Gallery Collecting Tips
How to make a Gallery
To make your own gallery you can click here and then pay the small sum of neopoints it takes to start your own gallery. The screenies below explain this more clearly.
This is the page that appears the first time you click on the Gallery link. If you want to go ahead and create a gallery, click on the here link at that page.
This is the main page where you can edit the appearence of the gallery. You can name your gallery, and choose what area it comes from, and also add a description which will contain your layout. Read more about the layout of a gallery in the Layout Section
If you would like one, you can select a Gallery keeper here and give them a name plus something to say. You can, however, tick the box saying: Do NOT display Gallery Keeper to visitors. There is also a box saying Make gallery Keeper picture's background transparent, which means that there will not be a white box around the gallery keeper, instead the gallery keeper will blend in with the layout/background.
Now you are ready to create your gallery. Below the Gallery Keeper part of the page there is a button saying Create Gallery. Click it and your gallery has been created.
Putting items in your Gallery
You can use your gallery by adding items from your inventory into there by clicking on them manually and using the drop down list to select add to gallery. Alternatively for more items, you can use Quick Stock.
Quick Stock allows lots of items to be added, which is so much quicker than clicking on an item in your inventory one by once.
Creating Categories
If you have different sorts of items, you can create categories. These help you organise your items neatly into separate sections that people can easily click on to look at. You can create Categories by clicking here. You can then name your category to whatever you would like. You can create up to twenty different categories.
You name the category the way you want, then click Add, and there you have a category.
Click back to here and then you can organise your items into categories by using the drop down list, or a quicker way would be to use Quick Categorise.
Depending on what sort of gallery you are doing, you can create ranges of categories to suit the big picture. There could be categories of colour, name and the sort of object it is. For instance, you may own a plushie gallery, for which you may want to create a category for basic coloured plushies, and a category for speckled plushies. Or, you own a food gallery and you create a category for spooky food, and a category for gross food. etc. Of course you can also use the categories to put different galleries on your account that really have little to do with eachother. This way you can have a plants gallery, and an orange items gallery in one. There are many different ideas to choose from.
Upgrading your Gallery
It is important to upgrade your gallery, as this allows you to put more items in. Every time you upgrade, you can add an additional 5 items to your gallery. Each upgrade costs an extra 200 neopoints each time you upgrade. This means that your second upgrade will cost 400np, the third will cost 600np, fourth 800np, fifth 1000np etc. If you are wanting to create a large gallery, you'll soon be paying upgrade costs going into the thousands for every additional 5 items.
Visit Sunnyneo's Gallery Cost Calculator so you can see how much you will be spending.
To upgrade your gallery go to this page and at the bottom there the option to upgrade. Click on it and there are five more spaces to fill for your gallery.
Creating Ranks
Ranking is putting your items in the order you want them to. You can start ranking your items by clicking this link. You can also rank your items within each category.
This is ranking by any random order. However there are lots of ways you can rank your items:
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You can also combine some of these options. How about blue books all in Alphabetical order, followed by green books all in alphabetical order? Organising your items like this makes your gallery look neater, and clearer too.
Choosing your Idea
This is probably the hardest part for most people. Think of the different types of items, for example: Foods, Drinks, Neopets, Weapons and many more. Try not to pick anything too large at the moment, as this will make it harder for you. Now narrow it down further. If you decided on a Neopets theme, pick an item that would be in your gallery and enter it into the Shopwizard on gallery search to see how many galleries there are which may be similar to yours. Then you will know how many other people share the same idea as you!
If you are having a lot of trouble picking, think of things that really interest you. Perhaps you love a certain type of petpet? Or you could base a gallery off of an avatar you really like? For example, the Symol avatar brings to mind a gallery of Symols.
Themed galleries tend to be more unique. Check out this gallery for an example. These are the galleries that catch your attention, make you smile, make you laugh, make you remember them. Instead of Neopets, or items, or basing it off of an avatar, choose a subject you really like.
These are just ideas, you will probably take your time in deciding what to choose. Choose something that you want to do and not something anyone else wants you to. After all, you must be original and eyecatching. (See Gallery Spotlight Section).
Collecting the Items
Once you have your theme you can start collecting the items for your gallery. www.neoitems.net has a great item database where you can type in what type of items you are searching for and a whole list will come up. Here you can look and see which of the items that fit in your theme you want to collect, unless you want to take the challenge and collect all of them.
You can find the buyable items on the Shop Wizard where you type the name in and it comes up. Make sure to put Identical to my Phrase unless you are simply searching for a range of the items. There is also the Super Shop Wizard for Premium members which searches the cheapest items immediately and is very helpful to use. SunnyNeo has a great Neopets Premium guide.
Once you have most of the buyable items for your gallery you can move on to the unbuyable items which are located at the Trading Post/Auctions. Remember you can only offer up to 800k in pure neopoints on the trading post, so you'll have to buy easy to sell items for the more expensive items in your gallery. The limit on auctions is 20,000,000nps. It is easier to start with the cheaper items though.
Know what to look for with your items. Also check the description of items to see if they have the theme you are collecting in there. If you have a Bori gallery, there may also be some items that do not have a name with the word 'bori' in it, but there may be bori's in the description or picture of the item.
