Where do the wiki readers come from?

Studying this map shows you where in world there are Mini treasures wiki readers. A lot of green already :). Never been in so many countries myself but now I have created something that goes where I can´t go. :)

Translating web pages with help of Google

There was a question in wiki about how to translate a page into English. Thanks Pauline for asking :). I added the answer to wiki faq but I´ll share it here as well.

1. Go to translate.google.com

2. Give the url of the page you want to translate and the languages (e.g. from Finnish to English).

3. Hit translate

The translation is made by a machine, but users can improve the translations. Also if you are using the translated versions of the wiki you might find odd translations - in that case go ahead and correct them. :)

And now that you know how to do it go and study Maria´s Indian headgear.

Merry Christmas

me and the tree
Originally uploaded by Johantti ~ Mini treasures

and happy new year and decade to you my treasured mini friends!

Playing with the wiki has been like an adventure. I have the background from Finnish wiki but changing the language and to bigger audience has really challenged my creativity. I knew how to reach the Finnish miniaturists but reaching the miniaturists all over the world is a completely different thing. If you any ideas how to spread the word, I am listening. :)

My simple strategy is to create wiki content I love and I have been so happy to see that others are doing the same: adding amazing stuff to the wiki. Thank you for that and keep it going: let's make the wiki a place all miniaturists love.

Hoping you will get some mini treasures from Santa :).

4000 visitors in our wiki, interviewing Hanna&leijona

Few weeks ago the milestone of 4000 visitors in our wiki´s home page was passed and the visitor number 4000 was Hannajaleijona (Hanna&lion). So let´s ask her a few questions...

Hi Hanna - how does it feel to be the visitor number 4000 in our wiki? It's cool! It's good that there are more and more people visiting and using wiki. This is our common database and a great way to get lost in all the eye-candy you find following the links at wiki.

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I'm Hanna, soon 38, a mom, a dance-teacher and a mini-maker from Finland. (Psst: here´s a link to her Etsy shop)

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures?
I try to get myself to do something else sometimes, but it's difficult! I watch tv when I'm lazy and I do stuff with my daughter a lot, but I don't think I have any other hobby.

When and how did you start doing miniatures?
I've done miniatures in one way or another all my life, but in an almost obsessive way for about four years. It started with my daughter's first doll's house.

What is your latest/next mini project?
I have all these ideas and projects going on and getting mixed up in my head and in our home... I've made two small houses, it's sort of a beginning of a neighbourhood, but I'm collecting stuff for a theatre too.

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? At the moment my favourite is the advent calendar, of course! It's so much fun to see a new page every morning. I used a lot of the Finnish version so it was a natural shift to international wiki.

What would you like to see in the wiki in the future?
Hmmmm.... dunno really. A lot of new links to all kinds of dollhouse blogs and homepages. I'd love to see different projects like zoos or circuses or amusement parks. It would be lovely to see really cool sci-fi or fantasy-settings or a hommage to Simpsons. Also it would be cool to have links to all kinds of historical dollhouses around the world. But then again... there might already be things like these at wiki!

Thank you for the interview Hanna, it was a pleasure (like always) to talk with you :). You are right, there were some of the pages already but I would also like to see them growing so keep adding cool links to the wiki :).

How to follow the Mini treasures wiki?

I just updated the FAQ of the wiki and realized there are quite many ways to follow the wiki.

1. you can order emails from the wiki
2. you can order RSS feeds from the wiki
3. you can follow this blog
4. you can join Facebook fan page to get notified of some wiki news
5. you can follow Twitter to get these notifications:
* notifications of new blog entries of Mini treasures blog
* notifications of Facebook updates
* some notifications of wiki updates (not all)
6. you can bookmark the wiki and visit it when ever you have time

Now it is up to you to choose the one that suits best for you. :)

It would be nice to hear how you do it?

Calling for Dutch dollhouse miniaturists out there!

As I just showed Netherlands was the most active country in Mini treasures wiki during the last month by the number of visitors. It was a surprise for me that there were so many Dutch visitors since as far as I know we do not have any active wiki user from there yet. But I hope we soon have as the Netherlands is one of the home countries of the dollhouse hobby. :)

So to celebrate&welcome our Dutch readers I just added a new tag for Dutch wiki pages.

See e.g. Dutch projects or Dutch miniature shops.

Feel free to add your links there - we want to learn to know you better since your canal houses are so charming. :)

Statistics from Mini treasures wiki

In the spring I tried to add Google Analytics to Mini treasures wiki but gave up too early after problems. In November I met an Analytics expert who also had trouble - and only after that I asked help from PBworks team. They gave the answer quick as always and now I am sorry I did not asked them before. Well, better late than never.

So now I have some statistics to share with you. It is not perfect as the Analytics code is added only to about 5% of the wiki pages but as time goes on I try to add it to all pages.

Now that we have the Advent calendar (see 12th window by Pubdolls) ongoing the number of daily visitors has grown a lot - 10 times more than in November! :) Cool and thank you for your interest :).

From Sitemeter (measuring only the main page) I have learned that there are visitors all over the world but Analytics is giving more detailed information.

