Your Show and Tell Projects

For today's Show and Tell Saturday I thought I would highlight some of the Pin Wins we have been sent over the past 2 years. We don't often highlight the Pin Wins we are sent (as we are "slightly" built around the idea of "pins gone wrong"), but we have some great projects in our inbox, and I feel a little selfish only ever posting up my Pin Wins. So today you get Pin Wins from your fellow Pinstrosipeeps!

1. The Pinspiration: Mouse Trap Magnets

http://suzyssitcom.com/2012/02/feature-friday-magnetic-mousetrap-clips-tutorial.html

The Pin Win:

Mallory said, "My friend and I found a pin for some magnets made from mousetraps. And we think it was a success!"

2. The Pinspiration: Bead Bowls

http://www.wooz.dk/?page_id=2611

The Pin Win:

Andrea found the pin for the melted bead bowl, but as she doesn't speak Danish, she had to work off the pictures to get her Pin Win. She said, "I used cooking oil (canola) to grease a ceramic bowl, put in Perler beads in a single layer (making sure that none of the beads overlapped), and baked it in my oven at 200 degrees Celsius (so, about 400 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 4-6 minutes. After letting it cool for a while, I removed the bead bowl from the ceramic bowl and washed it under cool water, then again with soap and warm water to remove the cooking oil. A simple project, yes, but I've received a lot of compliments on it. This would be a fun project to try with children (with an adult supervising the use of an oven, of course)."

3. The Pinspiration: Spoon Mirror

http://www.addicted2decorating.com/how-to-make-a-decorative-chrysanthemum-mirror.html

The Pin Win:

Nicole said, "So here are my wall flowers made of spoons and mirrors from the Dollar Tree. I made 3 and each flower is made of about 90 spoons."

"I used a cardboard backing because in the original pin from Pinterest they had wooden circles. I didn't have those and I didn't want to spend the extra money to purchase them. So I got a stove top pot lid and traced out large circles on cardboard and cut them out."

"In the original pin they had nicely cut the spoon heads off and layered them on top of the mirror. Well I didn't have sharp enough scissors to do that so I had to snap them all of. OMG my thumbs were black and blue the next day!  Doing this though caused me to have to layer my spoons under the mirror."

"I had an extra can of blue spray paint and did about 3 or 4 coats of paint. The next day when it was nice an dry I then hot glued the mirrors on."

"I love the end product. On a scale of 1-5 on hardness it was about a 3. Only because of sizing and spacing of the spoons.   I plan to make more one day doing color gradients. Hope you guys enjoyed my version :)"

4. The Pinspiration: Rainbow Cupcakes

http://spoonful.com/recipes/taste-rainbow?CMP=NLC-NL_Recipe_030810_taste-a-rainbow-cupcakes

The Pin Win:

Becci said, "I thought I would say that I rocked it on this one - though it was time consuming :)"

5.The Pinspiration: Garlic Chicken

http://www.food.com/recipe/easy-garlic-chicken-5478

The Pin Win:

Lisa said, "Tonight tried a recipe that I found on Pinterest, and it was a total PIN WIN! The recipe was for Easy Garlic Chicken. Mine looked just like the picture, and it tasted great too! The recipe was so simple, and all I did was follow it exactly. Totally worth the try, and I cant wait to make it again."

6. The Pinspiration: Sock Bun

http://style.fashionplaytes.com/how-to-do-a-sock-bun/

The Pin Win:

Heather said, "Hello there!!  :)  I saw your sock bun pin in the "to try" files on Pinterest today.  I wanted to tell you it works and it's awesome, but it takes practice and some finessing. I attached pics of my sock bun I did for my cousin's wedding back in April. I had an old knee sock that I never wore that I ended up using for my bun form."

"Basically you do it just like the picture shows.  Put hair in a ponytail.  Slide the sock form onto the pony tail.  Slide it to near the ends of your hair.  Roll and tuck.  Roll and tuck.  Roll and tuck...  In my case Roll and tuck...  Roll and tuck...  and a few more times.  You get the idea.  Add some pins and hair spray and you're good to go.  Now, the one thing I do differently is I flip my head over.  My hair is too long for me to be fussing with it over my head.  I let gravity help and for me, it's a lot easier for me to handle upside down." 

"Now I have to add that I am horrible at doing my own hair.  This (at age 35) is the first 'updo' that I've tried AND actually left the house with - let alone go to a wedding with.  I can't even get my hair to hold a curl for more than 30 minutes so this was a huge accomplishmentt.  If i can do it, anyone can do it.  :-D"

"It does take practice to have it look pretty.  I've started using this bun for around the house when I'm cleaning, or sometimes I'll put it in my hair before bed so I don't strangle myself in the middle of the night with hair.  It totally does stay in your hair without any pins - I don't bother pinning it if I'm home or going to sleep in it."

