Well, while Pinterest is deeply diverting, there is a strong element of “Buyer Beware” involved in some of the postings. Craft ideas that look awesome are evidently photographed and performed by professional artisans; it’s also possible that I am incompetent. I submit to you as evidence:

I tried this one this afternoon–we’d just bought a crate of clementine oranges at Fred Meyer and Junior Vox ate several, so I figured I’d give this a whirl. The pin would have you believe that you use one half of the orange’s peel as a candle base, fill it partway with olive oil, and light the little bit of membrane that divides the sections like a wick. Well I’ll be damned if I could get the damn thing to light. And where I thought the whole house would smell like a fresh orange, it ended up smelling like chicken. Go figure. Fail.

Another disappointment was the hair-curling method that involves making a sock bun. The sock bun itself is kind of cool–it makes a nice, big bun and it is really comfortable to wear, even to sleep in. However, the curls you see in the picture below? They totally don’t happen.

You end up with a big pouf of frizz. Instead, I prefer the no-heat method, as seen in the video below. It isn’t as comfortable as the sock bun, but you can wear the pre-curl style out of the house, and the curls turn out beautifully.

I had seen the hula hoop rug idea in the Disney Family Fun magazine (which is a GREAT magazine if you have kids under 10 in the house–lots of rainy day activities in there).

I have half a dozen hula hoops of varying sizes (because I am a badass hula hooper, believe it or not) and Mr. Vox has plenty of t-shirts to cut up for scrap, so I have made this project twice. The first time, I wove the shirts WAY too tightly, so I have a sort of Asian-inspired rice paddy hat made out of t-shirts. It’s not too useful. I made another one last week, and while it is better, it is still kind of bowl-shaped. I don’t know what you could do to fix it, frankly.

See how the one in the picture looks like some kind of cool batik fabric? Ours don’t look anything at all like that. I have no idea how they got that effect; ours look like your seat covers after you’ve had a box of crayons sitting in the car on a hot summer day, where the greenhouse effect causes the inside temperature to get to 450 degrees. It’s a big, waxy blob.

So that’s how I’ve been livin’ with Pinterest in my life. I am still having a ball with it. It’s better to try and fail than never try at all, right? And whether anyone reads them or not, I do re-pin the projects I have tried and have given them a review. Maybe that’ll help weed out the failures–I don’t know.

What about you? If you’re on Pinterest, have you made anything you’ve found there? How’d it turn out?

I made my first recipe from Pinterest and it was okay. But then, I’m not really a fabulous cook so there is that. I’m making a wildly popular Pinterest recipe for Thanksgiving dessert so there is huge opportunity for failure.

That crayon thing – we used to do that when we were kids, only we just used 2 pieces of waxed paper. I bet the way they got the separate colors was to let one color completely cool before doing the next. Otherwise, you usually end up with a picture of avacado green and brown all mixed together. Funny how a box of crayons makes those two colors.

I agree with you about the “buyer beware” aspect! Do you still have any of these fails? I would love to see a photo of, say, the rice paddy hat, and the crayon art. I would LOVE to feature them on craftfail.com (we are a friendly fail site! no calling people out – & we will link & credit, of course). Let me know what you think! heather@craftfail.com