The wiki visitors in the last month came from the following countries

1. Netherlands (a surprise for me)
2. Finland (not a surprise as I am Finnish myself)
3. Germany (another surprise)
4. United States (I was expecting this)
5. Spain (a surprise too although Spanish are very active in our Flickr pool)
6. Austria
7. France
8. Belgium
9. United Kingdom
10. Canada
11. Norway
12. Singapore
13. Italy
14. Australia
15. Portugal
16. Mexico
17. Switzerland
18. Sweden
19. Israel
20. South Africa
21. Russia
22. Denmark
23. Hungary
24. Brazil
25. Argentina
26. New Zealand
27. Japan
28. South Korea
29. India
30. Malaysia
31. Malta
32. Ireland
33. Chile

and from the following countries there were one visitor:
Sri Lanka, Algeria, Thailand, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Gibraltar, Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Senegal, Venezuela, Vietnam, Peru, Latvia and Isle of Man

Mini treasures in Facebook

In the spring I created a Facebook group for Mini treasures wiki. Currently there are 16 people in it and there is not that much happening there. What I have learnt from other organizations in Facebook is that fan pages tend to be more active than the groups - mainly because the fan pages you will see on your own wall while group messages can be read only if you remember to visit the group - or if you will get email messages.

So this week I took the time and moved Mini treasures wiki to a new level by setting up a fan page for us as well. After just 2 days we have more members (fans) than we have in the group - wow!

So if you are using Facebook join our fan page to get updates about the wiki easily on your Facebook wall. :)

1000 pictures in our pool, interviewing AiClay

Mini treasures wiki has a group in Flickr and it is quite active, three weeks ago we got the 1000th picture. :)

It was posted by AiClay and I asked if I can interview her.

AiClay says: wow 1000!! :) congrats to the pool, and lucky me! :) i shall do the interview soon! :) thanks Johantti!
Posted 3 weeks ago.

So here we go again:

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? Hi! :) I'm Jocelyn Teo from Singapore, 22. I'm a fresh university graduate with a degree in Communications and New Media but have fallen head over heels with miniature sculpting and polymer clay that I find it hard to imagine myself doing anything but it, for the rest of my life! :)

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures?
Before I knew polymer clay, I've always thought myself as being weird, because I didn't have a hobby like any other kid, and there wasn't something I particularly liked to do, besides the usual 'hanging out with friends'. NOW, I know I have found a hobby, deep passion actually, in sculpting miniatures. so the answer to the question would be no! Although I still really enjoy hanging out with friends and family! :P

When and how did you start doing miniatures?
I started clay sculpting in the start of 2009 with airdry clay, and very soon, I chanced upon this intriguing photo of a giant hand peeling open an extremely tiny realistic orange. (later I would discover it is Angie Scarr's famous oranges!) and of course, I HAD to scout around for polymer clay, and that was soon my first and only love (clay types at least. :))

What is your latest/next mini project? Currently, I've been MADLY at work in producing as many miniature stock as I can with my slow hands and ill self-discipline lol. It's for my very first fair in mid-December, and I'm really excited to fill my table! Crossing my fingers that it would be empty by the end of the day though! :)and besides that, I really want to venture beyond sculpting pastries, and start sculpting meals and savories. :)

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? I found it when the wonderful Johanna started commenting on my photos, and I was extremely flattered when my photos were used for some of the mini wiki pages. :)

My favourite page would be minitreasures.pbworks.com/swaps. I really adore the idea of swaps, and you wouldn't believe how my eyes brighten up when I know I've got a parcel! Would really want to participate in one soon. :)

Lastly, thank you so much Johanna! :) Do take care, and wishing you all the best in your new job! :)

Thank you Jocelyn and good luck with your first fair, it will be fine as you are such a talent, can´t imagine you just started. :)

Advent calendar starts tomorrow!!!

One more night and then we go, bookmark http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/advent_calendar_2009 or add a button to your blog or web page - and enjoy the Christmas time. :)

9 nights before the advent calendar starts!

This is getting exciting - only 9 nights before we can start opening our Christmas calendar filled with Christmas themed projects and dollhouse miniatures. This is something sensational as we have people contributing from very many places: from Asia, Northern Europe and Northern America. Can we still get someone in from Central or South Europe or from Australia or Africa (I have noticed there are wiki users there also)? There is still room for 10 people - so be quick and reserve your window now from here and start countind the nights with me :).

Ebay shops selling dollhouse miniatures

For a long time we in Mini treasures wiki have had a page for Etsy shops selling dollhouse miniatures. Now we are introducing also a page for
Ebay shops selling miniatures. If you are selling there, add your shop to that page.

How?

First you need an account (or open id) for the wiki - after that you can add any dollhouse miniature related links to the wiki. To get started see the wiki faq.

When you are promoting your miniatures in the wiki remember to promote back, here are the wiki buttons.

23 nights until the advent calendar starts!

My kids have already started counting days until they can open their advent calendars. Maybe I should do the same. There are still some windows available in the calendar, go and claim yours, it will be fun to see what you come up with. :)

I am promoting the calendar with pictures that I picked from Mini treasures Flickr group - we have 113 members and 935 pictures already - wow!

1. Gingerbread Pet Shop Detail-Roof, 2. Miniature Holiday Harvest Tree, dollhouse christmas tree ooak, 3. Gingerbread House Pendant, 4. Santa 1:12 Scale Miniature Doll, 5. Advent calendar, 6. TOYNBEE - angel, 7. Puesto Navideño, 8. dollhouse for a dollhouse rooms, 9. Christmas Decorating Underway at the Enchanted Cottage

Hej till Sverige!

(Title translated: Hi to Sweden!)

