Time for a Pinterest Cleanup!

I have recently discovered that my Pinterest boards are starting to look a lot like my crafting space: overcrowded! It’s starting to look a bit messy in there. The number of pins I have may be small compared to other Pinners, but the very thought of looking through over 3000 Pins is a bit overwhelming. I mean, am I ever going to do anything besides collect these Pins? (Although I have, to be fair, made some of the recipes I saved to my “Yummies” Board. But that’s about it). Below you will find my current plan for cleaning up my Boards. (So they’re neat as a …? Okay, couldn’t resist)! Come on, let’s do a Pinterest cleanup!

My first step is to edit: do I still like this Pin? Does it still inspire or awe me? Perhaps my tastes have changed. Is it a duplicate? Is it pinned to the correct board? (Gotta admit, that’s a pet peeve. There is nothing more distracting that looking at someone’s Birthday Card Board, for example, and seeing an ab workout or a recipe). So if the answer to any of the above questions is a NO, I delete that Pin.

—  By the way, when I’m looking at Pinterest I want to be sure that the Pins I save have an actual source. I am trying not to blindly pin uncredited images. That’s a no-no for me. I’ve seen images pinned from Stampin’ Connection, Ning, occasionally from SplitcoastStampers, and Two Peas that do not properly give credit to the artist. I will either avoid re-pinning them, or I will track the source if it’s really something I want to save. (In my attempt to corral all my pins I am going to go back to each Board and every Pin to see if I have followed my own directive). 😉

Finally, I want to be sure that my Pins are sourced correctly. In other words, I want to be sure that if I click on a Pin that it’s linked correctly. Or I might click on a Pin and get a message that the link for it has been reported as containing questionable content. But if I really want that image and I want to avoid pinning one with a link to something that might be yucky, what then? Well, there IS a way to check.

Here’s an example of a Pin I had where I couldn’t easily find the source . I found a pin on my “For Scrapbooking” Board, and the Pin that got my attention had Ning in the source. So I clicked on the Pin and this is where it took me ( pinterest.com/source/scrapthat.ning.com/.

I clicked on the Pin again to get to the source, and got to the Ning homepage. Well, that didn’t help. I don’t want to join! Now what? Well, you have two options: you can open a new window and go to Google.com and click on “Images” at the top of the page, drag and drop the picture into Google’s search box and hit Search, or you can install a bookmark that automatically links to Google and will look at all the images on your screen, placing black question marks over them, which enables you to just click and search. Here’s the info:

?¿ src-img

Src Img is a bookmarklet that interfaces with Google™ Image Search to help you find the creators of images you see on blogs that are too lame cool for attribution. How do I use it? Drag the following link to the bookmarks bar in your browser. ?¿ src-img Then click it when you are on a page with images you want to track down. ♒ This bookmarklet is brought to you by @jarred & @hydnhntr and is in no way afilliated with Google™.

So now if I click on the question marks over my Pin a new window opens up.  I went to the first website listed, Designs by Robin, where I found the sketch and a name, but it still wasn’t the original source. So I clicked on the next site listed, LG’s Scrapbook World, and lo and behold, I found it.

And that is how to research a Pin! A rather lengthy explanation, for which I apologize, but I hope you now have enough information to be able to do the same thing for yourself, whether it’s when you’re pinning or when you revisit the Pins you have.