Mini treasures 5th advent calendar opened today

A christmas tree by Redrickshaw

We opened our 5th advent calendar on Mini treasures wiki today.

The new thing is that we are encouraging people to contribute during the calendar, e.g. today we are asking people if they have mini villages as Christmas decoration in their home.

Come and see it now! :)

How to fill our advent calendar pages

I have been busy with my several projects and have not been hanging around on Mini treasures wiki for awhile.  Now I saw that only 8 calendar pages have been reserved so far. Haven´t you got any Christmas projects to share with us? If you don't I do :).

Just a warning: in the end of this month I am going to reserve all the remaining pages and fill them with stuff I find, e.g. from our Flickr pool or some nice YouTube videos about (e.g.
about miniature villages) and so on. So think creatively: you can use also stuff created by other people. Do you have a favorite miniaturist artisan you would like to interview or whose minis you would like to showcase for us? Or maybe you have a favorite Christmas poem (or story) you could write and use other people's mini pictures in it?

So if you now got a new idea, go and reserve your page before I take them all ;).

Time to reserve your page on our advent calendar

We are starting to reserve the pages of our traditional advent calendar. 

It is a fun way to promote your miniature projects - for free.

Last year some of the people also organized a lottery. One of the people who had left a comment on their page won the mini on that page. Hopefully this tradition continues this year too :). 

If you need help with reserving, we have a Yahoo group for giving support to each others.

Basically you need to 

1. log in to Pbworks (for that you need a PBworks account)
2. choose one of the days from  http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/w/page/62245469/advent_calendar_2013
3. open the page with that date 
4. press edit
5. write your name on that page
6. wait until Linda or I hide the page from others (change the security of the page)
7. fill your page
8. wait that Linda or I open the page for others again just before your own date
9. enjoy the comments and link traffic you are getting :)

The MTW Awards are here again

I just finalized our list of 25 biggest traffic bringers to Mini treasures wiki. In the beginning of MTW most of the traffic came through miniature blogs, sites and forums but now the situation has changed. People have bookmarked our site and most people visit it via Google and other search engines. So now I needed to go back to 255 biggest traffic bringers to get this list. The links on this lists are mainly blogs or website hosted by either private people or companies. They are sites where I can leave comments telling them about the prize they have gotten. I also found some inactive blogs and secret blogs which were left out from this list as I could not reach their owner.

I want now to thank these wonderful sites for the promotion efforts you have done for Mini treasures during the last year. Keep on the good work :).

I added all these award winners on our Pinterest board dedicated to MTW Awards. They are all nice sites worth of your browsing too :).

1. casita-mini-1.jouwpagina.nl
2. poohbeers.eigenstart.nl
3. true2scale.blogspot.com
4. inchscaled.com
5. mysmallobsession.com
6. littleroomers.blogspot.com
7. greenleafdollhouses.com/
8. tusminiaturas.com/
9. miniaturemavendiaries.blogspot.ca/
10. jazziminis.blogspot.com
11. nukketalo.vuodatus.net/
12. vame.org.au/
13. minisonja.blogspot.com
14. vesperminiatures.blogspot.nl/
15. debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com/ 
16. mindymaxminiatures.blogspot.com/
17. theminifoodblog.blogspot.com/
18. dollhousebrazil.net/
19. monique63.jouwpagina.nl/ 
20. a-miniature-life.blogspot.com
21. cinderellamoments.com/
22. linnanneito.blogspot.fi/
23. stalbertmini.blogspot.ca/
24. tiina2005.vuodatus.net/
25. candidcanine.blogspot.com/

If you want to be included on this list next year, start promoting our wiki now. Add a wiki button on your site and tell your blog's readers about our wiki and what it means to you. :) The winners are found also on our 4th birthday page.

Welcome to our 4th birthday party!

Mini treasures wiki will be 4 years on Sunday 14th April 2013. We are celebrating the occasion with several ways:

• we are show-casing the cakes from our Flickr group
• we have a special Facebook event 
• we will be tweeting about our birthday using #mtw4y
• we are giving away the MTW Awards for 25 sites bringing us most traffic
• there are give-away (feel free to donate too by this Sunday, e.g. by leaving a comment on this blog post)

Come and join our party (the main page for the event is of course in the wiki itself) and do not forget to spread the word about it :). Make us a birthday card or leave your kind words in the comment section of this blog. 

Our 4th birthday is coming soon with a contest

On 14th April Mini treasures wiki will be 4 years old. We have a habit of celebrating that by thanking the miniature bloggers who brought us most traffic.

See the 25 bloggers or site owners who got the MTW Award last year and think if you could join them by spreading the word about Mini treasures wiki in your blog or site. :)

But before our birthday have a happy mini Easter!

Mini treasures wiki's year 2012

White swan by Nina-chan

I told you earlier that I have been busy. I still am. But next week I am going to start a new course targeted for community managers. And as Mini treasures is my biggest community I am going to do some stuff for us during the course - two tasks at the same time :). On the first time we are introducing ourselves and our communities and for that I updated the presentation I have been doing earlier showing the highlights of last year from the social media point of view.