Yesterday it was Swedish day in Finland (there are 2 official languages in Finland: most of us speak Finnish and about 5% Swedish) and to celebrate that I edited the Swedish pages in our wiki.

blogs_swedish
forums_swedish
home_pages_swedish
swedish
sweden

If you know more nice Swedish links, feel free and add them. :)

PS. I am starting in a new job soon so I don´t have too much time for the wiki at the moment.

Wooper will be missed

I heard something I still can´t believe: one of the most beloved miniaturists in Finland has unexpectedly passed away. I just want to express my condolences to her family and friends - the dollhouse people in Finland will never forget Wooper.

I run out of words.

Sales @ Mini treasures´ fan shop

Don´t we all love sales and making bargains? I decided to start the sales in Mini treasures´ fan shop in Cafe Press today, it will last the rest of this year - so that you can buy something for Seasons e.g. greeting cards. Happy shopping experience!

Wiki slogan redefined

The slogan of the wiki used to be:

Mini treasures wiki - Connecting dollhouse people

but I just redefined it, now it is:

Mini treasures wiki - Connecting mini makers & collectors world-wide.

Any comments?

Button for Advent calendar

I am so excited about the Advent calendar in Mini treasures wiki - already one third of the windows are reserved - and I introduced the concept only 2 days ago. :) Take this button and add it to your blog or web site to promote the Advent calendar - this year the Christmas eve will come too fast, I can assure you. ;)

Advent calendar

I have loved advent calendars since I was a kid. I never stopped buying one for myself and recently I have had miniature calendars, some got from swaps, some bought (Lundby has made cool calendars). Three years ago I introduced a picture calendar in Nukkekotiwiki and it was really popular among the miniaturists. We have had it for 3 years now and now that we have the new wiki I am bringing the concept there too.

The idea is that people reserve themselves windows and then they fill the page with something related to Christmas miniatures.

Read more from Advent calendar and join - it will be so fun!

PS. Before Christmas there is Halloween, check the tips&hints for your projects.

Adding a calendar to your page

Linda from Little Roomers shared a great tip : how to add a calendar gadget to your dollhouse blog. Good idea!

So add a gadget called Feed in your Blogspot blog and give this url: http://30boxes.com/rss/7946313/Minitreasurespbwikicom/338680de87dc957a06229c787d3fac97/0/ so that you will always now what is happening in the mini world :). (Don´t forget also to add the happenings to the calendar).

Another Feed you could add is the recent changes in the wiki feed: http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/rss.xml .

Translation help needed

It would be nice if the Mini treasures Flickr group´s rules could be translated to as many languages as possible. The rules are simple:

"The Mini treasures group pictures from Flickr are shown in the slide show on the main page of the wiki (minitreasures.pbworks.com) and some of the pictures may be added in the sub pages as well.

The Flickr photos in the wikis are embedded which means that if you move your mouse over the picture you will see the originator and if you click it you will be able to add the comments/favorites in Flickr.

Only Flickr group members can post pictures to the pool."

You can add your translation here or in the comment section of this blog entry. Thank you for helping :).

PS. The pictures in the pool are so cool, you never know what the next picture will be about. :)

Interviewing Carol from SPminiatures

Minitreasures has an account in Twitter and I have been trying to find miniaturists from there. SPMiniatures was the 100th that Minitreasures is following and I wanted to make an interview to celebrate it so here we go again :).

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I'm Carol Singer, I live in New Jersey, USA. I'm a retired biochemist.

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures? My other hobbies are computers and hiking

When and how did you start doing miniatures? I have always loved miniatures. I built a small dollhouse for my daughter when she was little but I was more interested in it than she was. When I was older and had more time (and money) I bought a kit on impulse. A couple of years later the dollhouse store near me went out of business and I bought their inventory, went into business, and started doing shows. This was in 1995. Then the web came along and I started a website. Now I don't have any time to work on the dollhouses because I'm too busy with the business.

What is your latest/next mini project? My latest/next project is to get back to work on my dollhouses.

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? I don't remember how I found the Wiki page. I like the link to all the blogs.

Thanks for the interview and hope you have fun time in our wiki! And hopefully you will get time for your own hobby too :).

Promoted the wiki in forums

I have not been active in forums lately but today I wrote to four dollhouse forums (2 in Finnish, 2 in English) to promote the wiki. If some of you want to forward my email to your own forums, here it is:

Hello

In April I set up a wiki in English. It is called Mini treasures wiki http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/ and it is meant for everybody who loves miniatures or dolls. The dollhouse hobby starts to be so popular that we have a need to find the miniaturists who do similar stuff than us and for finding those people we can use the wiki.

Maybe an example helps you to get the point. Let´s say that there are 10 miniaturists in the world who are working on Patrick Swayze theme box. Some of them are blogging (one in Spanish and one in Finnish), some of them are active in Flickr or Youtube while some only read messages from forums. It is hard to imagine how they will learn about themselves, a Google search is not helping that much.

But what if they were all familiar with our wiki. One of them starts a new page for Patrick Swayze and adds links to her Flickr album. The others notice a new wiki page and start contributing, they add links to their blogs and YouTube videos and they can also use the comments section of that page to communicate. A lot of inspiration in miniatures comes through pictures, not through words so for them it doesn´t matter if they understand each others languages.

One of them finds a doll maker who is making Swayze dolls and shares that in the wiki - the others are now aware of the doll and might want to buy one too.

At the moment there is not a page for Patrick Swayze, but there´s soon 450 other pages.

