from your blog to Pinterest freely, you can learn how to do that here. I like it when people pin from my site. It seems like a bit of a complement.

Conversely, if you do NOT want people to pin from your site, you can grab a bit of code from this page to keep people from doing that.

Now then, go ahead and get started with Pinterest, or use this tutorial to find out who else is Pinning. Feel free to comment if you are a pinner and you wouldn’t mind a few new followers! You’ll soon find out just what a great resource and inspiration Pinterest can be for card makers like us. Just, please, watch out for the Pinterest fails (especially the  waffle iron cookies, mine did the exact same thing!!)