I use Pinterest on a daily basis. It’s a bookmarking site, an easy way to embed photos in your blog and a fun way to find ideas for any event, post, recipe or gift idea!
But now my new favorite way to use it is WITH FRIENDS! You can start a board of ideas and have other people contribute to it!
For example, my sister-in-law is getting married in THREE WEEKS. As the sister-in-law-of-the-bride-who-likes-to-throw-parties (and who gets to be a bridesmaid, too), I got to help plan the bridal shower! Well, one of the other crafty-bridesmaids, Jennifer is on Pinterest so we started a bridal shower board! Every time we ran across a good idea for the shower, we pinned it so the other could see!
You can see our board above. Her name is listed as the CURATOR because she started the board. But you can see my adorable mug below that is labeled CONTRIBUTOR.
It’s really easy to do. When you start a new board (or EDIT an existing board), just scroll down to WHO CAN PIN? and click ME + CONTRIBUTORS. Then you start typing in someone’s name and it pops right up! You can even invite someone who is not on Pinterest to be a contributor to join Pinterest and that board!
Just think of all you could do with this! Anytime you have to collaborate on an event, a presentation or anything it would cut down on emails or “what do you think about this?” and you’d have everything in one spot!
So, here’s some stuff we collected and executed from our joint Pinterest board! Ready?
It was a fun “feather your nest” theme so we used lots of birds and nests. Which, as a sisterchick, is some of my favorite stuff! One of the first ideas pinned were these cute yarn balls…
Source: shopruche.blogspot.com via Jennifer on Pinterest
She figured if we made them more oblong than circle, they’d look like nests and we could put a little birdie inside. Cute, right? Well, we tried it and were not too hopeful. They looked like a crazy mess of twine. But once the balloon popped inside? They turned out great!
We hung up a few around the room along with some tissue paper puff balls and some lantern-thingies I found at Target for $2. Jennifer made that cute little bird, too. From a tutorial on Pinterest…
Source: lavendersbluedesign.blogspot.com via Jennifer on Pinterest
For the cake, I found this adorable nest-y goodness on the e-mealz blog:
Source: blog.e-mealz.com via ohAmanda {impress your kids} on Pinterest
A friend of the family made one similar and look how darling it turned out!
Another sweet idea was a little flock of paper birds.
Source: remodelista.com via Jennifer on Pinterest
We (and by we, I mean SHE) copied it and then added a little GIFT sign to hang above the gift table. Isn’t that a great idea?
And did you notice the white curtain in the back? That was our backdrop for the gift-opening! We were in a church’s fellowship hall so we didn’t want to have all the pictures of opening presents with a drum set in the back!
I used our puppet stage and then added (are you ready for this?) Lydia’s shower curtain! We hung it up with twine and added a few more felt birds. Isn’t that smart? (You can go ahead and pin that if you want!)
Jennifer also found these great printable vintage looking index cards…
Source: freeprintablesonline.com via Jennifer on Pinterest
So in lieu of a guest book, we did recipe cards. We asked everyone to write down their go-to recipe to fill up my sister-in-law’s recipe box! Isn’t that a sweet gift?
And a few more fun things from the shower. Some we even made up all by ourselves!
blue star garlands, framed invitation, birdies and candles, handstamped napkins,
golden punch with fresh blackberries, flower cupcakes, birds nesting in blue m&ms and lots of yummy food!
But my favorite part of the shower was the wrapping paper assistant. My little Lydia sat right next to her Aunt Micah and stuffed all the wrapping paper into trash bags. She was so serious about her job and was such a helper!
Pretty fun, huh? How could you use Pinterest with friends?
pinterest love source: thedailydigi.com via KindredAdventures on Pinterest
I love the idea of doing a group Pinterest board, but I really REALLY love how you guys pulled off such a cute and creative shower. Those bird nests are amazing!
It ended up to be a really cute and sweet shower! I think everyone was happy with it!
This is so smart. I love this idea!! I just joined Pinterest this week, and I haven’t done a lot with it yet, but I want to make better use of it.
I really love Pinterest. It is a better bookmarking site for my visual-needs. And you can embed the HTML of a pin on your blog. So, that makes it worth it!
How fun! I knew about this feature but didn’t have any really great ideas for using it. A party is perfect, though!
I love it–I can see using it at Christmas for planning menus, parties, etc. Pinterest is genius.
I’ve also been trying to figure out how you could do it w/groups of bloggers—like all your contributors from LYW? But what would the board be? I dunno. Just seems fun.
Sweet idea!
Thanks so much! I just joined pinrest tonight and this was a great post to get my feet wet. I was wondering if I’d even use it. You know, just one more thing to do online. But, this seems really fun and helpful.
I really do use it every day. At first it was just a vortex of adorableness. But with other bookmarking sites, I never looked at my bookmarks again! (Tumblr? How in the world would I ever find anything again on there?!) So, Pinterest is perfect b/c I actually look at my boards/pins again and remember that I want to do/try/make/eat that!
I LOVE the vintage looking recipe card idea.
And thanks for this little tutorial! It’s exactly what I needed. I help my friend with her Five Day Club every year, and having a board that we can both add to will be so helpful!
Yay! What’s a Five Day Club?
Sort of like a VBS
It might just be me, but I can never see the pinterest pictures you post in your blogs? They just look like long skinny lines. Maybe it’s an Internet Explorer thing? It kind of looks like the height has been set in the code, but not the width?
Weird. Maybe it is IE. Try Firefox?
Me too! I thought it was just me..
Did you try it again, Jacquie? Because sometimes my blog is weird…if you look at the post on ohamanda.com and not the direct URL you can see pics. But sometimes the direct URL makes it weird. Maybe try that?
So, going to your ohamanda.com in IE didn’t help, but when I came over to Firefox, there were your lovely pictures in all their glory. Booo on IE – though I can’t seem to stop using it – I still usually prefer it over other browsers. But at least now I know – not sure why it doesn’t like to show those images?
Yup. Boo on IE. You need FF!
P.S. Are you able to invite people to pinterest? I requested an invite on their site, but have no idea how long the waiting list is?
I haven’t had much time to explore pinterest but I have been using it to pin new recipes. Thanks for this great info, Amanda!
I’ve had a pinterest account for all of two days, and I’m so happy to come across this how-to post! (Love the shower ideas!)
I’ve been thinking of setting up a Pinterest board with family photo shots I like & inviting my fave photographer to contribute– to help us prepare for this year’s family session.
Oh & I LOVE all the feather/nest/birdie stuff! What a great shower idea!
Oooh, I love that idea! I started a Pinterest board of hairstyles so I can bring them to my hairdresser!!
I’ve been invited as a contributor on a friend’s board. But when I go to ‘repin’ something to the group board, it is not one of choices (only my boards pop up as selections). Any suggestions?
I have no idea! You’re definitely one of the contributors? Those boards are just on my list of boards when I pin/repin. Hmmm…
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