Two new tutorials to be studied

Hurray!  Cyclonesue's and Riccinumbers' eagerly awaited tutorials on meshing and mapping have been published!  I will be working away on both of them.  Just a pity I have to go out now and do some grocery shopping and housework or I get sulky kids ;P

Handy Hint or another D'oh! moment

Whew...  a few hours have zoomed by again.  Wanted to make a poster this time.  Rejigging the teener poster was easy, thanks to a quick refresh of Vanilla Sim's tutorial.  Then I had the great idea of twiddling with the frames.  I wanted a metal brushed one, so changed the pattern, looks fine, tried it in game.  D'oh!  The whole poster looks woozy as the pattern is plastered all over the poster.  Grrr... change back to original generic one.

Scrolling through all the possibilities of the project tab, ticking some more boxes.  Oh, I can add a thumb, that should be pretty.  Add the original pic as thumb.  Save.  Create package.  What the... 15 Mb pack??  Back.  Remove thumb, make itty bitty pic of the .dds used to make the pack. Save. Create package.  That's better - 950 something kb.  Can't have a poster as large as a house now, can we? :D

Alright, have a quick sneak preview of the poster - I hung a row of them in the Art Gallery ;)

So here's our handy hint of the day: when adding a thumbprint picture to a package for easy recognition, make sure it is a thumb and not a whole body slam.  It's the little things that count ;)

Hmmm... now let's see, what pictures can we make posters of next?

Next!

All three approved!  Seems like I've figured out how to do it now :D  On to the next one!  I had one on the shelf since christmas, which shows in the pattern ;)  It's one I translated from curtains my Mum made yonks ago.  My mother was an accomplished weaver and had several handlooms.  After she died we had to sell off the biggest ones (one was almost 4 square metres) but I still have one in the garage.  One day I hope to get enough room cleared there to set it up again and do some weaving myself.  That's one of my flaws - I know a bit of everything, but I never find the time to 'specialise'.  Batik, weaving, bobbin lace, silk painting, tie-dye, knitting, crochet, sewing - I can do it all.  What I need to practise it all is another house, really.  Shame you can't build a Sim house in real life ;)

Three patterns coming up (I hope)

I had to admit that the patterns I uploaded before didn't work anymore - so I threw in the towel and went browsing some more tutorials.  I found Sinastra's one, and what do you know!  It worked!  Three of the 'old' patterns have been reworked, screenshots added and - with crossed fingers - have been submitted.  Now we just have to wait to see what comes of it... and what you guys think of it too of course.  They're batik patterns I used to make say, about 30 odd years ago.  Very quick and easy way to brighten up dull run-of-the-mill t-shirts :D

I wonder if I can cross-reference to my Facebook photo album here for previews.  I can hardly dump them all in my screenshots.

Ooooh - what does this button do?

Usually, I'm the kind of person that reads the manual first and then tries to figure things out. Problem is, I don't seem to be able to track down proper manuals for all those 3D programs we need to make 'proper' stuff for TSR.  Recolouring is nice, but sometimes I would like to make things from scratch.  Frustrating, to say the least :P  I made a maxi-skirt  and it looks quite nice, but when the Sim runs, it looks like those 70's bellbottom flaired trousers (yes, I did wear them in that day and age and yes, that kind of custardy yellow - the batiks were used in t-shirts, mostly :D) so I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong there.

Patterns - another thing, I made a few, but I'm still not satisfied.  Redo from start that one... 

Another project were curtains.  The weird thing is that they look good in the download, but the moment you place them in a lot and want to save the pattern/recolour them, the pattern is gone and you have just a grey blob O.o  I noticed that with some stuff too that the moment it goes in your storage (when you move for example) it reverts to its original product.

All in all, lots to learn still :D  I'm starting now with a little 10-hour crash course on CS3.  Going to check the net for some weblearning too - I heard about AutoCAD, maybe I can try that ;)  Like my grandma always said:"You have to keep on learning your whole life long, otherwise your brain dies off!" ;)

I'm wondering...

why my latest additions aren't showing up in the 'featured' pod.  Or maybe it's something I need to click on my side of the fence?  Are viewers seeing all 5 or only 3 like me?  And why is that blasted pattern not working?  I must be doing something (very obvious) wrong, but what?  It's a day of questions today. :S

Biggest question of all - when is it finally going to be spring?  I'm getting fed up to the teeth of all this white and/or wet stuff.  Can't remember a winter being this cold, grey and stuffy for the life of me - and that's over half a century already :P

Trying to find my 'own label'

Like I said in my former post I need to find my own label, a way to showcase my work so it is somewhat easily recognisable.  As I just said to Sinastra in her blog, I also want to create a pattern library.  One, to keep track of all the gorgeous stuff I keep nabbing here and two, to keep track of the stuff I create myself in the meantime. Also to be able to check for unwanted (or unwillingly made) duplicates.

Suddenly I had a brainwave! Most probably I'm not the first to think of it, but still, it's a wave for me :D  I'm going to build me a museum cum gallery, where my Sims can go and admire all the art I gathered. Otherwise their houses get cluttered - and there's always an annoying chimney, door frame or wall shoving into the picture most of the time :P

*note to self* Ask Angela if I can use her Latis furniture to dress the gallery - and use it for my window dressing - should be just the ticket!

First lot in the pipeline...

Ha!  It is always satisfying when you see the tab 'pending' change into 'approved' :D  Two packages will arrive soon - one lot and one picture. 

The farm was also submitted to the 'official' S3 exchange, before I discovered TSR (didn't look back after that :D), so as far as I know there won't be any custom content in it.  If, by any chance you do notice CC though (can't remember anymore if I tweaked the farm in game after submitting it) please give a shout and I will gladly amend!  The picture is hanging in most of my Sims houses, it was one I made some time ago of youngest and our cat.  I really should make one of eldest daughter too :D

Now I have to work on my patterns - the packages are done, but they weren't approved before because of poor showcasing - can't blame TSR for that, I just have to get better at photographing in game and finding a kind of 'own label' - and getting inspriation from all the beautiful window dressing of you guys :D

Excuse me??

Umm...  I hope the person whose banner is pasted above my site is a bit understanding...  I 'bought' a banner space via the Kudos Shop, diy'ed something together for the time being, uploaded it and lo and behold!  Someone else's banner plops down instead! Very weird! :S

Now I have to go and comb the forums again to see where I can report this :P  *sigh*

I did it

I tipped out my piggybank, rummaged underneath the sofa cushions, checked the cat's basket and came up with the goods.  Made myself a subscriber as I saw too many cool things just out of reach.  Finding Katalina's abandoned elf dwelling finally tipped the scales :D  Now I can go wild and download all that's within reach, starting with Cyclonesue's junk stuff!  Wheeee! :D