Nothing like Pinterest

I think I am going to start a website called

www.nopromisepinterest.com
  

Or maybe I will just call it

www.pinterest.ish.com

The reason is that I have a real skill set when it comes taking the posted projects and making them look nothing like the pictures.  I think my epic fails should be shared with the world.  The world needs the comic relief.

I don't even know why I got started on this venture.  Except that one day, someone, somewhere casually said  "Oh, are you on Pinterest?".  And I replied "NOOOOO  that's not for me".  And then not too much later,  I got just a little curious.  So I took a quick peek and then logged off the computer.

And then one night when the moon was high and there wasn't much on TV, I caved.  I opened up the site again to see what the fuss was about. It was an eye opener.

I quickly realized that on Pinterest, there is no 'little' when it comes to poking around.  

Next thing I knew, a whole hour had passed.  I had been sucked into Pinterest Vortex, looking at everything from using toilet paper tubes to organize makeup, to step-by-step instructions for home decor.  I perused interesting signs, great gardening ideas, and how to create fabulous jewelry out of leftover pasta.  (that looked nothing like the macaroni necklaces
I made in Grade Three)

I found out that Pinterest is a paper-free way to collect random ideas.  I admit, it's easier to keep the ideas in an online folder, than to rip them out of a magazine (and besides your doctor doesn`t really like it when you rip out magazine pages)....
Next thing I knew, I had signed up.
I made boards. 

And I posted things on them.

My favourite board is called "Ideas I Love But Will Probably Never Use".  That's where I post ideas which are completely cool, but I know I don't have the patience or the skill to carry it out, like making a fortune cookie out of a 10 dollar bill. Still, I like to look at them once in a while and say 

..."Oh yeah!  I thought that was cool....and...nope...still probably won't make it in this lifetime"..

 I vowed to be careful to keep it casual - this interest in Pinterest.   I don't over do it.
Just a few Pins every now and then...

when the moon is high and there's not much on T.V. ....

Anyhooo...after several months of collecting ideas I decided to step out and actually try making one of them for myself.  It was close to Valentine's Day and I was out of inspiration.  As you know, I love Valentine's Day almost more than Christmas.  I consider it a perfect opportunity to tell people I love them - I like the idea of giving them a small specially-chosen-easily-affordable gift.

I did a search.  Immediately 3000 pictures came up with perfectly executed one-of-a-kind-low-cost gifts.  I was inundated with pictures of painted Mason Jars filled with tea lights, homemade chocolates, hard boiled eggs made to look like hearts, mirrors decorated with Post-It notes in the shape of a heart...and in between, I did some bunny-hopping through other sites where I learned how to create a 'smoky eye' and 50 uses for baking soda.

Several hours later, I settled on "Fifty Two Reasons Why I Love You" which uses a pack of playing cards (and a peck of pickled peppers) to outline 52 loving thoughts for that special someone.

I decided to throw all my effort into making my husband this one-of-a-kind gift.  In doing so I would be just like the 960 other people who pinned the idea on their Pinterest boards in their search for a terrific [cheap] gift for the love of their life.

I felt confident that this was a project I could manage and I was certain would have that "wow" factor I was looking for, without breaking the bank.  
It turns out the Wow factor of this project was this:  "WOW, that took a long time!"

You can click on the link below if you want to see

What it was supposed to look like

This:

is how my project went down.

The first instruction was to sand all the cards.   I very nearly gave up after 12 cards.  It seemed rather labour intensive, and quite messy.  Blue ink was everywhere - on my fingers, all over the desk, under the printer....  However, I couldn't just stop at 12.  It would have looked like I didn't care enough to do it right. 

 I stuck it out, muttering something about cheap products from China.

Next I was instructed to make the pieces that would be attached to the playing cards.  She did rectangles.  I went with a heart theme.   If I had thought more about it, I would have realized that cutting out 52 heart shapes was going to cost extra time. But once I started, I couldn't change my mind.  Starting over would have been more labour-intensive. The final step was to cut out a background and glue the hearts on them.  I measured these out precisely (ish). I ran out of the green cardstock.  So I used some yellow. So much for uniformity.  Whatevs. 

The second last step was punching out the holes, I faked it.  There were a few missed holes.  Oops.
I was proud of myself that I got out a ruler to measure.  Even if I only measured one.  

Measure-schmeasure.

Surprisingly, coming up with 52 ideas of why I love my husband wasn't as hard as I thought.  Although, when he went through them, I found out I had repeated myself a couple of times.  Apparently, I think he is REALLY good with animals.

The instructions said to attach the cards with double sided tape.  Happily, I had some of that.  I used up almost a whole roll of it.  You might have gathered by now (if you are still reading) that I was getting tired. Still I soldiered on.

I got to #52 and I had one card left over  and no more cards that whispered sweet nothings on paper..  Sigh.  That's when I realized I had two # 20-somethings stuck together.  So I did the only thing I could do.  I stuck it onto the last card.  So the card went in order until #21 and then again from # 23 to #51, where I interrupted the flow again, and put #22 next to #52.

By this time, my husband, who had been banned from the office while I made his gift was getting hangry (that's anger caused by hunger).  I had to wrap things up.  Instead of taking it all apart and putting the cards in order, I decided to leave it as is. and not to say anything about it to my husband.  I would wait to see if he noticed the numbers were out of order.  [Fortunately, this lesson has stood me in good stead since the early days of our marriage, namely,  if you keep quiet about the fact that you put uncooked rice in the cookies instead of coconut, people will either not notice, or be too polite to say anything.]

My husband never said anything about the out-of-order card, so I have to assume he was too polite to say anything.  Or just plain hungry because I wouldn't let him eat until he had read every last card out loud.  (My Valentine's Gift, My Rules)

The last instruction was to attach a ring through both sides of the punch holes to make it into a book form. I did not have rings to attach all the cards.  And they didn't exactly open up on the right side because of how I pasted them onto the cards.  

But I did have binder twine.  So I poked that through the holes  and called it a project. By this time the whole thing had taken me about 6 hours.    

I don't think I will ever press REPEATon this project.
 But I did get my point across to my husband.
He knows I love him.
 But then again, he knows that every Saturday when I make him pancakes

Take that "Pinterest"!