5 Pinterest Projects I've Actually Made!

By Sjay235 @naturalmommainm
Pinterest is a bit like window shopping - you go there and pin all the lovely things you wish you had, and most of the pins end up never actually being "had". I go through phases with Pinterest - I'll go nuts for a while, then nothing for months, and repeat. Since I'm in a "nuts" phase, I thought I'd share with you 5 Pinterest projects which I pinned during my first "nuts" phase and - shock, horror - we actually have in our home!
1) Photo walls
If you look on my "For our bricks and mortar" board, you'll see a large percentage of the pins are dedicated to photo walls in the home. When I used to think of photo walls I thought of old ladies with a hundred pictures of their family in horrible frames. Pinterest showed me that these are a great way to show off your pictures and make a feature wall. This is something we decided to do in our living room, and I love how we will be able to display pictures of Isabelle as she grows, along with our own little bits of "artwork". Luckily, Simon is a picture framer so this was a cheap option for us!

(There is an oval frame missing in the middle at the minute!) 


2) Wall decals
For anyone who doesn't know what these are, they are basically giant wall stickers. You can get really anything you want and, after seeing them on Pinterest, I became obsessed with them, both for our living space, and also for our nursery. Trees seem to be a major theme for living areas, and I chose the one below from Etsy. I was initially unsure, but love how it looks in our living room. I also ordered Isabelle's from Etsy, and have never loved a piece of artwork so much!

3) Map hearts
These take up one of the spaces on our photo wall. I have them pinned in my "Beautiful crafts I could never make" which is true, because Simon made them for us! They show the map location of places we hold dear - where we live, were we met, where we got married, where Simon is from, where we went on honeymoon and where we got engaged. It was actually pretty simple - I used an online mapping system to source various maps, and Simon "cut out" the relevant piece in a heart shape using a computer program, then framed them.

4) Button letter
Somewhere along my Pinterest journey, I become obsessed with buttons. I never knew how many things you could do with buttons...they are massively versatile when making crafts. I'm not actually the most crafty person in the world - and I couldn't sew a button on to save my life - but I did make a button "S" (for Simon and Sarah) and it was surprisingly easy (although I incurred quite a bad burn from the glue gun!). I keep looking up bags of buttons on eBay, and would love to make some button Christmas cards this year (although with an 8 month old in tow that sounds like a recipe for an A&E trip if I ever heard one). I've pinned so many cute ones onto my "Cute as a button" board, but highly doubt mine will look anything like that!

5) Repainted old furniture
One of our spare rooms - Simon's parents' room - had mismatched furniture. A cheap wardrobe bought from B&Q, two even cheaper bedside tables from a Lidl sale, and a bookcase left behind by the previous owners. We talked time and time again about getting a chest of drawers, but never did, and I hated the look of the room. Pinterest saved the day yet again, when I saw how beautiful painted furniture can be. Simon brought home an old chest of drawers (did I mention we own an antique shop?) and we chose some paint. The end result was a wardrobe, chest of drawers, 2 bedside tables and a bookcase which all match beautifully. We even lined the drawers of the CoD and the shelves of the bookcase in off cuts of the same wallpaper from B&Q.

Now, to master some recipes from Pinterest, make my Christmas cards, and periodically add bits and bobs to my "Moustaches" board...
What's your greatest Pinterest achievement? If you don't already, why not follow me on Pinterest here.