Ahh Pinterest. The website where anybody can design their dream house, plan the perfect wedding, and find hundreds of do it yourself projects. When boredom transpires I’ll hop on the app and add to one of the 31 random but organized boards I’ve created. Not going to lie: Pinterest gets addicting rather quickly. So when a girl (me) who loves artsy projects (even though my art skills are sub-par) has access to thousands of various creations, a couple things happen. For one, I spend a lot of my free time at Michael’s. And secondly, I know what projects actually work and yield a good final product. So without further ado here is a variety of creative and successful Pinterest projects to try in the future.

1. Crayon Art

I’m pretty sure this first project has been on Pinterest since the very beginning. Crayon art is kind of like painting without the paint and with less control of what happens. OK, so maybe melting crayons is nothing like painting but in a way that’s kind of the point. After hot gluing a range of colorful crayons on top a piece of canvas, a hair dryer is supposed to heat the wax from the crayons and create a different combination of colors each time. I’ve done this project on multiple occasions and each final canvas has varied even when I used the same colors. A lot of examples on Pinterest also involve an actual painted portion that somehow connects to the melted wax. I usually tend to paint song lyrics or a quote over the wax with a bright color of paint.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/343821752781785197/

2. Rainbow Cake

This is another Pinterest favorite that has been tested many times. Of course, I had to try this experiment as well because what could possibly be better than a combination of cake and rainbows? Before tackling this baking experiment I watched a video on how to go about this project and I ended up using a recipe that made the entire cake and icing from scratch. Tip: the easy way to accomplish this cake is by using boxed cake mix and icing and just adding food coloring. But of course, being the difficult person that I am, I just HAD to do it the hard way. Baking the cake involves following a strict recipe and then separating the batter six ways and adding food dye to each. Then the layers are baked, stacked with frosting in between each, and then completely frosted from top to bottom. Overall, I spent a decent amount of time on this cake but I do think baking it from beginning to end was worth it because the result was delicious.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/93590498483235880/

3. Paper Roses

The first two thoughts that popped into my mind when seeing this pin were, “I need to make this as soon as possible,” and “I don’t have the patience to make this.” I thought making a complete bouquet of these flowers would look really cute in my room so I decided to ignore the second thought and push forward. This pin is actually fairly simple and not that difficult. All it involves is cutting out various shapes of “petals” from an old book and then hot gluing and taping the pieces together on a wooden stick or piece of wire. Then, once all the pieces are secure, the petals should be folded backwards to make the rose look more realistic. The last part is the hardest just because if the petals are glued down too much they can become hard to adjust. It also doesn’t help that I am a perfectionist and wanted my rose to look exactly like the example but that’s just me. This project does take a good amount of patience and concentration but the end result is actually gorgeous. I plan on making more and hopefully finishing the bouquet.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/519321400759449048/

4. Blackout Poetry

My cousin showed me these projects on Pinterest just this past week and I was obsessed from the start. This project is unique because it involves a bit more thinking and prep. The idea behind the entire concept is to create an original poem from a page of a book, article in a newspaper, or etc. I chose a random page from an old book and then planned out the poem by circling the words I wanted to remain visible with pencil. Then, I just painted around the words with black paint by gliding the paintbrush side to side in a messy fashion to make it look imperfect on purpose. The hardest part of the entire project is probably figuring out what the poem should say, but after that it’s smooth sailing.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/402790760392964492/

5. Painting with Flowers

I’m convinced this project was directly intended for me because painting and flowers are two of my favorite things. This definitely has to be one of the easiest and yet strangely satisfying projects I’ve ever done. There are really only two steps to this whole ordeal. The first is to coat any kind of flower (I used daisies) in one or more colors of paint. Then after that, just press the flower onto a piece of paper or canvas and observe the beauty. The flowers leave such a pretty print behind, especially when the colors chosen complement the background. I will admit that my final product looks a bit flat considering I only have six prints on the canvas but I was just being lazy that day.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/457959855839367842/

