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If you’re reading this blog, I’m going to hazard a guess that you’ve at least heard of Pinterest, even if you aren’t quite as addicted to it as I am.

(You are, aren’t you?)

For those of you who don’t know, Pinterest is an ‘online pinboard’ that allows you to ‘pin’ images from around the internet, and organise them into themed boards.

I thought I’d do a little post sharing some nice Pinterest blog bling I’ve come across – both social media icons for everyone, and some really great plugins for my fellow WordPress bloggers.

Pinterest is becoming such a huge part of the design social media scene, so promoting and sharing your Pinterest account is – I think – becoming increasingly important in our online community.

If you’re not already using Pinterest, I’d definitely urge you to check it out – especially if you have an online crafty business. From a business perspective, it’s such an awesome tool to reinforce your personal brand… and from a personal, image-loving point-of-view, it’s just super-fun!

It is still invite-only, so if you need an invite to get started, make sure to just shoot me an email! Jessica AT EpheriellDesigns.comand I’ll hook you up with an account.

Social Media Icons

You can get the ‘official’ Pinterest social media icon from Pinterest’s own site… but that might be the wrong colour/size/style for your blog. So, here are some pretty alternatives – and the whole set that they come with!

Please follow the link to the site that has the set you like – you’ll be able to download the icon sets from them.

The Academy

Brandi Girl Blog

Pretty Lovely Design (not free)

The Pixelista

Plugins for WordPress

Yet another reason why I adore having a WordPress blog – all the groovy plugins we can use! I have a number of great Pinterest plugins for those of you who have self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Pin It Buttons

The two simplest plugins to easily display a ‘Pin It’ badge on each blog post are Pin it on Pinterest and Pinterest “Pin it” Button.

The former has the benefit of letting you choose which image from your post will be pinned, along with being able to pre-determine the description. That’s the one I currently have installed here.

The down-side of that is that you need to manually set it up for each post. The latter is very simple – you just activate it, and it will put the Pin It button on each post without you having to do anything! I’ve got this one installed on the *bespoke* blog. They both work well, so it just comes down to personal preference as to which one you like to use.

Pinterest Widgets

The three Pinterest widget plugins that I have tried out are Pinterest Pinboard Widget, Pretty Pinterest Pins, and Super-Simple Pinterest Widget.

I’m currently using the Pinterest Pinboard Widget, though I like the look of Pretty Pinterest Pins, too! They all do the same thing – pull your (or someone else’s!) most recent pins across for display on your blog sidebar. You can choose the number of pins to display in all of them – so the one you choose comes down to aesthetics.

I’m going with Pinboard Widget for now because it crops all the pins to make them the same size – which is handy when you pin one of those super-long images. However, it does make the pins quite small… so I may change my mind on that one!

If you know of any cool Pinterest social icons or anything else, please feel free to leave a link in the comments (don’t leave more than one link per comment though, or the spam-catching monster might eat your comment and we’ll never see it!).

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