Pinning on Pinterest

I'm finally getting around to posting about the Pinterest-inspired project I did a couple of months ago. For those of you who don't know, Pinterest is a giant online "inspiration board", a digital clippings file if you will. You can "pin" pictures from anywhere on the web. Pinterest will create a link to the original source, so for instance, if you pin a picture of some delicious-looking recipe posted on someone's blog, you will later be able to click through to go back to the original post to get the recipe.

On my Pinterest account, I currently have 17 different "boards", almost 400 pins, and a lot of ideas of "hey, I should do that some day!" Back this summer, a home DIY blog I read did a Reader Pinterest Challenge where they challenged everyone to pick a project they had pinned and complete it. After all, it's supposed to be inspiration on what we want to do or make, right?

This was my inspiration photo:

Photo from Design Sponge here: http://www.designsponge.com/2011/05/diy-project-clothespin-mirror.html

I knew I had an old circular mirror somewhere. This mirror is about 2 feet in diameter, and came from my Great-Grandparents W's house after my Great Aunt passed away back in the '80s. The mirror itself is in pretty good condition, not too wavy and only 1 or 2 small dark spots. It's etched with a saw-tooth pattern around the edge, but other than that it is very plain. No frame or beveled edge. I liked the look of the clothespins around the circumference of the inspiration picture, and I knew I already had some wooden clothespins from back when I lived in Rochacha and dried my laundry in the basement. I dug out what I had for pins, made sure they would fit on and stay on the edge of my mirror, and then headed to AC Moore to pick up additional clothespin supplies.

I wound up getting 3 different sizes of pins - mini, medium, and large. The large ones were the same size as the ones I already owned. I figured I could alternate sizes around the mirror. Here is everything laid out before I got started:

I tried a couple of different patterns of pin sizes, but eventually decided on a large-mini-medium-mini-medium-mini pattern repeat. It took me 17 repeats to get around the mirror, so that's a total of 18 large, 34 medium, and 68 mini clothespins.

End result:

I love the sunburst pattern that emerged with varying the sizes. I also like that the pins had slightly different wood tones depending on size, so there is some variation in color. The original instructions with the inspiration photo called for gluing the clothespins in place, but I didn't really want them attached permanently. There seems to be plenty of tension in the springs to hold them in place; the mirror has been hanging in the guest room since August and none have fallen off yet.

So - one Pinterest project complete. 399 to go!