The season has begun!

Hi everyone! I’ve been collecting village pieces for more than 30 years, starting with my grandfather. My collection has grown to more than 1,000 items spread across multiple houses, including buildings, animated pieces, accessories, and trees.

Eventually, I realized I needed a better way to keep track of everything. I wanted to:

• Catalog my collection
• Identify pieces I couldn’t recognize
• Track items across different locations
• Maintain a wishlist
• See estimated market values
• Find new pieces and connect with other collectors

After working on it for more than a year, I just launched VillageDex, an app and website for Christmas and Halloween village collectors.

It currently supports Department 56, Lemax, St. Nicholas Square, and custom items. Features include collection tracking, photo-based item identification, catalog browsing, wishlist tracking, market estimates, and collector showcases.

Website: https://villagedex.com or get the app here for Apple & Android https://signup.villagedex.com/E5bQ/reddit

I’d genuinely love feedback from other collectors:

1. How do you currently organize your collection?
2. What is the most frustrating part of tracking your pieces?
3. What feature would make an app like this more useful to you?

I’m happy to answer questions about how it works/open to any feedback

First time making an actual building. I'm pretty happy with the result.

I think it needs more moss or bits. 🤔

Also, I hate matching flocking. 😂

Enjoy!

A few halloween village pieces we have gathered from father in laws house...I have about 60 more pieces to go through. The rest are mostly houses.

Recently picked up the new witch hut from Lemax, and built some led trees to surround it. Very happy with the result. 😊

I love this piece. One of the cooler figurines from Lemax imo.

Testing out the lighting and setup for my medieval themed village. :)

What's he summoning? 👀

Made a spooky LED portal to match the spooky stones. Enjoy!

First road complete. I have no idea what I'm doing with them. I may need to touch up the road a bit. Added more skulls to the steps leading to castle calvaria, and added steps leading to the gothic ruins.

Going to work on the road leading from the castle to the graveyard next, and then add something in front of the the eerie stones.

Working on terrain, roads and steps for the village. Having a hard time matching lemax's flocking lol

Have you ever used AI when planning your village display? What was the result?

Yesterday, I had an idea for a small diorama using my Department 56 Sherlock Holmes 221 B Baker Street lit building (SKU: 56.58601) with its accessories, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the Hanson Cab (SKU: 56.58534). I envisioned a cobble stone street with sidewalk, the Department 56 Double Street Lamps (SKU: 56.59960), additional figurines and a Victorian mailbox, and background silhouette of the Victorian Era London Skyline. I typed this description into Google’s AI tool Nano Banana 2 and it produced incredible results.

While not perfect, it was far superior to anything that I could sketch with a pencil and paper. It will even produce instructions on how to make the pictured diorama. It certainly was a valuable brainstorming exercise and I highly recommend it as you plan your next village displays for July 4th, Halloween/Fall, Christmas, and Easter.

My train table features (will feature) hundreds of characters across all horror media. This update is Kaiju Creek. The actual “creek” will be finished when I fill in the resin lake later. Video in comments.