If you’re like me, once you discovered Pinterest, you got hooked into doing arts and crafts again like you used to do in elementary school. It’s hard not to catch the bug with Pinterest because they make everything look so easy and cute! Obviously they’re not always going to turn out that way, though. So this article is to help you learn what pins to try and what pins to just admire.
I think the most important thing to know when starting a craft is what level of craftiness you might be. If you’ve ever dabbled in drawing and painting, those types of pins are going to be a little easier for you. If all you can draw is stick people, you might want to start out with something more basic. One thing to know about Pinterest crafts is that even though they all look and seem easy, there’s a good chance they’re all at least twice as hard as they look.
A good rule of thumb is that if it looks easy before even reading the instructions, it’s probably going to be easy. If it looks crazy difficult and then the comments try to tell you otherwise, they might just be lying to seem cool. Also, the less supplies the better. Your easiest pins are probably going to involve something like a can of spray paint and some hot glue. If you’re new to Pinterest and crafting, one thing you might want to try would be painting an old wine bottle a new color and putting a flower in it. Here are some easy pins that made my apartment really unique:
Both involved only a few supplies making them both easy and affordable. The first one only used a mirror, spray paint, dowel rods, and hot glue; the second only needing corks, a shadow box and hot glue.
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Making canvases with quotes on them are really cute to make for a dorm or apartment, and are really hot on Pinterest right now. These are a great way to add some personality to a space, but I warn you, lettering is extremely hard to do with a paintbrush. If you feel that you aren’t ready for something like that, there are plenty of stickers and stencils to choose from at Michael’s. Make the background cool, though! Dots or stripes aren’t hard to do. Even if you don’t know how to do anything elaborate, a background is something you can mess up on without many people noticing.
I’m a big fan of glass paint pens right now because they’re super easy to use and you can make any glass item look amazing! I use them all the time to make presents for people because they aren’t expensive and people LOVE getting custom made gifts. Even if you have awful handwriting, just slap their name on a wine glass (sold at the dollar store!) along with a few polka dots and you won’t disappoint.
Another thing that’s all over Pinterest right now is projects involving melting crayons onto canvas. While this may look like an easy project, let me warn you that not all types of crayons work as well as others. I discovered this the hard way after buying out the dollar store crayon section only to find that they barely melted at all under a hairdryer. I find that Crayola works best. If you’re feeling brave, though, something interesting to try with crayons is putting them into a hot glue gun instead of just melting them with a hairdryer and letting them drip down. This gives you much more control over where the crayon goes and you could come out with something unique like this:
I will warn you though, it gets pretty messy! So make sure it’s a hot glue gun that you don’t really care about, and get lots of newspaper for the floor!
If you’re looking for some more ideas, or a good laugh, check out these websites: http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com and http://craftfail.com. These sites try out popular pins on Pinterest and tell you whether they were a success or a fail! Next time you think about trying a new pin, maybe you should check there first and see if it really is as easy as it looks online. Good luck crafting!