When I started the Mini treasures wiki in 2009 I used A LOT of my time for building the site and starting the social media channels for it. It acted as my portfolio then showing what I can do. It still does that but now I have also other communities and my own business to take care of.

But looking at the figures shows me that the site can survive and grow even if I am not spending that much time on improving it. We have Linda and and we have plenty of fans and users who like us, thank you :).

Flickr used to be my main arena where I did the community management stuff for Mini treasures as the pictures are critical for miniature hobby but last year I got hooked up with Pinterest and used more time for that. I still believe in the possibilities Pinterest can offer for us but every now and then I try to find time to spend in Flickr too.

Now look at what we accomplished last year and have fun with us this year too. Any help with Mini treasures world is appreciated as always. :)

 

Mtw 2012 from Johanna Janhonen

Removed members from wiki - sorry folks!

Yesterday Linda got an idea: she wanted to clean our wiki members a bit and checked the ones who had not been logged in for three years. Then she removed almost 70 members. When I found this out I was really really upset. Pbworks is not showing the correct information always and there were valuable members (and my friends) removed who had been editing the wiki during these years. Even if the people are not logged in for our service they might visit our site regularly (you can read without logging in) and follow the wiki updates from their own emails.

So far our policy has been that only the spammers (you now them, they are marketing rented cars and diets and so on, kitchenware for our 1:1 homes not for our mini projects) have been blocked away. We do not have any activity rules for our members and we will not make them now. We wont start kicking away miniaturists, only spammers!

So what I just did? Invited the removed members back to our wiki. I also invited them to our new Yahoo group which has recently started to help our users with the wiki problems as well as giving us feedback and new ideas about how to improve our services. The rest of you are also welcome to join our group!

I now Linda meant only good with her cleaning and she is sorry too about what happened. Peace & harmony folks, we do want to keep you in our wiki!

Adding photos to Mini treasures wiki with help of Pinterest

I created also another how-to-instructions: embedding photos to Mini treasures wiki with help of Pinterest.

Embedding photos with help of pinterest from Hidden treasure - Piilotettu aarre

You can embed photos e.g. from Flickr or Picasa but Pinterest allows you to embed almost any photo (you can add photos to Pinterest as well). Do not embed photos from other people to our wiki unless you have asked their permission.

How to get started with Mini treasures wiki editing

Just created instructions of how to get started with Mini treasures wiki. You need an account and then you go.

Embedding photos with help of pinterest from Hidden treasure - Piilotettu aarre

Any comments of the instructions?

Miniature advent calendar for this year open for registration

We have a nice tradition with advent calendars in Mini treasures wiki, we have done it already three times and every year we are getting more and more followers. Linda asked to create the page for this year as there are already people asking her when they can reserve their date.

If you want also to contribute to our advent calendar go and reserve a day for yourself. This year we are filling the dates well before the due date in order to avoid the hassle (it has been quite exciting for me to wait if the pages are filled in time, sometimes they werent and then I needed to invent something fast). So we are filling the pages in advance but the secret is safe - the pages are opened to public on a due date only.

What can you add to your page then? Something related to Christmas of course. You can share your project, you can make a video, printables, instructions. Use your imagination and start counting days for 1st of December when we open the first window of the Advent calendar! :)

If you have anything you want to ask about the calendar, leave a comment below and I answer you as soon as I can. :)

Greetings from Dorothy from South Africa

Do you remember when you first visited Mini treasures wiki? I got a message from Dorothy who fell on love with our wiki and as I was very pleased about her reaction I asked if I can publish it jere. She said YES  - and asked if she could help spreading the word. Please go ahead and tell all your mini friends about our site :).

Dorothy wrote:

I stumbled across your website yesterday - totally by accident - and it's absolutely brilliant! I've been able to delete at least 150 other sites that I had bookmarked because everything I need - links, blogs, how to, etc, is all here in one place. It's so fast and easy to navigate, and everything is so well organised! It must have taken you months and months to set it all up and I truly appreciate your hard work. Definitely the number 1 one stop, all in one, go to miniatures resources site and I love, love, love it! I live in South Africa where we don't have any miniatures shops (not one in the whole country!) so we have either have to make our own stuff or import. Your site now makes it so simple to source ideas or actual products. Thank you so much!

MTW Award 2012

Howdy hoe!

It is again time to share the MTW Awards. Every year we are giving them to people who are bringing the most traffic to Mini treasures wiki. They make our site what it is by spreading the word and thus they are really valuable for the site. So once a year we are giving the credits for 25 popular mini sites. If you want to see your site in this list next year, start acting now: add links to our wiki every now and then and a button to your side bar.

I left the forums, search engines and social media services out of this list - most awards are given to a blogger.