Maybe you are collecting miniature frogs or are passionate with cushions, maybe you do Harry Potter scenes or build a sushi restaurant. The wiki offers you colleagues, tips and ads for theme related miniatures on sale. And the usage of the site is free of charge, also for the sellers.

I hope you have wonderful time surfing in the wiki :).

-Johanna
Mini treasures wiki founder

I am hoping we can get a lot of new readers & contibutors in the wiki. :)

Mark your favorite wiki pages (star)

I have seen the Starred pages feature in the wiki but I never looked what it is until now. It means that you can (book)mark your favorite pages with a star, so that it is easier for you to find them later. I guess we start to need the stars now that we have over 400 pages... :)

1000 visitors in this blog!

Hurray, I just got the 1000th visitor for this blog. I don´t know her(his) name, but I do know that she comes from South Africa /Johannesburg, Gauteng and she came to Mini treasures blog from the wiki. If you notice this, please leave me a comment or send me an email (johantti at yahoo dot com) so that I can interview you in this blog :).

My TwitterSheep

This sheep has eaten the bios of the 100 (!) people Minitreasures is following in Twitter. Looks interesting :).



If you want to see what yours have eaten, check this site.

Creating a mini book together

Have you ever dreamt of seeing your miniatures printed in a book?

Four years ago my dream came true: a book that we did with our dollhouse discussion group was published by one of the biggest publishers in Finland. The book was a success, they took a second edition of it and because of the book the amount of miniaturists grow remarkably in Finland. We created the book using Yahoo´s group & emails but with a wiki the same would be so much easier...

So I have a new dream now: creating a miniature book using Mini treasures wiki, a book that would be created by miniaturists in dozens of different countries. Wouldn´t it be exciting? I have some ideas for the theme of the book but I´d like to hear yours too: what would it be about? If we limited the amount of text and concentrated to the pictures maybe more people would be able to contribute. So tell me, tell me, would you be interested?

PS. I posted this accidentally to wrong blog (Hidden treasure 2.0) first.

Tags added to the wiki

I have started to use tags in Mini treasures wiki. I have collected the tags to this page: http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/tags - feel free to add more tags. See e.g. Halloween tag or movies tag.

This will improve the usability of the wiki, enjoy. :)

PS. I have created a home page for one of my dolls, Vianne Kettunen, take a look :).

Treasure hunting with Mini treasures bag

I like experimenting - I just established a shop in CafePress for Mini treasures wiki. Go and see what there is for you. Have not decided myself yet what to order, maybe magnets and buttons for starters. Mmmm. If your favorite product is missing, tell me and I´ll add that too, I just did not want to choose too wide selection right away. Happy shopping! :)

Interviewing the creator of the wiki page number 333: Linda McD

Mini treasures wiki is growing fast, this week the page 333 was added by Linda who has been very active with the wiki.

Hi Linda! How does it feel to be the creator of wiki page 333? I am very excited about contributing to the wiki because I have saved all sorts of websites, etc for future use, and have never really found the perfect venue. I like that the information is shared and organized. I appreciate how patient you are, and how that makes posting much less intimidating!

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I am married, no kids, retired. Moved from the suburbs of Toronto to a beautiful small town.

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures?
Cross-stitch
General Crafts - I am a real Trash to Treasure person. At garage sales I am always looking for something I can turn into something else.
Painting ceramics - plaster houses, repainting figurines
Computer - making up quizzes for holidays, blogging, belong to WAY too many mini digests!

When and how did you start doing miniatures? About 8 years ago. When I moved here the Newcomers Club started an interest group for miniatures. It never did really get off the ground, but I bought a dollhouse kit, joined an internet group and took off.
What is the best thing in miniature hobby and what is inspiring you? Every single miniaturist is different. Some are artisans and others just wanna have fun! I am definitely not an artisan! Love that I am learning something new every day. I copy a lot from others, I think we all do to some extent, but then make it our own. From the first, I was determined to make DIY projects, using found items. I go garage sailing every Saturday during the summer, and collect all sorts.

I really like making dolls, ( I'm no good at it, but I like to create characters doing things) Got a little side-tracked as I am trying to finish other projects.

What is your latest/next mini project? I am thinking about a Remembrance Day scene. That will take a lot of thinking and planning, but I have a kernel of an idea in mind, WW1 era, Canadian history.

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? I think you posted the link on one of the digests I follow, Johanna.

What would you like to see in the wiki in the future? I haven't belonged long enough to say.

Thanks for the interview and hope you have fun time in our wiki!
PS. See more pictures of Linda´s projects.

Interviewing the owner of the photo number 500: leneUx8

Hi leneUx8! How does it feel to be the owner of the photo number 500? Believe it or not it felt like winning a raffle! Woooohoo! 500th! I have never been lucky enough to land on significant numbers like that before. Congrats to minitreasures on 500 uploads!!! And to Johanna for being such a great moderator!

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I am an Industrial Designer who recently left her whole design career in the Philippines to marry her long-term boyfriend of 7 years. Currently I’m starting a new life in California as a happy newbie housewife who's addicted to miniatures and jellybeans. Now I'm trying to create my own line of modern minis in Playscale and listing them in my recently opened Etsy shop-Dragondee or posting pictures of them in my Flickr account. ^_^

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures? Aside from learning how to cook and trying to meet new friends, I also enjoy doing photography, graphic design, various crafts, and the occasional mini figure modeling in polymer.

