A few months ago, I started learning about Pinterest. It seemed like a fun platform to display quotes I like and pictures for crafts, activities, and fun information to do along with my books (currently Jobs of a Preschooler and Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles). After reading some books (I love books!) from the library (I really really love the library!) and watching a few videos online, I created a Pinterest account.

I have had fun learning how to create boards, make boards private or public, add pictures, follow others, and organize items. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to continue adding items periodically to my Pinterest page. As a result, I have been trying to save five pins at least five times each week to my boards. So far, I have over 350 pins on my public board and over 150 pins on my private boards. Needless to say, I have had fun pinning on Pinterest and exploring all of the fun ideas others have pinned!

You can follow me on Pinterest (link to my Pinterest page) if you would like to stay updated on the pins I add to my boards. If you only want to see pins on certain topics, there is an option to follow specific boards.

On my Pinterest page (this links to my Pinterest page), I currently have 6 public boards:

• Jobs of a Preschooler
• Fun Crafts
• Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles
• Quotes for Writers
• Quotes for Parents
• Quotes for Homeschoolers

The Jobs of a Preschooler board is filled with all kinds of fun crafts and activities to do along with the book Jobs of a Preschooler. I currently have it divided into 13 sections:

• I’m a sculptor
• I’m a builder
• I’m a scientist
• I’m an actress
• I’m a police officer
• I’m a jewelry maker
• I’m a singer
• I’m a meteorologist
• I’m a doctor
• I’m a teacher
• I’m a chef
• I’m a veterinarian
• I’m a painter

The Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles board is currently divided into 9 sections:

• Wearing pickles
• Crafting pickles
• Eating pickles
• Making pickles
• Pickle quotes
• Pickled foods
• Pickle merchandise
• Pickle classroom activities
• More pickle fun

I added some of my own pictures as pins; however, they did not look as gorgeous as the majority of the pins that I have seen on Pinterest. So, I started trying to figure out how to create better eye-catching photos. I noticed a lot of people online kept mentioning a graphic design program called Canva, which has a free option. Since free fits within my budget, I decided to give it a try.

Last night (around 10PM), I created my free account in Canva. Once I figured out how to use the basic tools (free online video tutorials saved me a lot of time!), I started adding my own pictures and creating nicer eye-catching creations.

Notice, I said nicer. I am not a graphic designer, and it certainly shows in the pictures I created; however, they look a lot better than what I had before.  The two pictures shown above for Jobs of a Preschooler and Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles are two of the pictures I created last night using Canva.

Using Canva was addicting! I had so much fun playing around trying to create pictures to put on my Pinterest boards that I stayed up until 1 AM this morning.

I started pinning some of my pictures to my Pinterest boards, and then I realized that the pictures saved on there looked so much nicer than my website pictures. So, I plan to update some of the pictures on a few of my past posts some time in the next week.

Hopefully, future pictures will look a little nicer…no promises, though!

Do you use a program to make pictures look nicer? If so, what do you use?