Local crafting bar avoids pinstrocities
Customers can drink while creating projects
Katie Garcia consistently has 20 to 30 internet browser tabs open on her computer.
Most of them are projects she found on Pinterest, a website designed for people to discover and save recipes, home decor, style inspiration and other ideas. For a long time, she rarely made any of her saved projects.
About a year ago, Garcia and her friend Garrett Sheskey opened Pin-It Live, a creative studio and bar on Water St. for people to complete those pinned projects. Pin-It Live is similar to painting bars where the creative juices — wine, beer and other drinks — flow. They won’t send you home with a pinstrocity that will end up as a Pinterest Fail.
Unlike most painting bars, Pin-It Live lets customers pick their own projects. On its website, Pin-It Live shares tried and true projects that customers can create. With 24 hours’ notice, customers can select any of these options, such as a set of cornhole boards, a blanket ladder or a Drinko Plinko.
Guests also can go on Pinterest, find a project and then send their pin to Garcia and Sheskey. The pair hunts down supplies, prepares materials and has the project ready to go before customers arrive.
Walk-in customers can make “InstaPins.” Pin-It Live always has on hand the materials for these small projects such as shelves, a wine caddy or inspirational plaques. The “InstaPins” start in price at $15 for a wooden box game.
“We’re not pros or experts at it,” Garcia said. “But we research (each project) and know how to get you from Step A to the finished product.”
When customers asked about making mercury glass and metal stamping, Sheskey said they watched YouTube videos and figured it out.
Garcia and Sheskey are teachers by trade. Garcia teaches first grade at Summitview Elementary in Waukesha. Sheskey instructs sixth-graders at Les Paul Middle School, also in Waukesha. The friends started thinking about opening the Pinterest-inspired business while getting their master’s degrees at Carroll University.
After opening Pin-It Live, their normal routine soon became leaving school, buying supplies at Menards,
Goodwill and Hobby Lobby, and stopping at Garcia’s house to cut and sand materials before trekking downtown.
The pair can spend up to 40 hours a week either at the Pin-It Live studio or working on the business on top of full-time teaching loads. But “this is fun to us,” Garcia said.
They opened the studio by investing some of their own money and taking out a line of credit. Sheskey said the business is on the cusp of turning a profit for the year.
The cream city brick studio space on the second floor at 522 N. Water St. is decorated completely with projects Garcia and Sheskey found on Pinterest. The decor includes work tables made from old pallets, a teal bar and menu board, shelving for supplies and lighting arrangements hung from the ceiling. They made it all. Not all of it is perfect.
“It’s D-I-Y,” Garcia said.