Lettering: How about using fonts from your computer. If you can, use them on the paper they're printed on or use them for tracing the size and then transfer them to your sign.

Joyce Gould

Ink smudges on transparencies: You purchase special transparencies that are designed for ink jet printing.

Tom Berkner

Re: Free online websites easy homepage builders:

Just a note of caution...I've noticed some of the online websites easy html/home page builders do not automatically put the image size dimensions in the HTML code that is generated and the pages take forever to load: a real turnoff to a lot of potential viewers.

If any of you are putting up a web site it's really a good idea to check your html code, to make sure each image has something like this for each image used :

height=xxx    width=xxx      (with of course the actual pixels instead of the xx's) :-)

You can check the actual code on your pages by using:

View  Page Source  in Netscape  OR View Source in Internet Explorer

To edit the code you can load the htm or html file in Notepad.  But you will need an image editor that tells you what the actual image dimensions are first!

IF you use Netscape Composer or FrontPage those programs will automatically insert the height/width tags for each image for you.

Wilma Kinder

Websites: What's the first thing I should do?

Wow! Ok, this isn't *just* the first thing, but this is the preliminary idea....

Assuming you have a business (you mention shows) and all the things you need for that (insurance, tax numbers, license etc. if applicable). Assuming you know how to make products that are saleable (and have them priced so they will sell). Assuming you are already prepared to do mail order (and packaging, orders, shipping etc).

Now that we have that out of the way (no techie stuff yet), what do you want to do with this site? Why do you want it? What are your goals, purpose, reason for having it? Are you selling all your products? Your favorite 10 products? One really expensive product? Custom orders only? Is your website going to have everything you have for sale or a selected portion of it? Deciding your goals and purpose is the first thing you need to do when moving a miniature business to selling online.

How easy do you want to make it for your customer to purchase?  A shopping cart, order form they fill in, something they need to print and mail to you?  How can you accept payment?  Money order, check, credit card etc.

Now you need pictures.  Do you have a catalog already, or professionally (ie look great) photographs?  If so, a scanner will probably be your next step.  If not, you need to decide if you are more comfortable with a conventional camera, or a digital.  Layout, composition, lighting and scale are all things to consider with photographs.  Once you have digitized your products, you will need to optimize them for the web.  This is something I could fill an entire digest with info on.  I'm not going to go there today!!!

Pictures are only half - a picture may say a thousand words, but without description, sizing and price, it is unlikely to sell.  So content becomes all important.  Even if you have everything else "perfect", lousy content is lousy sales.

Next you have to figure out how you are going to put all this on the web.  How is going to dictate where so I'm going to leave that for now.  You can: learn html and write it yourself (and design all your page layout, graphics etc.); use a software program that will visually assist you (WYSIWYG program possibly) - learning the software and all it's tweaks; "hire" a friend who will do it "cheap"; or hire a professional who will worry about the structure, layout, navigation, function, appearance, and promotion for you.  Don't misunderstand me - you may discover a passion and a joy doing your own site - this may be something you love doing - but some of you (and you know who you are) would rather be making minis than debugging some webpage code.

Where to put your pages?  If you are using FrontPage and are using the extensions, you will need to look for a host that supports that.  If you like a free site and their templates, then you will be looking there.  You may have a site with your ISP already (which may or may not be usable for business sites).  A designer you work with may have a preference of which host they work well with.  So until you have an idea of how, where is kind of a moot point.

Just as an example, "anyone" can make foods from Fimo.  There are lots of tutorials on how to make things, perfect them, learn new tricks.  Some people will want to learn it, some will try and decide they would rather do other things, some will purchase the "pieces" to assemble, and some will rather buy an artisan piece fully finished.  The same goes for webpages.  The only way to decide the value of having someone else "doing" your page for you is deciding if you would rather spend the time or the money.  It is going to take more of one of them.

Noella

Texturizing Catalog Prints for artwork: Scan the pictures into the computer, then using something like Photoshop apply a gausian blur effect or maybe use the "finger Smudge" tool to simulate brush strokes . Then print the picture out on your computer printer.

Marc

Etched Glass and Lettering: You can get decal paper from MicroMark, page 46, both for laser and inkjet. Then you can design or scan and reduce whatever you want to have for windows or your bar mirror and put on as a decal.