The New Features page is always a good way to hunt down the new items when they are released to see if any match your gallery. Keep track of these, because you will also need them in your gallery. Always remember though, newly released items are often very expensive, within the first few months after release the price will drop like a rock. Best to wait a little while before you buy these items.
There is also the nice touch of adding a wishlist onto one of your pet's petpages for your gallery as a way to keep up to date on what you want to buy, and also so other users can see. SunnyNeo has a fantastic premade wishlist petpage that you can use to show all of the items you will be wanting. Of course you can also design your own wishlist to match your theme. Once you have bought an item on your wishlist remember to remove it so you don't end up buying the same item twice! You can also put the average prices of items on it for buying purposes, although this is not necessary.
Setting Goals and Limits
Once you have collected most of the cheaper items in your collection, it makes it easier to set goals on what items you are going to buy next. If you are doing a spotted gallery, you can make goals of the more expensive items, for example a Spotted Paint Brush, then save up and buy, never losing sight of the goal.
HOWEVER! Be sure to set a limit on how much you will spend on an item, if you don't do this you will find yourself splurging and spending way more than you intended on something. It is also nice to set a limit of what amount of neopoints you won't let your back account drop below. That way you always have some nps, it really helps to keep yourself balanced. You also never know when you will find the deal of a lifetime on an item you have been wanting. Think about it, if you just spend all of your neopoints, you wont have any neopoints left to buy the great deal because you just spent them on another item that you didn't even want as bad! If you have a million neopoints, set yourself so you can only spend 250,000 neopoints of it! That way there's still 750,000 neopoints left over. You can also try to invest some of your neopoints so you can use it to earn more neopoints. Think of the stockmarket or restocking, both require you to use some of your neopoints before you see the results.
Remember to check the price!
Remember when buying an item to check the price! A /lot/ of people on the Trading Post lie about the prices, and after you buy you search the item up on the Shop Wizard and realise it's only 7k when you've paid 700k! Ask at the Trading/Auctions Neoboard for a price if you're not sure. Also search on the Shop Wizard before you buy something.
It may also be useful to keep an eye on the auctions, what sells and what does not? Often the lots at the tradingpost ask a very high price for an item, while items priced below this price are not even selling at auctions. If you have an idea of what prices the items are selling at, you can use this information while negotiating a price with a seller at the trading post. If they are stubborn and insist on the overpriced price, buy it at the auctions instead. Or neomail the owner of an auction that just went unsold, perhaps they will give you a discount. Never just buy an item for the price people are asking, always to a little background searching first. You may end up saving yourself thousands or even millions of neopoints.
Earning the Neopoints for your Gallery
Yes, there has to be some hard work in getting the perfect gallery, and that is earning the neopoints to buy the items that need to go in there! But don't worry, there are lots of ways to make the neopoints you need with a little practice, determination and hard work.
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These tips will help you become well on the way to earning plenty of neopoints for your gallery.
Hard to find Items
There are lots of item that are seemingly impossible to find. Retired and very expensive items have this problem. However, do not give up trying to search for them. Here are some ways to help find them:
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The Layout
The layout makes your gallery look pretty and if you find a matching one that's great! Help making a layout can be found SunnyNeo's HTML Tutorial or CSS Codes page. But if you are not very html/css savvy you can also choose to use a custom layout made by a friend, or one of our own fabulous Premade Layouts. Gallery's using a premade SunnyNeo layout can ven win the gallery spotlight! You can see some examples: Winner #303, Winner #267 and Winner #300.
You are also allowed to alter the coding of our premade layouts to create your own, under the condition that you credit us for the coding. Gallery's with credit to SunnyNeo for the coding have also won the gallery spotlight, see for instance Winner #327 who wrote: "A big thanks goes to sunnyneo.com for coding help. The mentioned website also worked as a good inspiration source for this particular layout.". There are many such examples to be found among gallery spotlight winners.
When choosing or making a layout make sure that:
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If you match all of the pointers above your layout should be ready. You can always ask your friends, or people at the neoboards for advice and comments. Maybe they will hav some useful tips for you.
The Gallery Spotlight
With so many people on Neopets, there are bound to be A LOT of galleries out there. If you are trying to win the Gallery Spotlight, or just want your gallery to stand out from the rest, it is going to have to be unique. Here are three of the easiest ways to make your gallery stand out.
First off, you could choose something totally random that no-one else would have thought of, like you could have every one syllable item in there or something else to that effect.
Another way is to have a generic theme, but add a lot of items that link to that theme, but not directly. Say you did a Kau Themed gallery; you could add grass items, black and white items, hay items etc.
Lastly, you could just not have a theme and throw anything that catches your eye in there. A lot of people do this, but with everyone's unique tastes, yours is bound to be different.
The Gallery Spotlight is located here and it's where if you win it you can show off your obviously amazing gallery. Here are some tips to help you win the gallery spotlight:
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Your best bet would be to go through some previous gallery spotlight winners to see what they've done and how they've described their gallery to neopets upon entering. You will get an idea of what tnt is looking for in a winner. However, don't let this lead you too much, be original!
Now all you've got to do is wait and see whether your gallery will be announced as this week's gallery spotlight winner. Good luck!