6. Canvas Lights

Being the typical Tumblr girl that I am, my room already contains a string of white Christmas lights strung across my cork board. But when I saw this project I knew I couldn’t resist. The best way to approach this project (at least for me) was to paint something basic that wouldn’t look weird with lights in the background. So the first thing I did was just paint the canvas with some simple song lyrics. Then, I had to figure out how to get the lights inserted into the canvas without creating too big of a hole. For some dumb reason I took a pencil and basically started poking holes and widening them until a single light would fit inside. But then I finally realized that it was much easier to just push each light into the back of the canvas until it went through to the front. I also just kind of eyeballed the spacing of the lights because I tend to make things up as I go rather than plan ahead.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/333266441148431051/

7. Finger Sandwiches

Just the title of this project sounds ridiculous, but I swear it is worth it. For some reason I was obsessed with pinning various versions of “tea sandwiches” for about a year and one day I finally decided to make a whole bunch of different kinds with my cousins. We made pimento cheese pinwheels, cucumber and cream cheese on white bread, and Gouda cheese sandwiches. These recipes were even better than I expected them to be and super easy to make. Plus they are perfect appetizers or treats for a tea party themed party.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/457959855834698142/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/457959855834870264/

8. Water Gun Painting

This is the perfect summer project for kids and adults alike. All it takes is some liquid based water color paint, water guns from the dollar store, and either canvas or water color paper. Tip: water based water color paints can be expensive so my friend and I bought just the primary colors and mixed them to get the other colors. The first and messiest step is to fill the water gun with the desired color. (I definitely recommend wearing junky clothes and mentally prepare to get paint everywhere before doing this project.) After that it’s just a matter of squirting paint in various places. My friend did this project the smart way and waited for each individual color to dry before adding the next one to make sure the two didn’t mix. On the other hand, my impatience got to me and I added multiple colors at a time, and then when realizing that wasn’t my brightest idea, I swirled the colors around and let the excess run off. (In my defense, I ended up liking the final product.) Then we both waited for the paint to dry completely and painted on top with acrylic paint.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/457959855839368300/

9. Homemade Bows

Maybe it’s just me and my love for Christmas, but when I was little I was always impressed by the way bows glittered on top of wrapping paper. A few years ago I also discovered a tutorial on how to make homemade bows and I jumped on that. All this craft requires is cutting different sized strips of magazine paper, folding them into an almost infinity shape, and finally taping them together. The end product can be pretty beautiful depending on what was on the page of the magazine used. I remember putting homemade bows on a majority of my family’s Christmas presents a few years ago and getting so many compliments.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/202380576976661902/

10. Ink Transfer

This is another Pinterest oldie and thanks to my amazing Photography teacher last year our class did a foolproof version. The original pin involves a piece of wood, a printed out photograph, and almost a guarantee of frustration. I tried the first version before and when it came time to rub off the paper portion, the ink came right along with it. However, when I did this project in photography class, I was instructed to mod podge the original picture multiple times and then put the entire picture in water and rub the backing off. This process makes a world of a difference. The ink didn’t budge like the first time and it was so much easier to just take the picture and plop it on the desired surface. On a side note the picture below is the original pin because I couldn’t find mine.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/212935888610028422/

11. CD Art

I was extremely skeptical of this project when I saw it. Not because it looked difficult or complicated but just because my painting skills are already minimal when using a regular canvas. However, there is something about the round shape of the CD that makes the overall final project rather appealing. I first started out by painting an old CD with black paint. To be quite honest, I’m not really sure why I did that because the pin shows just regular CDs with designs on them, but who knows what I was thinking. After that dried, I proceeded with my simple pattern of vines and flowers because that’s about as far as my skills go. In the end however, I actually really like the way it came out and this project is so ridiculously easy I will definitely try it with my friends next time.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/294282156881387215/