Regina Steele in Wilmington, DE

Scale Reduction of Images From Web: I use a far less technical way of reducing the tiles - I "copy" from the site and then paste into my wordprocessing document (I use Word 97). One the picture appears - click on it - and it should be surrounded by a black box with dots at certain points. Put your cursor over the lower right hand side dot and click and hold and drag the dot up

towards the top left hand corner. This makes the tile smaller - of course you click and drag downwards if you want to make anything bigger. As the tile measurements were given, it makes it quite easy to hold a ruler up against the screen to see whether a "six inch" tile has become "half an inch" in miniature.

Jan in Melbourne, Australia

Art Sites:  In the quaint-and-charming folk art category (with a bit of mischief) is  http://www.willmoses.com/   
For a huge collection spanning centuries and styles, try http://www.postergallery.com/default.html Indexed by artist as well as general subject matter.
Another good source: www.barewalls.com

Mary

Japanese art: Some sites for anyone interested in Japanese art. http://spectacle.berkeley.edu/~fiorillo/
http://www.shogungallery.com/

Marlene

Web sites: Due to their 'natural modesty', two of the hardworking elves that bring you this digest didn't mention what they can offer you.

Noella is the "system administrator" (or something like that) of miniature.net. She can provide you with a great place (server) for your web site, at one of the lowest costs I have found. This is not a free site, but then you don't have other people advertising on your web site and trying to lure your customers away. Go to the Miniature Net home page www.miniature.net  for more information

Anne Gerdes designs and implements beautifully designed web sites for a reasonable cost.  Many of the miniature web sites you have probably been visiting have been done by her.  I'm sure she would be glad to give you a list of her credits.

My web site (I did my own, so don't blame Anne) has been on Miniature Net for 2 years, and I am very happy with the service.

Tom

Building your own  web site: I built and maintain my own website and I, of course, have my own opinions and have never hesitated to hold back.

If you can help it, don't put it on a "free" hosting service because the ads are distracting and unattractive and may well be advertising something you don't approve of.  I once went to a mini site and there was an ad for an online casino. On other sites the ads were so intense (monkeys running back and forth) that I immediately got off.  As far as I know, you have no control about the ads on your site.   If you have an ISP they usually provide you with some free server space, free of ads,  and you should look into that first.  If you find that your business is successful, then sign up with a good webhosting service.  Mine costs about $60 a month which includes internet connection.  I am paying for extra bandwidth due to the heavy traffic on my site and extra server space due to the size of my site.

Kill the music.  Many people are now surfing the web from work (during their free time of course) and hitting a website with music could cause them unwanted attention.  For those that are surfing, you can turn off the sound.

If you are going to have graphics, watch your colors and remember the color blind.  Don't combine green on red and vice versa or they could see a blank page.  I'm not color blind but I have hit websites where it was difficult to see the print especially purple on black.    It can depend on the monitor.   Graphics can be distracting and I have few on my site. Graphics can also slow down loading.

Start simple.  A great book is "Web pages for Dummies" which is how I started.  When I wanted to enhance the site, I went to www.javafile.com (I think that's the URL), where they have free javascripts and all you need to do is change the parameters.  They have scripts for  such things as dropdown menus.  Be careful of the scripts you use as some of them are incompatible with some browsers.

 Have good images of your products.

 Make it easy for people to contact you.  I found that people were having trouble sending email to me from my site.  Never figured out why but I think it's because they might not have had their browsers set up properly.  I have tried to solve the problem with a webmail form but there's no such thing as an idiot proof solution because people have to put in their correct email address.  I've had someone yelling at me because I don't answer them when they have given me an incomplete email address.  I have now put in red letters on the webmail form something to the effect of putting in the full email address and an example.  Answer your email promptly.

After you have finished your page ask people to check it with the following browsers: Explorer and Netscape both on PC's and Macs and also Webtv.  This is especially important with Javascripts.   The people on SS are happy to help as I have found out in the past.

Thumbnail pictures.  The rule of thumb with web design is to have as few clicks as possible.  Putting in thumbnails instead of the full image requires an additional 2 clicks.  One click to get to the thumbnail, one to hit the back button.  I don't use thumbnails.

Try to avoid frames.  Frames are ok but they do cause additional problems.  I got around frames by making an image map for a  site menu.

