5 Creative Social Networking Sites

Color by COLOURlovers

The Creative Side

If you enjoy playing with color, COLOURLovers is sure to please. With this site, you can create your own unique color palettes! Use a favorite photograph to build a palette, or choose colors by hand with the palette making tools. When you use a new hexidecimal color for the first time, you get to choose a name for it!

You can also create patterns using your color palettes, and make your own pattern templates to color in, and share them with other Colour Lovers. The site is partnered with Imagekind, Spoonflower and Moo, so you can create palettes and patterns, then use them to make your own unique artwork, fabrics and business cards.

Color by COLOURlovers

The Social Side

From COLOURLovers:

"The COLOURlovers community is made up of people from around the world and from all walks of life. Gathering together under the common love of color, this group of people continuously amaze us at how supportive they are of other members and how creative they can be with their work."

Everything you create and save on COLOURLovers can be viewed by other members. They can Love, or thumb up, your creations, favorite them, and leave comments. Users can follow each other, join and create groups to share themed color creations, and use each other's patterns and palettes in their creations. There is also a forum full of discussions and games related to color.

Color by COLOURlovers

Off Site

There are lots of ways to use COLORLovers creations on your blog or website. You can display a widget of your latest creation, or download an image of your palette or pattern. You can also purchase prints, fabric, clothing and promotional tools through the COLORLovers shop and partner sites.

The Creative Side

Polyvore is an amazing creative tool for anyone that loves magazines, fashion, color, images, collage, scrap booking, and paper dolls. There are three main categories for creations made with Polyvore's set creator tool: Fashion, Interior Design, and Art & Expression.


Spicy Sweet Summer by mortira featuring a red bead necklace

Fashion and Interior Design sets can feature any of the millions of clothing, jewelry, accessory and home décor product images that have been clipped from around the web, and added to the Polyvore catalogue of pics. Each clipping is linked back to it's original source, so you can also track down the products in their original settings.

Art & Expression sets use a variety of clipped images and collage tools built into Polyvore to create stunning, original collages. Polyvore is also partnered with COLORLovers, so you can add blocks of simple color to your creations. The Colors tool will even create a palette for you, based on the most common colors of items already in your set.


Nefertiti Awaits a Manicure by mortira on Polyvore.com

The Social Side

Members of Polyvore can Like and comment on sets, save their favorite clippings from other members, and follow each other by becoming Contacts. Anyone can join or create a themed group and share their creations - many groups run fun contests for set creation.

Polyvore also has a forum called Ask, where members can pose questions and receive answers that use clippings and sets. Members can share and receive fashion advice, color tips and decorating advice.


Purple Perfection by mortira featuring gym bags

Off Site

Polyvore sets are easy to incorporate into blog posts using the HTML provided. You can choose to show just the collage you have created, or include a list of products for your readers to browse. You can also Tweet or share your sets and favorites on Facebook with one click.

The Creative Side

Deviant Art is the place to upload and share your creative talents. Although the site is mainly used for photography and fine art, they also have categories for other types of visual and handcrafted arts. You can upload your creations, sell prints (with Premium Membership), create albums, and share your uploads with handy embed widgets.

Tip: Deviant Art doesn't have as many content rules as some other sites, so you may want to turn the mature content filters on before you start browsing. Or not, if you don't mind that sort of thing.

The Social Side

Deviant Art members can comment on each other's uploads and profiles, create albums or "Collections" of their favorites, and Watch or follow artists that they admire. Profiles on Deviant Art are very detailed, and similar to MySpace profiles. Members also get a blog space on their profiles to write and share inspirations and thoughts.

Off Site

You can share your uploads on Twitter and Facebook, or use the Deviant Art embed code to share them on your blog.

The Creative Side

Goodreads is a vast online directory of books in all genres, where you can make lists, or "Shelves" of titles that you have read or want to read. If you enjoy writing as well, you can create reviews for the books that you have read, and make recommendations for other users and book lovers.

You can also create Lists of books based on any theme, quizzes and trivia questions, or add quotes from books or authors that you like, all of which are displayed on the site and used by other members.

Published authors can create special profiles and have a blog space to share news and updates with their readers. Unpublished authors are also able to upload and share their short works in the Creative Writing section. There are hundreds of independent stories and novellas to read and enjoy, right on the site.

Mortira's bookshelf




More of Mortira's books »



The Social Side

Like most networking sites, you can add friends, share and receive book recommendations based on what your friends have read, and join or start groups and discussions. There are also fun trivia games based on story plots from books that you have read.

Off Site

You can use Goodreads widgets to keep your friends and followers up to date on what you're reading, and your favorite books. There are quite a few widgets to choose from, including a collage of your favorite book covers, updates on your site activity, and favorite quotes.

The Creative Side

If you spend a lot of time browsing, reading, and viewing websites, having an account on either of these visual bookmarking sites is a great idea. Both Pinterest and The Fancy allow you to collect and sort your favorite images from all over the web, and you can save or clip them as you browse. All you have to do is add each site's save tool to your browser bookmarks.

At The Fancy, bookmarks are placed into specific categories like Women's, Men's, Media, Home, and Pets. You can clip images at any time, even when you're not logged in, and add your own captions and descriptions.

Pinterest allows you to create your own categories or albums of favorite images, which you collect from around the web. Your descriptions can include @replies or #hashtags, just like Twitter, which makes them easy to find and share around the site.

On both Pinterest and The Fancy, users can also save and like images that have been shared by other users, and visit the original sites to learn more about the image.

Source: photo.net via Morti on Pinterest

The Social Side

Both of these image bookmark sites are about sharing and interacting with other like-minded users. You can follow members that have a similar taste, make comments on their items, and share with your friends. The Fancy has special badges or Promotions for top contributors and members that use the site often. Pinterest makes it easy to browse pins from the same site, so you can easily find people who have the same interest, and browse their Boards for inspiration.

Off Site

You can share your bookmarks, or those that you really like via Facebook and Twitter. On Pinterest, you can also grab embed code and share your favorites on your blog or website.

Source: beadcreative.com via Morti on Pinterest