I definitely do not believe that things are declining, but Real Life tends to pull people away. And some creative folks move to a different theme when their creations don't make them instant internet-heroes or millionaires. (I only have one of my designs that was 'for sale', and that was a cooperative project with someone wanted me to assist with). Jim had the Flip-It war game that was quite creative, then he started doing a mish-mash of Sci Fi models, then tried to do a dungeon crawl board game, then the items that drew your interest. Each time he set up a website for the project, a small expense, then at some point he didn't renew the website. And they were gone. It's a real shame.
I don't currently have time to go on a hunt for the old website addresses right now ... Real Life again. But if I had time, I would go through these blogs to find the websites, and see if they can be pulled up with Internet Archive.
PAPERMAU: Search results for bowen
Ninjatoes' papercraft weblog: Search results for bowen
Tektonten Papercraft: Search results for bowen
Those searches are somewhat incomplete, but they should give you a start