How To Turn Your Patterns into Pinterest Pins, Fast
You have a folder full of patterns. Pinterest is sitting there waiting to send people to your website, your shop, or your Instagram. So why is the pin step the one that never quite happens?
Usually it is because making pins feels like a project. You open Canva, you try to build a repeat so the pattern fills the pin, you fiddle with the layout, and forty minutes later you have one pin. Do that for ten designs and the afternoon is gone.
It does not need to work like that. Let me show you how to take your pattern tiles and turn them into a whole heap of pins in a fraction of the time.
Why should surface pattern designers post pins from their patterns?
Pinterest works like a search engine, so a single pin can keep sending people to your portfolio or products for months or even years, long after an Instagram post has disappeared.
That makes it one of the best places for a surface designer to spend limited time. You are not feeding an algorithm that forgets you in 24 hours. You are placing your designs where people are actively searching, and where art directors and buyers genuinely look for fresh work.
The catch is that Pinterest rewards consistency. One pin is one chance to be found. Ten pins, in different colourways and on different mockups, is ten chances. So the designers who get found are usually the ones who can make a lot of pins without it taking over their week.
What is the fastest way to turn a pattern into pins?
The fastest way is a tool that takes your pattern tile and tiles it for you automatically, so you go straight from a single tile to a finished, repeating pin without rebuilding the repeat yourself.
This is exactly what my Pin Generator does. You take your pattern tile (from whereever you created it, including straight from Procreate), copy and paste it in, and it automatically tiles the pattern across the pin for you. Then you can generate a whole heap of pins ready to go, without setting any of it up by hand.
Because it tiles the design for you, you are not stuck recreating your repeat from scratch every single time. You just need your tile, and the tool does the repeating part.
How is this different from making pins in Canva?
In Canva you usually have to build the repeating block yourself before you pull it in, which is slow and fiddly. A pin tool that auto-tiles your design skips that whole step.
If you have ever made pins in Canva, you know the faff. You drop your tile in, it shows up as one small square, and now you are duplicating and aligning it over and over to make it fill the pin. Or you need to patternfill artboards with the design to then bring into Canva. With a tool that tiles automatically, that part is just done for you. You bring the tile, it handles the repeat.
That difference sounds small, but it is the exact thing that turns "I will make pins later" into "I made twelve pins while my coffee was still warm."
Where should your pins link to?
Point your pins wherever you want the traffic to go: your portfolio website, your Spoonflower shop, your Instagram, or a specific collection. Match the link to the action you want people to take.
There is no single right answer here. If you are building licensing visibility, send pins to your portfolio. If you sell on Spoonflower, send them there so people can actually buy. If you are growing your audience, send them to Instagram. The point is that each pin is a quiet little signpost pointing back to your work, working away while you are off designing.
I cover this in depth in my Pinterest Workshop!
How many pins should you make from one design?
Make several pins from each design using different colourways, backgrounds, and mockups, because Pinterest rewards fresh variations rather than penalising them.
One design can easily become five or ten pins. A different colourway here, the pattern shown on a mockup there, a fresh background on another. Each one is a new chance to match what someone is searching for. Pinterest does not get tired of seeing your design in a new form, it rewards you for keeping it active.
So you do not need more designs to show up consistently on Pinterest. You need to get more out of the designs you already have, and a fast pin workflow is what makes that realistic.
Your designs are already made. Let's get them found.
The creative work is done. Your patterns are sitting in a folder. Pinterest just makes sure the right people can actually find them, and a tool that tiles your design for you takes the friction out of getting there.
You can try the Pin Generator below and turn your next pattern into a whole heap of pins in minutes.
And if you want to build a proper Pinterest strategy around those pins, one that actually brings enquiries to your inbox, my Pinterest Workshop walks through exactly how I do it.
