Pinning Til The Cows Come Home

With all that 'spare' time I have, I've been spending a lot of it on Pinterest. 

It's the purest form of eye-candy and for this self-acknowledged magazine junky, it's a good way to get my design fix without spending any cash. There are also no stacks of magazines cluttering up the house (well, there are but less than there used to be) and no files full of tear-out pages to refer back to. If I want to remember a recipe I can just 'pin' it to a board and it's also a very useful tool to use when blogging and in need of images and links to share.

image via here

Until now, I hadn't really thought of Pinterest as a social media site. But Facebook has been getting me down, since the timeline format was introduced for business pages (possibly they changed the algorithms at that point too) the interaction on my page has plunged into the icy depths. Now Facebook wants me to pay to communicate with my likers and I'm just not sure how I feel about that.

The challenge now is to broaden my business interactions online, to continue to use Facebook but also to gently encourage my customers to follow me on Twitter or the blog and now I'm going to treat Pinterest in the same way. And why not? There are currently 322 people following me on Pinterest. Just because they like images and design and recipes and humour as much as me. I've followed most of them in return and have been invited to join group boards in which a whole lot of people contribute to one place. This is a great networking tool! I'm only just starting to make the most of Pinterest in this way, but the idea is growing and I like it.

On that note, I decided to co-ordinate a new group board. I invited women I've met through Facebook who either run crafty businesses or have blogs which support said businesses, and they're on Pinterest. These women have incredible tenacity and integrity and I'm very glad they're my friends. This group has only just begun, but I'm already watching some wonderful new friendships form, and it's lovely to have a safe environment to chat about the highs and lows of running small businesses and blogs.

Our new group board is called Pin-Ups, and you can find it here. It's a place where we can all share images from a basic theme, whether it be our own work or someone else's. Each month we will change the theme, and share our favourite pins with our own readers/likers/tweeters. Our first theme is, fittingly, Pin-ups. And today, I thought I'd start sharing some of my favourites.

Here is one from Christina, who operates Little Pickers. 

image via here

Christina is a WAHM (work at home mum) and does some really cool applique when she's not hanging out with her boys. Here are some photos of her work.

I think her work is great quality, and have enjoyed watching her business explode overnight, with over 2000 likers on Facebook these days. You can follow her on Facebook over here.

Hope you like the direction things are going on the blog, I really want to share more than just Poppet's bicycle adventures and my stitching with you. Handmade is my life, after all.