1. inchscaled.com/
2. poohbeers.eigenstart.nl
3. nukketalo.org/
4. casita-mini-1.jouwpagina.nl/
5. schifka.vuodatus.net/
6. littleroomers.blogspot.com
7. hannajaleijona.blogspot.com/
8. mysmallobsession.com/
9. a-miniature-life.blogspot.com/
10. ilovelittlethings.blogspot.com/
11. debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com/
12. adventkalender.punt.nl/
13. vesperminiatures.blogspot.com/
14. nuestrasminis.blogspot.com/
15. pubdolls.blogspot.com/
16. fashiondollreview.blogspot.com/
17. stalbertmini.blogspot.com/
18. geekgirlsfinland.blogspot.com
19. snowfern-clover.blogspot.com/
20. nasunnukkekoti.blogspot.com/
21. true2scale.blogspot.com/
22. lastanzadigiuggiola.blogspot.com/
23. narinanapertaa.blogspot.com/
24. klarameijer.blogspot.com/
25. njdminiatures.com/

Thank you for your support and congrats for reaching MTW Award 2012. Here is the award banner for your blog.

I would love to hear from you winners:
What is your favorite page in our wiki?
Any ideas about how could improve the site in future`?

Maintaining our wiki

Mini treasures wiki is free for users to read and edit. Even the miniature sellers can add a link to their shops for free.

But it is not the whole truth - Mini treasures wiki is not free for all: I need to pay for the maintenance every year. And every year it is a bit more expensive.

I just paid the bill again. If you want to participate the costs consider jumping to Amazon via links in Mini treasures wiki or use our new Mini Treasures Store. The most popular item so far is this set bought by 11 people:
  .

Thank you for all who have used this supporting opportunity already :).

If Amazon is not for you but you still want to participate, you can always donate a prize to one of our contests or spread the word about our wiki.

Hope you enjoy our wiki as much as I do :).

How to get started with Mini treasures wiki

The first lesson for the Mini Treasures Hunters is here. You can read the wiki without logging in but once you want to leave a comment, edit a page, give a star to a page or get emails from the wiki changes you need the account. Here is how to do it:

Starting with MTW

View more presentations from Mini treasures.

Mini Treasures Hunt is open for enrollment

A while ago I promised you a fun wiki course which is a contest at the same time.

We are organizing it because there are people who would like to contribute more in our wiki but don't know how exactly to do it.

During this 2 week course you will together with your new partner learn the wiki editing tricks in a fun and exciting way. And 2 of you will get this wonderful and one-of-a-kind set including a seat and the accessories donated by our wiki member Anne from Greece.

Come and have fun with us!
Read more about the rules from here.

Happy new year mini friends

Click the photo to see the details

Hi friends!

We had such a wonderful mini year :). The year 2011 ended with our popular advent calendar, every day we saw a mini surprise. Managing the calendar together with my personal rush hours (with kids, Christmas & my own business) took the juice out of me so I decided to keep some distance with MTW: I was away about 2 weeks. I guess that is the longest time ever since I started almost 3 years ago. But now I am back and soon I am going to introduce you a brand new activity. It will be lots of fun, be prepared.

Now I wish we will have another great year together with lots of shared mini treasures. :)

Yours, Johanna

Behind the bed / scenes

You know Linda, my co-moderator. She partipated a canopy bed project with a group of miniaturists and shared the results in the Littleroomers blog. She emailed the group and I was added as cc and I wanted to publish the email in this blog too. Go ahead Linda and tell your story!

This post was made to the Dollhouse Mini Projects digest after the group completed a project and the participants consented to have their beds featured.

Now, anyone who completes their bed and wishes to be included in the post, please send me a pic and the description and I will add them.
I also put a link on the Bed page of the wiki

I also wrote about the technique of lace and embossed paper on the furniture page with a link to the blog illustrating the technique.

Scroll down to the last tip, and click on the here link.

What is a a Minitreasures wiki, you ask? It is the same as the wiki-pedia whicb we all use, only for miniatures. I suppose we could call it a mini-pedia! Here is the link to wikipedia which talks about PB works, the wiki site used by MTW.

I don't know about you, but I have frantically saved all sorts of tips, sites, pictures throughout the years, but have great trouble locating the info. The wiki enables me to save links to specific subjects on pages, which can inter-connect, and to share that info with others.
Go to http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/w/page/20981680/FrontPage
Beds are furniture, right? If you enter furniture in the search box on the upper right, the drop down menu offers 2 selections. The folder contains a list of all pages related to furniture. The page (with the little pencil to indicate editing) offers a generic page for general tips and info that apply to furniture in general.

This format kinda fits my tiny little OCD mind. I can't get my mind wrapped around Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, but I can understand a dictionary!
Hope this explains about the wiki a bit. Look on Youtube for some tutorials

Linda McD from NOTL, Ontario
aka minilinda2001
http://picasaweb.google.ca/minilinda2001

Easy access to your favorite wiki pages

1083. That´s the amount of pages in our wiki at the moment. A lot! Once in a while you pump into a page you want to visit also later. There is a nice way to bookmark those pages - you just give stars to your favorite pages. How is it done?
See the instructions and participate a contest - maybe you will win these delicious mini chocolates? :)

A rose is a rose is a... donated by Pei Li

Want to get these? Promote our wiki in a way or another to win them :). See more from our contest page.