"I hope that helps.  I'm a complete hair-spaz and I pulled it off - pretty well too if i do say so.  :)"

7. The Pinspiration: Ombre Nails

http://www.makeupwithdrawal.com/2012/04/tutorial-easy-sponge-gradient.html

The Pin Wins:

Kristi said, "Now, by some miracle I actually didn't fail at this. I'm very into nail polish (that's an understatement!) but nail art of any kind has never worked for me. I was surprised when I tested out a gradient and it worked! Following the tutorial on the website Makeup Withdrawal, I used wedge-shaped cosmetic sponges (which I bought at Walmart for about $1.50). I painted my base color, in this case it was Zoya Arizona (the orange that the original blogger used!), used a quick-dry topcoat and let it dry for at least 30 minutes. Then, on my sponge, I swiped my 3 colors, the original orange, then I used a pink by OPI called "Kiss Me On My Tulips" and finally I added a 3rd color, Zoya's "Kristi" (yes, I own a polish that has my name!). I just did three stripes, making sure to thoroughly "wet" the sponge, and then started bouncing it against my nail. Yes, bouncing is the only term I can use to describe it. I would move a few millimeters up and down to blur the line where they blended. It was super messy, I might add (in hindsight it works best to apply an oil or Vaseline type product around your cuticles for easy cleanup). It will be bumpy and not so pretty when you're done, but adding a coat of topcoat/clear coat will smooth things out and make it look awesome. I won't go into the specifics of "clean up" but Googling the "Meganchair method" should be helpful (basically, cheap makeup brush + pure acetone = clean cuticles!)."

"I've also repeated this with other colors, and loved this purple to black gradient:"

"I will admit, most people I've known to try this method claim to fail miserably. Maybe I just have some magic touch with gradients, but not any other type of nail art! Haha. Though, I would not recommend trying this with neons:"

8. The Pinspiration: Bacon Hearts

http://thepapermama.blogspot.com/2011/02/wordlessish-wednesday-bacon-of-hearts.html

The Pin Win:

Caitlyn said, "After seeing the Bacon Hearts Pinstrosity, I decided that it had to be tried the following morning for breakfast. And seeing that it was my first official morning of vacation, I figured I deserved some bacon that loved me back. I was a little proud of my so-called Pin Win so I figured I had to share."

9. The Pinspiration: School Supply Cake

http://radiobutlers.blogspot.com/2011/08/school-supply-cake-tutorial.html

The Pin Win:

Farron said, "I made a school supply cake for one of my kids teachers. Even though I don't feel I didn't do it correctly. I still wanted to show off something that I have created that did look similar to a School Supply Cake."

10. The Pinspiration: Scrabble Wall Art

http://www.personal-prints.com/Personalized-Game-Piece-Name-Print_p_659.html#.U2R4CfldWa8

The Pin Win:

Khris said, "I thought this would be cool and simple to make. The link goes to a website you can buy each 6 x 8 tile for the hefty price of $12.95 each!! The whole project cost me less than $25.00."

"I wanted to surprise my mom with all the children and grandchildren' name in the scrabble format. It's not a game we played a lot growing up, but the idea was super cute! The 6 x 8 tiles where TOO big and TOO costly for me. I measured out the area that I was willing to use of this idea and came up with an area of 5 by 4 feet. I made the titles a lot small, 3.5 x 4 inches with a one inch space between each title."

"If you're wondering why I they came out to be 3.5 by 4, it's because I used a 1 x 4 x 4, which means I only had to cut the length of each title. One board gave me 13 titles; I needed a total of 48 titles. I bought 4 boards for $0.58 each. I had the black paint, but the clear acrylic was $3.99. The most expensive item was the backing, since I didn’t want to nail up each one. I added Command Stripes on the back and it was perfect."

11. Your Pin Wins:

We'd love to feature every single Pin Win we've received, but we sure can't do that all in one post! Good thing we have many more Show and Tell Saturday posts ahead! 

Have a Pin Win you want to share? Link up your blog post about it below. The link up will stay open until next Saturday's "Show and Tell Saturday" post!

An InLinkz Link-up

Beachy Frizz

My hair is just getting to a good length where I am starting to collect pins with different hair tutorials and styles. I've been working on growing it out since August of 2012 (the last short cut):

Me on the right with my gorgeous friend Rae on her wedding day. 

Eventually I'd love to get back to this length where I can test out all manner of hair pins:

For now though I'm in that awkward in between length where it's too long for the short hair styles and too short for the long hair styles. It's hard not to just chop it all off. Must stay strong!

So in the meantime I'll have to show you other's hair pin tests (I'm sure when I get mine a little longer you'll see some epic Pinstrosities from my attempts).

For today's post I have a curly submission for you. This is one we've seen on the blog before (hence...Throwback Thursday).

The Original Pin

http://www.lovemaegan.com/2009/06/hair-tos-big-curls-with-tiny-buns.html

Beautiful beachy waves. Looks simple.