I use 2 programs for maintaining my site.  CuteHTML, an HTML editor.  You have to know HTML for this.  The other program I use is an image compressor which makes the images load faster.  Both cost around $20 each and that is all I have used.  If you just have a couple of pages you don't need an HTML editor, you can use Notepad.  The advantage of CuteHTML or programs like it is that I have about 170 pages on my site and I can make a change in all of the pages simultaneously. I have Corel-photopaint for making buttons, image maps for menus etc but you can get an image mapping program for about $30 and you don't need an expensive Corel program.

Doing a website yourself allows you the flexibility to change it when you want.  This is especially important if you have an ever changing inventory or if you make one of kind things.  I spend at least an hour a day on my website, taking off or marking things that are sold out and adding on new items.  It is time-consuming.

Carol, S P Miniatures

Web page design: Carol, Boy do I agree with your website advice. Some people might as well have no graphics for the quality of the pictures they do have is so poor. One thing I really find very distracting and as soon as I see it now I just get out of the page is a trailing curser. It drives me crazy. I do like thumbnails, I find that with them you can see several pictures at once and only open the ones you are interested in. Otherwise you have to keep opening each thing and that really takes to long. Unless you have all the pictures larger on one page.

My reasons for not liking music is if you spend any time at all looking at a page it gets very annoying. I love the new Ripley's aquarium that opened recently in Gatlinburg, but the music is so annoying after awhile it takes away from the experience.

If the page is crisp, clean, easy to navigate, not to many ads which take up to much space, I enjoy looking at it. If it's to much trouble to find what I want, I just say forget it and get out of that page and find another one that is all the above.

The pages should have some kind of search engine on them so if you are in a hurry, you can find just what you need and get out of there, and last but not least I think any page that does nothing but give your address and phone # to contact you is a waste of your time. I'll go find a site that has the graphics, search engine, prices etc. I like to browse a site and see what's available and if there is no price I feel that it's probably out of my budget range.

These are opinions from a consumers point of view, so that you know what we like in a page. There were some things on eBay that I might have bid on had there been pics but the only thing they did was put a short description. I went and found the same item that had the pic and better description and ended up buying it from that person even though the price was slightly higher.

Kathy in E. TN

TRANSLATIONS - Helen of York had a problem with Dutch Instructions, somebody else with the NOCH site, and ME with a faxed order, having a question and not being able to fax back in FRENCH.   Well...here is the answer - http://www.babelfish.com/

You type in your message and then click on the language you need to communicate with -  I have found this to be such a blessing.

Mary Eccher

TRANSLATIONS - This is where I ended up

http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/translate.dyn

Makeminis

TRANSLATIONS: Another translation site I like is:

http://www.translationwave.com/

Noëlla

Web Design: Any of you who want to learn some good basic style information for building websites, here is a site that has a whole course that is free on the Internet.

http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/intro/purpose.html

Start there and just take the course for free, by following the links. Another good source is a book called "HTML 4 For the World Wide Web" by Elizabeth Castro. You can get the book at the library and Ms. Castro has web pages to go to for each chapter in the book so you can see how what you are reading about works. You can do all of this for free to find out if you really want to get into doing WebPages.

Grace Shaw

How to Save Images and Fill a Page with Them for Printing: Rather than saving the HTML file that a printable appears on the net, you need to save just the image. With your mouse on the image, click your RIGHT mouse button. A little menu will appear and allow you to "Save Image As" or "Save Image." Save it to your hard drive. Now, open the image in an image editing program that will allow you to copy and paste it repeatedly to a full page. Or, copy and paste a variety of images to a page. Either way, you can fill up a page before you print it.

Anne Gerdes

Scanners: I think the inexpensive scanners do a fine job. I would be more concerned with what photoshop software is included with it.

Fannye

Saving Tips: I opened a document in my word processing program, Microsoft Word, and keep a running list of tips and "recipes," which I've cut and pasted from the digest. Using bold type to highlight the significant word or phrase, like folding screen or bending wood - sure helps when I run back through my document looking for something I've saved.

Wanna in El Paso

Scanners: I just finished a hat kit from Dana of Miniature Art. She wanted everyone to send in a picture of their hat. Since I do not have a digital camera, I took the cover off my scanner (it just lifts off), set the scanner on its end in a vertical position, set my little hat up on a couple of boxes so it was in the middle of the screen and then covered everything with quilt batting and scanned it. While I was scanning I discovered that I could cut the picture down in the scanner to eliminate the boxes and just got the hat.

Elizabeth Cooper