My pinterest boards + my pinterest pet peeves.

I am a total pinaholic. I can’t get enough. There are just so many great things on pinterest, I can’t stop! But it is very much a love hate relationship that I have developed with the site. More about that later…

Check out what I have collected so far…
I have chosen some of my favourite pins to share with you in this post.
Click on the image to go to the original source or click the text to go to my pinboard. 
Make sure you check out the original pages. That’s what pinterest is all about after all…

There are stacks more where they came from. Click here to see the rest of my boards.

and now for the things that grind my gears…
It’s not so much what I don’t like about the site itself, more the way people use it.

Number one: 
Pinterest is all about sharing ideas and other peoples work.
We all love Etsy. Crafters get to make things they love and we can buy their works. I am totally addicted to it, but thats a whole other post…
The number of times I have seen people posting photos from Etsy and other similar sites writing descriptions like “I could totally make this” or “so easy to make” or “DIY all you need is…”
The crafters that have made those pieces are SELLING them. They want people to buy their work not just steal their ideas. The internet is full of FREE craft tutorials and DIY ideas like I post on here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I never get DIY ideas from things I see on etsy. I just don’t publish their photos, of the pieces they worked hard on and say. Hey why buy this when you can make one for yourself. Please be respectful of the original creators and be careful how you describe your pins.

Number two: 
Companies that use Pinterest JUST to promote themselves.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with using pinterest to promote your brand as long as you are sharing other things too. I have seen several BIG companies using pinterest to ONLY promote their products. They make no attempt to share the works of others. Pinterest does discourage this but technically they can totally do it. I just hope people are smart enough to see they are just promoting their own stuff and not follow them. What’s the harm in sharing the love??

Number three:
check the links. PLEASE!
This is a two parted gear grinder…
Part one. When you are re-pinning something please check the link. There is so much spannage floating around on pinterest and it spreads because people just see a pretty photo and want to pin it.
Part two. The pin should be linked to the original content. Please do your best to find the original source of the image and pin the link from there. The original poster deserved the credit and the traffic to be heading their way, not to a random blog that featured the photo. In the past I have gotten a fair bit of traffic from people pinning images from crafted that where not originally mine. If I feature someone else’s photos on Crafted I ALWAYS post the source of the images. It doesn’t take that long to find where it has come from. As much as I like to promote my blog I don’t post other peoples stuff on here so that I get noticed, I do it so their work gets seen and appreciated. Please just do your best to spread pins from the right places.