When and how did you start doing miniatures? I have always been a miniature enthusiast even at a young age, but it’s only after migrating to California (about 4 months ago) that I started making modern playscale miniatures of my own. Needing to wait a couple more months to get a work permit to legally work in the US, I was stuck at home facing a ton of free time in my hands. Being a natural worker and a believer that life is a game of SIMS, I saw creating miniatures as a way of preserving and upgrading my creative skills and at the same time, actually having fun in the process!
What is the best thing in miniature hobby and what is inspiring you? Having people appreciate your own handmade creations and wanting them for their own collection, I believe, is what really keeps me inspired. Like most artists, you get passionate in creating something when you know it makes people happy. ^_^

What is your latest/next mini project?
Most of my miniature creations go well with Re-ments but not 12” dolls like Blythe. Jackie, a new Flickr friend is requesting slightly bigger furniture for her Blythe girls. ^_^ I’m excited to do that for her next and maybe create a few new designs at the same time.

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? I think I found the minitreasures group in flickr first. I joined the group because I wanted to meet people with similar interest. I’ve even become immersed with other crafter’s amazing works that I never knew existed! I love seeing innovative and resourceful creations. Who knew you could turn an old watering can into a room box!

What would you like to see in the wiki in the future? Hmmm…it seems to have everything already. Maybe just a page dedicated to modern miniatures. I think it’s really a new trend for miniaturists, be it in any scale.

Thanks for the interview and hope you have fun time in our wiki! Thank you too! And I am definitely having fun in the wiki. ^_^

Interviewing visitor number 2000: Lovingclaydolls

Hi Lovingclaydolls! How does it feel to be our visitor number 2000? What a nice surprise!

Tell a little about yourself: who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? I am married with five children and five cats. I'm a doll sculptor and more recently a needle felter. It's a blessing to be able to express my creativity in both mediums. I'm a big fan of Etsy and have a shop there.

Do you have any other hobbies than miniatures?
Facebook, if that can be considered a hobby,lol. I also like history and antiques.

When and how did you start doing miniatures? By accident really ~ When I started sculpting OOAK dolls, making them super tiny was what just came naturally to me. It turned out they were a good size for dollhouses and miniaturist started buying them. After I realized that, I was more intentional about making things 1/12 scale....Although my work is probably still not true 1/12 scale. I just sort of go by what looks right to me. And I bought a very large antique dollhouse collection a couple years ago. Now I have two entire dressers full of doll furniture and no room for my clothes!hehe

What is the best thing in miniature hobby and what is inspiring you? The people of course! I love meeting new people who share a similar interest. And I am amazed by all of things miniature artists can make. The tiny food for example...stunningly realistic!!!!

What is your latest/next mini project? I thought it would be fun to try make some of the foods unique to my area (PA Dutch Country) by needle felting them in miniature. So far I have made a Shoo-fly pie (it's delicious and has nothing to do with flies,lol) and a Whoopie pie. They are in my Etsy shop if you want to see my attempt! : )

How did you find Mini treasures wiki and what is your favorite page in the wiki? Through Flickr, oh yeah... that's another one of my hobbies! (see lovinclaydolls in Flickr) I love seeing everyone's creations! The log cabin on the 1:144 scale page of the wiki is really nice!

-What would you like to see in the wiki in the future? I guess I would just like to see that people are using and enjoying it.

Thanks for the interview and hope you have fun time in our wiki! Thank you! This was fun!! : )

Flickr pictures in wiki

Setting up a site this huge is a great learning experience for me. As a human being I make mistakes but I try not to make the same mistake twice. I have been using Flickr for years but have not that much moderation - even if I have had the Lundby group there. I basically created that and then forgot about it ;). So I made some wrong assumptions (I e.g. thought that if you have your photo in a group you need to be a group member also).

So now I have finetuned the Flickr processes a little by adding the rules that a new group member needs to approve before joining the group. Earlier this was told only in the group messages - and not everybody reads them. Rules are simple: the member agrees that the pictures in the pool may be used as embedded pictures in the wiki. Embedded means that if you move your mouse (cursor) over the picture you will see its details and if you click it you are forwarded to the picture in Flickr where you can e.g. comment it.

The other day I was sending a private message (via Flickr mail) to group members and people who have pictures in the pool but are not members hoping that they would be aware of the rules now (I hope I did not miss anyone). Here´s the message:

About Mini treasures wiki
*johantti* is a group administrator *johantti* says:

Dear Mini treasures group member

I want to tell you backgrounds of my wiki, minitreasures.pbworks.com/ . I established Mini treasures wiki for dollhouse and miniatures lovers and it´s aim is to connect miniaturists to each others. Maybe an example helps.

Let´s say there are 10 miniatuarists in the world who are currently working on a project to honour Michael Jackson. How on earth they will find each other? But if they were wiki users and some of them created a wiki page for Michael Jackson... Then another one could share her print links there while somebody would add a link to MJ doll maker. And tadaa, a small MJ community is born that can inspire each others. And if someone starts the same project next year the page is still there...

The wiki is still very new and most of the updates are done by me. But I hope that eventually there will be more and more contributors who can promote a)their own hobby, b)their mini business and c)their favorite sites and idols. FOR FREE.

