Following miniaturists in the web

I just said I have more ideas than time. When I started this hobby back in 2000 there were not that many miniaturists online. At that time I knew all the miniaturists in Finland personally and knew their projects in details. Now it´s not possible to follow all, there is just so many of them and the amount of the hobbyist is rising all the time. As there´s more to choose from I have become selective - I like to follow the projects of people doing similar stuff than me. I know some of them before but how to find the new ones?

Google is not very good at finding miniatures (I think) and I don´t have the time to go and search by browsing the dollhouse pages. I want service - someone to search the new pages for me! Flickr is doing wonderful stuff, they have e.g. groups. I started Lundby group and now it´s very easy to go and see the Lunby pictures from there. I belong to several groups and once in a while I go and look at the pictures in those groups. That´s not the perfect solution though - not everyone is using Flickr, there are other photo services, there are blogs, shops, books, home pages, videos, discussion groups, museums and... How to find them all in one place?

My answer is the wiki!

Let´s use the Lundby page as an example. There is a slideshow from the Flickr group, there are links to discussion groups, to blogs and home pages. I was asking for service, someone to find new pages for me. Now any of you can do a favor for me by adding the Lundby pages that are still missing from the page. It´s a favor for you too - you will get new visitors to your Lundby pages and it´s a favor for all other Lundby lovers out there: one page that stores all the nice links for them.

I want to use miniaturists for crowdsourcing - start sharing your favorite links with me and everyone else using the wiki. I have shared quite many links in the wiki so far and now I´m eagerly waiting the input from the others. The wiki has the potential to be the best service ever for all the dollshouse lovers - and it is free of charge :).

PS. In addition to Lundby I have a tiny dollhouse called Blue box (which I like actually more than the Lundby). I think it´s German and the scale is 1:24. I would love to find other people who have the same house and will be just thrilled if you add new links to this page.

Mini treasures enters Twitter

I have more ideas than time and now I added Mini treasures to Twitter:
http://twitter.com/minitreasures.

Mini treasures is using already quite many services:

the wiki itself is in PBworks
the wiki news are told here in Blogspot
the photo group is in Flickr
the video group is in Youtube
the fan group is in Facebook
and now the Twitter account is for sharing quick notes about the highlights.

The most active of all is of course the wiki, the other places are created for promoting the wiki to all miniature lovers in the web.

Countries

Dollhouse hobby is so great. Let's say you have a country that you love. You can't afford to move or travel there but you can create yourself a piece of that country in miniature. To help you follow your favorite countries I created a main page Countries, from there you'll find pages e.g. for Finland and Spain. I was inspired to this by one Spanish lady - I'll tell you more about that later :).

Mini treasures in YouTube and Facebook

Mini treasures has had a Flickr group for some weeks and now there's an account in YouTube as well. If you create dollhouse/miniature videos or if you are following them in YouTube, send me an invitation. :)

Or if you have an account in Facebook, join the Mini treasures group there.

Collecting miniatures

Collecting is addicting and many of us collect miniatures as well. Collectables is a new page in wiki for collecting collectables :). I'm collecting Re-ments and I have some Reutters as well but what kind of miniatures are you collecting? Tell! Or even better - show and tell :).

Mini treasures slide show

Oh, I'm so excited! I just added this slide show to the main page of the wiki, isn't it cool?

If you want to see your pictures there, just add your pictures to Mini treasures group in Flickr.

PS. It seems that the slide show works better in the wiki than in my blog.

Do it yourself miniatures

Some of us are collecting miniatures while others like to do everything by themselves. And the majority of us do both. So it was about the time to start a page for instructions: DIY . What is your favorite technique? Do you modify your miniatures, create them out of trash, do you sew, crochet or saw? Tell me!