This blog post comes from a great blog, CT Designs Blog. Christy at CT Designs produces fabulous wedding invitations and stationery. She also has a really inspirational blogsite. This particular post, Pinterest 101, struck me as something that needed to be re-posted for all our Sassy Chicago Brides to see. As you all know, I am pretty much addicted to Pinterest and I share my great finds in my Pinterest Picks of the Week postings. This post divulges how you can also check out Pinterest and use it in your wedding planning and in life planning. It’s a great virtual vision board. Feel free to post links to your boards and happy pinning!

Today, I thought I would do a little “Pinterest primer” for those who have been hearing the whispers/rumblings about this latest addiction, but not quite enough to be motivated to actually join the site (or should I say movement?). Pinterest really has the potential to become a dominant force in the world of visual communication and is impacting how we approach blogging and how weddings are visualized.

Because so much of what we do is driven by:

• What brides see
• The pictures brides provide as inspiration
• And what WE ourselves see
  …the creation of this “online pinboard” seems perfectly aligned with the wedding and design industry. In the words of style maven Rachel Zoe, it’s “bananas!”

Who should join?
Anyone who is visually stimulated should join because there are virtually no limits to the types of boards that can be created and pinned on. I’ve seen boards for recipes, interiors, colors, antique furniture, you name it!

How do you join?
You can either ask a friend that you know who is on Pinterest to invite you, or you can request an invite by visiting pinterest.com. You should receive an email back from Pinterest accepting you to the site with instructions on how to create a login.

What exactly do you do once there?
Once you join, and this is very important, you need to create a board (you will need to name the board and give it a category using a pull down menu) and then PIN something! Seriously, I know it seems obvious, but a lot of “would be” pinners join, look around at other people’s pins and then leave without pinning anything. If you do not have any pins, others can’t follow you and your boards. You have to have at least one pin for others to connect and follow you, so don’t forget to take that step.

How do you pin?
Really easy… You select Add+ from the toolbar and you are given the options to either pin using the pin button, upload an image from your desktop and/or create a new board to “house” your pins… i.e Recipes, Wedding Colors, etc. There are other cool apps and plug-ins being made available, making it easy to pin from anywhere… You can find out more on their site.

You’ve got some boards with pins on them, now what?
Congratulations! You now have some of your favorite items in one place and you can return and reference them whenever you want… Great thing about this pinning mechanism is that the source website is one click away from your pin so everything is interactive.

How specifically can Pinterest impact your work?
Bloggers: Can neatly organize images for use in upcoming blogs
Wedding Planners: I can’t think of a better way to tackle inspiration boards for brides
Brides-to-Be: Can begin to go over and catalog mucho eye candy for their big day
Photogs: Can examine different techniques – lighting, perspective, etc.
Invitation Designers: Can catalog different paper ideas by style, color, element, etc.

It goes without saying that since the images automatically indicate links back to their original location that wedding pros can carefully pin their own work to these boards as well. I wouldn’t go overboard though, “self-pinning” should be done sparingly in my opinion

Check out these Pinterest links
Great blog on how pinterest’s logo was developed
Pinterest on Facebook
Pinterest on Twitter
Pinterest Home
Now, for a Pinterest roll-call… Who else is addicted??

Big thanks to Christy at CT Designs for this super helpful blog post. You can visit her original post here!