So if you would be making MJ dolls (or looking for soul-mates with similar projects) you could add a picture of it to the wiki page and every time a MJ fan would come to the page they would see your picture. That if anything is a well targeted ad! And I´m not charging anything from you for that. :)

In the wiki I´m using the embedded pictures from Mini treasures Flickr group. Embedded means that the if you move your mouse over the photo you´ll see the originator and if you click it you can comment or favorite in Flickr.

Keep sharing your mini treasures with us in Flickr and also in the wiki (read FAQ for starters: minitreasures.pbworks.com/wiki_faq) :) .

-Johanna

Over 2000 visitors in the wiki

Yesterday was a historical day for in the wiki, the 2000th visitor came in. She was Lovingclaydolls and I´m going to interview her here later :). I also plan to make a habit out of this, so more interviews will come when ever a new thousand is reached. So keep visiting the wiki to get more interviews and if you happen to be the 3000th visitor, inform me :).

Here´s a map of the recent 100 visitors: they come from 5 continents, wow!

Figures of Mini treasures

Building up a wiki or a forum is tough - it takes time before people find the place and start contributing. I know that during the fall more and more miniaturists will find the wiki but what´s the situation now when the wiki is 4 months old?

Let´s see. There are

-already 246 pages in the wiki. Sounds a lot but most of the pages contains only few links - I´m hoping that you will add more links about your favorite subjects eventually.

-22 wiki users (=they have signed in) and every day on average 11 wiki visitors.
-54 members in Flickr group
-40 followers in Twitter
-22 so called Followers in this blog (=they have signed in) and on average 6 blog visitors daily
-12 people in the Facebook group
-12 friends in YouTube

When I started the wiki I thought I could make some small money with it (at the moment I´m between jobs) but soon I decided not to "ruin my hobby". So while I´m looking for work I am using the wiki as one of my portfolios. As time goes by I hope the wiki grows to be a real treasure: the biggest and nicest dollhouse/miniature link collection in the world.

If you want to help me in that you can do it easily. :)

-If you have a web site or a blog, add a link to Mini treasures wiki (see buttons here).

-If you have account in Google/Flickr/Twitter/YouTube/Facebook join one of the fan groups (see the links in the main page) and feel free to promote it to your friends too.

-Get yourself an account from the wiki too and start adding some links every now and then. It´s perfectly ok to promote your own stuff there whether you are a seller, a newbie or an artist - the wiki is meant for all of us who love miniatures.

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!

Pictures in Mini treasures wiki

Have you noticed that there are more and more pictures in the wiki? There is already 12 members in the Flickr group Mini treasures but you can do a favor and invite more members :). From the group pool it is very easy to pick the appropriate sized pictures for the page so I keep adding pictures in the future as well (and of course you can do the same). If you want to see the details of some picture move your mouse over the picture so see who has took it and if you click the picture you will end up to Flickr where you can get a closer look at the picture as well as leave comments. :)

Wiki members

Mini treasures wiki - connecting dollhouse people

So how can a wiki connect people?
Well a wiki can't itself but it needs people using the wiki.
Just introduce yourself here. :)

Tags in wiki

The social media pages are often organized by tags, you can see tags in e.g. Blogger blogs or Flickr photos. The same feature is also available in PBworks and I just added the first tags there - for scales. By clicking scales you can see all pages with scales tag.

Take advantage of this feature and add the tags you like so that it will be easier for you to navigate in the page.

Mini treasures and Norton

I heard that Norton was complaining about the Mini treasures wiki, here is the warning:

Viruses
Threats found: 1
The complete list:
Name of the treat: W97M.Thus.A
Location: litchickmccain.pbworks.com/f/AP+2008-09+syllabus.doc

Of course I got scared when I heard this but

• there are no *.docs in my wiki
• the location is referring to another wiki (called litchickmccain). There are no links to that wiki from my wiki and the only common thing we have is the platform (PBworks).
  

So I am saying that it is very safe to use my wiki. But tell me if you got more warnings about it.

Flickr group for Mini treasures

I established a group for Mini treasures in Flickr. If you have an account there, join the group and add pictures of your mini treasures to the the common album. Some of the pictures in the group will be used for decorating the wiki pages.

Adding Flickr Photos to PBworks

I created my very first SlideShare presentation about how to add Flickr photos to PBworks. By doing this the valuable space in wiki can be saved :). So check out this:

Adding Flickr Photos to PBworks

View more presentations from jjanhone.

The presentation is also in the FAQ (wiki) page while the Halloween picture I added from Flickr is in Halloween page.

Have you made any Halloween miniature projects? Tell about them. :)

Copyrights of photos and videos

I have been very careful with pictures - the one who has taken the photo owns the rights and nobody should use pictures from web without the approval of the originator. There's one exception: Creative Commons licensed pictures in Flickr. Do you know if there are same kind of licenses in other systems too?

Video copyrights were a mystery for me so far but I got advice from a forum guru and he told that it is safe you use embedded YouTube videos in forums so I started to add them to the wiki.

See e.g. Titania's palace or Queen Mary's dollhouse.

I like also the videos made by MiniMaker07, see e.g. the Victorian dollhouse in this page.

So if you find nice YouTube videos please add them to the wiki.

Poll about the scales

What is your favourite scale in miniatures? Answer here by commenting.

Museums, scales and wiki faq

I started my week by adding some new pages.

Museums - list of dollhouse museums all over the world (looks quite empty still but I know you can help in filling it)
Scales - a placeholder of the different scales used by dollhouse people. The sub pages are quite empty still, please contribute to your favorite scale page. :)
Wiki FAQ - do you have questions related to wiki usage? Add a question to this page.

