Let me be honest: I pin a lot of food that I have no intention of cooking and a lot of decor that I don’t have the means to purchase. I'm not alone here, right? It should be evident that a woman’s pin boards are not really “bookmarks” of things they plan to do in the near future, but are a collection of images that represent the life they’d live if they suddenly found themselves with a bunch of extra time and money.
I
figured I would make a small contribution towards changing that by hosting a
“Pinterest Craft Night.”
I
invited six girls and prepped a roasted cauliflower and aged cheddar dip. The
cauliflower dip didn’t look quite like its pin, but that probably had more to
do with my photography skills and poor presentation than the dip itself:
The
tile coasters are so easy to make. You
only need a few things: white ceramic
tiles (16 cents apiece at Lowes!), Mod-Podge, sponge brushes, scrapbook paper, felt,
scissors, and a can of spray-on acrylic coating.
I
also had an old stack of Cincinnati Magazines that I thought would be neat to
cut up and use as decoration on the coasters.
I texted this idea to Danielle ahead of time and she warned me that the
paper might be a little too thin and would possibly wrinkle. I didn’t listen.
Turns
out, the magazine paper was a little too thin, and it did wrinkle. But it was cute and I wouldn’t hesitate to
use it again.
I
would detail the instructions here, but this project is so ridiculously easy you can
probably figure it out without a tutorial. Basically you cut up some paper or magazines,
use the sponge brush to adhere the paper to the tiles with Mod-Podge, put felt
on the bottom so the coasters don’t scratch your tables, take it outside and spray
the whole thing with acrylic coating.
Here
they are, a bunch of civilized crafters, planning their motifs:
Two
hours and two bottles of wine later, the dining room looked like a scene from Grey Gardens.
But
we each had a new set of coasters:
Check
out Ashley’s Brandon Phillips theme on the left center and Danielle and Katie's wrinkle-free coasters on the bottom right. And Maggie’s fresh pedicure in the corner.
Here
are mine:
(Wrinkly)
Sidebar: In college I was obsessed with collage, and even spent (i.e. wasted) two college credits taking a class called “The Arts: Collage and Mixed Media.” Believe it or not, that course is on my official transcript. Ten years later, propped up on my bookshelf, is one of the projects that I turned in for my final:
Yup,
that’s a naked woman framed by a cutout photo of my hands holding two miniature
turtles.
Sidebar
to the sidebar: “Collage and Mixed Media”
was not the only ridiculous class I took.
While some people were gaining actual skills to be used in the real
world, my Fall 2004 lineup looked like this:
I
would say that I don’t know how I earned an A minus in a class called “The Existential Imagination”, except that
for my take-home exam I turned in three collaged canvases that I professed to
be a “triptych” of my quarter life crisis.
WTF.
It may seem like this post has strayed far from my original discussion of
Pinterest’s unrealistic portrayal of our best selves, but it’s all
related. In a very basic sense, Pinterest is a collage of
half-baked hopes for the future. A collage
of the life we’d live if we didn’t have to work for money. Or the life we’d live if there were no social
problems to solve and we could succumb entirely to the kind of self-centeredness
that that "This is the Year" and "Fall 2004" may seem to advocate. Maybe Pinterest doesn't represent our best selves at all, but is instead a more selfish and more materialistic version of our actual selves.
Or
maybe I’m over-thinking it and Pinterest is just a collage that doesn’t require
any Mod-Podge.
Let’s
go with that.
-K.
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