Very Pinteresting…

If you regularly follow my blog, you know that I love Pinterest and you may have seen some of my projects inspired by Pinterest, like my Mason Jar Light.

While I wouldn’t say I’m addicted, I’m a visual girl and I love the opportunity to curate ideas and pictures. Besides, if I admit to an addiction, does that mean recovery is just around the corner? Pfft…I’m not going down THAT road, thankyouverymuch!

I have my settings in Pinterest set to send me an email when people repin my pins. To date, the two most frequently repinned pins are the How to Tint Mason Jars pin,

and the marriage advice pin.

There are a couple of things that I’ve noticed that has happened on Pinterest that crack me up. One thing that amuses me is the popularity of some of my boards. I created a couple of boards to be more personal than public, but I didn’t mark them as private. To see that my boards for projects I want to do and my thinspiration board are my two most followed boards is funny to me. I didn’t set them up to give anyone else ideas, but it turns out that a lot of us want to create cool things and loose weight. Go figure.

I’ve organized my boards in order of popularity in case you’re interested in that sort of thing. One of the things I love about Pinterest is just the ability to dream and sigh over beautiful things. My MoPo board is set up for that very purpose. MoPo is an inside joke that I will not explain in a public setting, but if you’re dying of curiosity to know what it stands for, you can leave me a comment. I’ll reply as long as you have an email address I can reply to.

*Sigh* One my sisters says she doesn’t understand my obsession with shoes. Neither do I, Sis, I just enjoy it while it lasts. Here’s the thing, since my foot surgery, I’ve only been able to wear a couple of shoes, so it may just be a wishful thinking board. But, come on, look at the red shoes and the bows and tell me you’re not just a little bit in love!

Here’s the other Pinteresting thing that’s happened. When I do a post on one of my projects, I pin it to my Frou-FruGal Projects board. Mostly, I notice one or two people repinning my project pins, but not very often. However, I was looking at my blog stats a few weeks back and I noticed that I was getting a lot of traffic to my site from Pinterest. Being the curious gal that I am, I clicked on the link and was very surprised by what I found.

First, let me explain that since I have created my $25 Craigslist Buffet, that post has shot to the top of my most popular post list and has stayed there ever since.

It’s climbed up from around 7,500 hits for the last year. I don’t really look at my stats all that often, but best I can remember, my other popular posts were only about 4,000 hits or so. My tips on How to Score on Craigslist,

How to Fix Veneer,

my Ancestral Map Settee,

my Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkin

and my Blessing Gown from a Wedding Dress have all stubbornly held to the top spots on the list.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge the popularity and interest in my projects more on the number of comments I receive and less on their actual stats. So I’ve had projects that I felt had fallen flat in Blogland because they didn’t generate very many comments or hits. This doesn’t bother me, because I realize not everything thing I do is going to appeal to people. Comments act as my gauge to help me know what people want to see from me.

So color me shocked when one of my lesser known posts started garnering some attention. Want to know which project of mine has taken Pinterest by storm? Okay, maybe not by storm, but it has certainly shot to the top of my leader board thanks to Pinterest. My post on How to Emboss on Wood – Piping Style has taken off!

In the last 3 weeks, this project has shot from 1,300 or so hits to 12,455 hits all thanks to Pinterest!

I was going to do a series of posts about how to emboss on wood using a couple of different techniques, but because this project didn’t garner much attention, I let that idea go. Maybe I will do the follow up. Who knows?

A couple of other projects of mine have also jumped into my top ten projects thanks to the Pinterest Phenomenon, like my Knock Off Pier 1 Ping Pong Letter Balls.

My Chairs Turned Bench

and my cane-back chairs with the Aged Silver Finish have also jumped in numbers,

but both of these projects have been seriously helped out by the Tip Junkie who featured both projects on the same week! However, with Pinterest, their numbers have been steadily climbing this last week.

I didn’t really mean to turn this into a Greatest Hits post, but I wanted to share with you the power of Pinterest. When I first joined Pinterest, I thought it was bad form to pin my own stuff. Like I needed to wait for someone else to say, “Hey, this is cool. I want to pin it.”

Pfft….silly Suesan. I got over it and I’m happy now to Pin my projects with pride. I’ve worked hard on them and if someone else finds enjoyment or inspiration from them, then I am a happy, happy girl.

If you want an invitation to join Pinterest, leave me a comment, WITH an email address so I can reach you, and I’ll be happy to send one your way. If you don’t follow me on Pinterest, why don’t you click on over and see what I find Amusing, check out the great collection of map projects I’m gathering, or just see my Inspiration for my little Sis, Dani. Feel free to follow me on Pinterest.

Have you had any pins take off on Pinterest?