PS. There are already 13 editors in the wiki, as many as followers in this blog. Are you the next one?

Popular culture projects

I have been editing the project pages. Little by little I keep adding new themed projects. When people think about dollhouses or miniatures in general they have no clue how much we are inspired by the culture around us: books, music, movies and tv series, e.g.

Beatrix Potter
Harry Potter
Lord of the Ring
Moomins
Narnia
Pingu
Gnomes by Will Huygen & Rien Poortvliet .


Do you have any pop culture projects on-going? Tell me and the rest of the world via the wiki (or by commenting here).

10 blog followers

Cool, I have now here already 10 followers, congrats to Pubdolls - you was the number 10. And thanks to Debbie, who has brought me new readers today by posting about the wiki.

PS. I have problems with Sitemeter & PBworks combination, I don't see the referring urls there. Can someone help?

Wiki slogan and a story behind

A site and service needs a slogan, right?

In the morning I found the slogan from my head:

Mini treasures wiki - Connecting dollhouse people.

I love it, do you? :) The true meaning of the wiki is to help us to connect with each others.

I started this hobby back in 2000. In that time I didn't know anyone doing dollhouses and but then I found Yahoo groups and was thrilled - I'm not the only nut :). I started to network with other miniaturists in Finland and a little bit outside Finland too - now one of my best friends are found via the hobby.

When the hobby was hardening in Finland I quit the foreign groups and started to promote the hobby in the web in Finnish. I established own Yahoo group with my 2 friends, Nukkekotielämä in 2002 and that group is really special: in 2004 we build a dollhouse together and in 2005 we published the very first dollhouse hobby book in Finnish. Our other projects are recorded in our common web page.

My dollhouse web pages (started 2003) were pioneering in Finland and in 2005 I started one of the first dollhouse blogs in Finland. In 2006 I started the Finnish Dollhouse wiki (Nukkekotiwiki) and by now it has found its place among the dollhouse enthusiasts.

Now it's time for me to go back to the roots and start dealing with miniaturists around the world again. :) Back in 2000 it was nice to find someone who do dollhouses but now that we are so many in web I want to mainly find my soul mates: someone who does similar projects than me. My wiki can help me in that and I hope it will work for you too. Whether your dollhouse is occupied by skeletons, Sylvanian families or James Carrington originals, whether your dollhouses are in 1600s or 2000s, in Rome, London or NY, whether your dollhouse shops sell candies or hardware Mini treasures wiki will help you in finding similar projects.

I'm so thrilled about this since I know that if I succeed with the wiki it can change the way we all do this hobby!

Projects - my favorite page

I just added the first version of my favorite page to wiki, projects. Like many miniaturists, I'm a collector and I have many miniature collections e.g.:
bags
cat figures and stuff
masks
food, especially fish
rubber ducks and Donald Ducks ...

When the collection has grown enough it's time to use them in a themed project. In a normal dollhouse you can't have that many cakes, but in a cafeteria you can. And if you collect paintings you could use them in an atelier. What is your favorite project and what do you collect?

Shops / Etsy

Creating the structure to Shops page is a challenge, there are so many shops out there - how to make a user-friendly listing out of them?

I guess I just need to start with it and then improve it later. :) The first page is for shops in Etsy, another one is for shops in Finland (which contains only links to Nukkekotiwiki currently but feel free to add more:).

FAQ added

A lot of posts today... I have added FAQ page - it is meant for all those big and silly questions you have always wanted to ask about dollhouses or miniatures.

Wiki what?

I was thinking about the naming question and realized I haven't even introduced the wiki term here. Ups!

So let's go to Common Craft and let them explain it to you:



So a wiki is a web page anyone can edit. Maintaining link lists is a pain since they keep changing/disappearing but if there is a big group editing the wiki regularly the pages will be up-to-date. Collecting all dollhouse related links into one place is a huge effort but together we can easily make it. Go to Editing instructions to find out how PBworks is updated and start contributing by sharing your favorite links :).

Geocities is shutting down

Another change in services: Geocities is closing by the end of this year. Actually it is not that big surprise, the blogs are so much easier to update that I haven't updated my Geocities pages for ages.

PBwiki is now PBworks

The wiki service we are using for Mini treasures wiki changed their name from PBwiki to PBworks:

What we have now is not just some user-friendly generic wiki; it’s an increasingly full-featured hosted collaboration environment, used by tens of thousands of companies around the world to get their work done. It became clear that ‘wiki’ was caging us in.

I didn't know about this change until now so I need to think about this - should I change the name of my service too? The official term is now Mini treasures wiki but should I change it to Mini treasures work? Or maybe I should just use the url: http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/ .

Wiki is a well known term, if you are in a wiki you know that you can edit it. Work is of course more familiar term than wiki but doesn't make sense in this context... If I rename the site Mini treasures portal or Mini treasures web is it then clear that you can also edit it?

Any ideas my friends, I'm hoping to hear comments before making the decision? :)

Dollhouses by manufacturers (e.g. Lundby)

I added a new page for Dollhouses by manufacturers, see e.g. the page for Lundby. Do you have a Lundby? Do you have picturers of it in Internet? Tell me or add your links to the wiki by yourself, here are the instructions for editing.

Mini treasures in Digg.com

I added an article to Digg.com about the new Mini treasures wiki. Please help me spreading the news by digging it :).

