【Gallery Spotlight Guide】
*Disclaimer: There is absolutely no guarantee that following this guide will win you the spotlight, but I'm trying to help you substantially increase your chances!*
1. Choosing A Theme
This is arguably the most important step to this whole guide! While choosing your theme, there are a few things that you have to consider:
- Is my theme unique?
If your theme is "been there, done that" your chances of winning are reduced dramatically. You honestly can almost say that if someone has ever won with the theme that you have in mind, you almost have no chances of winning. Originality is one of the biggest things that they look for when it comes to choosing a winner.
- Do I have the funds for a gallery?
Galleries are the most expensive hobby on neopets by far. You have to realize that increasing your gallery size alone can cost you millions upon millions alone and that's before the first item goes in. You can find a cost calculator (you need an account to see links). After you reach a desirable size, you still have the potential of spending millions more... just keep that in mind! Spending more doesn't necessarily mean you have a better chance of winning, though, and I'll explain that later on!
- Is this something I'm passionate about?
I feel like you can tell the enthusiastic collectors apart from those who are just after a trophy, and this does hold some significance. If you seem bored by the idea, I would strongly suggest against starting a collection you're not interested in. Some items you may have a hard time getting your investment back out of when you choose to re-sell and it's lots of work and time to empty a gallery! Plus, you want collecting to be a fun experience! 
2. Adding Items
I'm going to pick a theme to use just for example's sake, but the steps I'll take will remain the same for any theme. I'll choose the theme: shenkuu. (I would not necessarily recommend doing this theme because I know of a few spotlights that have been taken by this theme).
A very valuable resource that can save you tons of time is (you need an account to see links). Click the link which will take you to this screen:
1 - Name Box
This is the most important part of this form and it allows you to really get creative in growing your gallery!
2 - Sort By
I love this and it makes it much easier to stay within a budget when shopping for an item. I would recommend setting it to Sort By: Price and Display: 100.
3 - Category
This is very important when you're starting to nail down some more unique items and we will go over this a little bit later!
The first thing I would do is very straight forward: search shenkuu in the search box.
This will pull up almost every item that exists with "shenkuu" in the name. You can start from the cheapest items and work you way up until you've purchased your fill of items from this screen. It is proven that mixing neocash items with neopoint items does increase your chances!
This is the easiest step of filling up a gallery and this alone has the potential to fill your gallery quite a bit. But it was covered in the Editorial that you need to go a step further if you want to be considered for gallery spotlight, so here are some additional recommendations that I have to make yours really stick out:
- Get creative with your searches!
Now you need to brainstorm and get creative. What other items are related to shenkuu? For example you could search: sushi.
This alone brings up many more items to add that are relevant to your theme! You can continue the momentum with things like: lantern, noodles, blossom, etc. You really have unlimited things to choose from dependent on your theme and the more creative you get, the more likely you'll be chosen for gallery spotlight!
- Be organized!
You may not realize it, but the way you have your gallery organized can impact your chance of winning! If you just toss all of your items in there, you have less of a chance than if you rank your items in some way. In your gallery, select "Rank All Items" to assign each item a number. It will then rank the items from low to high. You can rank by color, group, function, really anything that you like!
- Use a layout!!
This is so important, especially as competition for spotlight has gotten tougher. TNT likes to see layouts that make sense with your theme and it's even better if they are user-made! There are many people on clraik that code gallery layouts, myself included, that you can buy and claim as your own!
Coming back to the shop category, this is something you can do when you're looking for the last few items of your gallery. Basically what you can do is pick a shop category that is relevant to your theme and literally browse every page and see if you find anything interesting! Sometimes an item that would fit into your gallery doesn't have a related name.
Here's a quick example! You can go through every category if you really have the time to do so. 
3. Extra Step ***
Now this isn't something that necessarily applies to every theme, but this is something you can do for certain themes! For example, if you are doing a "faerie" theme, you can go through and search:
- Aethia
- Fyora
- Jhuidah
- Kari
- Mira
- Taelia
- Illusen
And so forth! This can add hundreds more items to your gallery that you wouldn't necessarily expect because they don't have the word "faerie" in the name or description all of the time! Same goes for adding neopet characters, villains, etc. to go that extra step in item hunting.
4. Closing
So, I hope my guide has helped you out a little bit! Please feel free to PM me for additional questions and if you ever need help tracking down misc. items for your theme! Who knows, you may be the next gallery spotlight winner!
Happy Collecting! <3
Originally Posted by nitrous-oxide
Posting Permissions