In our previous post, we showed results from three different submitters who tried this pin. Here are the results of their pin tests:

Today's submitter, Heather, sent us this story:

"Well, I have wavy hair. But I wanted beautiful beachy waves.  So I took to Pinterest for some tips. I found this tutorial and thought it was foolproof.  Well, turns out I was wrong…

I started with wet hair and sectioned it, twisted it, twisted it and twisted until it twisted back onto itself.  Then I used bobby pins to hold it in place.  And continued over my entire head.  I didn’t have time to sleep on it so I let it air dry.  I used a blow dryer on low and put a towel over my head to diffuse the air and keep it from getting frizzy.  When they felt dry I took the pins out.  See exhibit A…"

The Pinstrosity: Exhibit A

"My husband said, 'Wow. Brush it out.'  Well, I used my fingers like it said, and enter Exhibit B…"

The Pinstrosity; Exhibit B

"So NOT beachy waves.  Oh, did I mention I finished this 10 minutes before I had to go somewhere?  Needless to say I pulled it back.  It was too poofy to put in one pony so I had to put it into two, like I was trying to revive my 16-year-old-self… awesome.  Any advice?  Feel free to share as you will to prevent this disaster from happening to anyone else!"

As I'm no hair expert, I don't have any tips to offer. But we do have Emilee's know how! Here are some tips she has given from some of our various hair pins:

The hard truth, like we have said before, is not everyone's hair will do everything, and it definitely won't do it perfect the first time or otherwise.

Doing wet twisted curls with your finger and pins isn't always going to give you the same end results. Here is why. Variation. Every time you do it you may be pulling harder, pinning looser, taking smaller chunks, taking bigger chunks, inconsistency is the issue a lot of times. That is the other issue with Pinterest, did any of these pictures come with directions ON them? NO. Now if you are lucky enough to have had a link to go with your picture, and smart enough to follow that link, watch the tutorial video, and then follow those directions, you might have had a fighting chance. However if your hair is different than the tutor's, then you run into more trouble. Let's be real here also, nobody's hair is exactly the same...I have had clients whose hair does not work with heat, others who do not work without heat, others who had to wash it every single day  in order for it to do anything, and others who washed it once a week or it looked like a wig on chicken. Everyone's hair is different. 

Now that I have the hair pow wow over with, I CAN give you some tips to help out.

• Some pins you need wet hair, others need dry, look at the picture, does the original pin picture have nice tight twists on top of their head or do you see "fuzzies" sticking up everywhere? If you see an abundance of "fuzzies", there is a good chance the pinners hair is DRY. If it looks slick and clean is is most likely wet.
• Using a leave in conditioner will generally help with tame the"fuzzies" for when you take your hair out, but humidity is a WHOLE 'nother ballgame. 
• Leave it in over night. Most of these pins require you to sleep on them. Those of you who have thick hair, your hair will most likely NOT be dry in the morning. Like I said in a previous hair post, you  MUST blow dry it. Use the blow dryer gently on low heat low speed...gently. Too vigorously and you will look like you put your hand in a socket. No bueno. 
• Those of you with fine limp hair, this is tricky. You don't have a ton of hair and it generally doesn't have a lot of volume. I would put a silver dollar size of mousse in your roots before twisting it up, this should help add some volume. Also when you take it out tousle your roots with your fingertips while your head is flipped upside down, but don't shake like a dog. Too much will ruin the effect. Definitely use hairspray. 
• Section sizes, it's hard to tell you what size to take because everyone's hair thickness is different, but I would say thick haired people use 1" by 1" squares all over if you want good defined smaller curls. For bigger more wave like curls take bigger sections, but I wouldn't suggest anything bigger than 3" by 3" or you will have a problem with it not drying in time. 
• Another thing to think on: if you are sleeping on your do perhaps use a hair net or cap over it to add some security. Some of us aren't still sleepers. Food for thought.
• DON'T brush it out. Use your fingers to separate it. If you are desperate use a pick. Again, go GENTLY.
• In general you will almost never see a hair style like the styles on Pinterest that hasn't been touched up with some sort of curling iron/straightener/wig. It is just the way of the game. Just like photo shop and magazines they think no will notice and that everyone will think that's just how they look. The jig is up, America knows. A great tutorial can be found here: http://www.lovemaegan.com/2011/09/revisiting-no-heat-big-curls-w-twisted.html

The moral of the story is this: don't get discouraged. Make sure you have directions or someone who has done this before to maybe help you out, and figure out your hair; it's your hair, own it! Everyone's hair is different, and with that it will behave differently, so remember to take that into account. Don't be ashamed to do a two minute touch up. I'm not, and I am a hairdresser. -Emilee

Thanks to Emilee for her tips through these past two years! I hope they've helped some of you! For more Hair Style Pinstrosities or to go through and find more hair tips from Emilee, check out the rest of our Hairy Pins.