Wiki page naming conventions

Yesterday I was thinking about the naming conventions for the wiki pages. Giving examples is the best way to describe them.

Blog pages are named like this:
blogs (includes links to sub pages)
blogs_english
blogs_spanish

Forum pages:
forums (includes links to sub pages)
forums_english

Home pages:
home_pages (includes links to sub pages)
home_pages_english
home_pages_japanese


Photos:
photos (includes links to sub pages)
photos_flickr
photos_picasa

Capital Letters are not used in page names (only the pages named by the PBwiki system have Capitals: FrontPage and SideBar).

If you establish a new wiki page, please follow these rules - otherwise I'll rename your page :).

List of all pages in the wiki

Wiki calendar added

Yesterday I added calendar to Mini treasures wiki. It's empty now but as time goes by I'll add wiki happenings there. Also if there are any global dollhouse events (on-line) they can be promoted in it. For countries/regions please add a calendar of their own, see the example in Nukkekotiwiki calendar for Finnish happenings.

Mini treasures in many languages

I added links to Google translation to the main page with the following languages:
Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. This is so cool :). The Finnish translation is not that good, I hope that other languages work better.

Amazon links added to books

Where to buy links have been added to Books page. From Amazon links you can see the cover of the book, sometimes also the inside pages or reader reviews. I hope you add your comments to the wiki tables itself. :) Have I missed your favorite book? Go and add it yourself. First you need an account and then you can start editing.

Wiki visitors in a world map

I haven't really started the wiki promo yet so looking at this map makes me really happy:

.

There are miniaturists in very many countries already who have found the wiki! Great!

Mini treasures in Japanese!

Via Sitemeter's hitcounter I noticed somebody had translated Mini treasures to Japanese.

Are you using these Google translation services, are they any good?

Amazon links added

I added links to Amazon to this blog as well as the wiki's magazines page, later I add those to books page too. I might be soon unemployed and that's the reason I need to carefully think about my future. Making a living from a hobby sounds a dream come true so of course I need to try it out (otherwise I would later regret) but if I get only some small checks a year that is really nice too :). Wish me luck! You can support me e.g. by starting to order your Amazon books via my blog (go the the end of the page for the Amazon ad), the prices are the same as always but they will pay me a share of their profit.

Dollhouse inhabitants

If you ask a passer-by who does live in a dollhouse they will answer: dolls of course. But since making miniatures is mainly about using your imagination you can do better than that, why not use teddy bears, mouses or giraffes? Go wild!

I created a page for dollhouse inhabitants and added some links to the pages I mentioned there. Who is living in your dollhouse or roombox, any surprises there?

Mini treasures button

A wiki needs a logo of course and that's what I just created. You can add this button to your home pages with a link to the wiki.

Books and photos added

Updating the new wiki is rather easy, just copy-pasting from the old Finnish wiki. And then a little editing on both...

I added books. The only reasonable format of presenting this information is tables - too bad that editing them is not always so easy. I didn't want to translate the Finnish book reviews so I left most of the fields empty so that other users can fill them. I hope you do!

Then I added photo albums. Pictures are so essential in this hobby, we don't need to understand the language used but all of us understand the amazing mini pictures. I know there are thousands of photo albums available out there so I divided the photo albums by services: Flickr, Fotki, Gfoto, Kuvat.fi, Ovi Share, Photobucket, Picasa, Picturetrail, PixBox, Webshots. It seems that Flickr is the most popular right now but let's see what happens when you start adding links to your favorite albums. Photo albums of Finnish miniaturists are collected here, do you know if other nationalities have same kind of lists?

Promoting Mini treasures

Do you have any ideas how to promote the new wiki? I tried Wikipedia.org but the link was removed because the site is not mature enough, i.e. not long enough history and not enough editors. Well, it's almost 2 days old now and there has been 2 editors in addition to me, why that is not enough? ;) I've been telling about the new wiki to my dollhouse friends and some of them have forwarded the news to their friends. I'm also hoping that once people find out that they are getting visitors from my wiki they are eager enough to study it further.

But before starting the big wiki promo campaign I need more content. :)

I started with blogs but now there's pages also for:
forums
home pages
magazines and
printables .

In near future I'll add the shops but before that I need to figure out how I structure the shop pages, by countries, by languages, by continents, by names (alphabetically), by the way they are selling, by assortment... Any ideas for that?

PS. This blog has been added to Blogilista and Blogged.

Mini treasures wiki

I just created a new wiki called Mini treasures. The name miniatures was already taken and I didn't want to take dollhouse / dolls house because not all miniaturist have a house, they can do e.g. roomboxes or just collect miniatures one by one. So I used the Mini treasures name from this blog and thought that this will be the place where I post about wiki news.

The first thing I added there was lists of miniature blogs:
Dutch blogs
English blogs
Finnish blogs
French blogs
Italian blogs
Japanese blogs
Portuguese blogs
Spanish blogs
Swedish blogs

Welcome to Mini treasures

Just in case I ever want to start updating a miniature blog in Blogger, I reserved this name for me. Goes well with my another blog, Hidden treasure 2.0. :) Meanwhile I blog in Share and Yahoo, only in Finnish though.

The accessorized chair in the picture belongs to Iines Ahola, who loves pink and teddies and is a namesake to Daisy Duck. Click the picture to see the details better, the glass box is a tiny roombox featuring a japanese teddy scene, the poor old teddy is crocheted by me from thread. The chair was done for a competition held in Nukkekotielämä group a year ago.