Beacon Falls: Carmichael Family

The Carmichael family is my second addition to the Beacon Falls project (which, btw, is coming along swimmingly). If you like playing scheming Sims or soap opera plot lines, then this one is for you!

Willow Carmichael

Willow owes her fine level of living to her calculating mind and wiley manipulation ploys. Having grown up in a low to middle class family, Willow quickly discovered she had a natural finesse for deceiving people and getting what she wanted. Unable to afford a college education, she took a maid position after graduating high school and deftly swindled her employer out of a significant sum of money. Since then Willow has continued her "love 'em and leave 'em" scheme, lining her pockets with cash and leaving a trail of broken - and flat broke - hearts behind her.

Again, if you'd like a complete copy of Willow in all her ruthless glory, I would suggest getting a copy of Beacon Falls when it is available. If you'd rather just her individual packaged Sim file (no custom content) and personalized information files containing all personality traits, skills, etc. to recreate her yourself as you see fit, PM me with your email address and I'll happily send her your way (but remember, you've been forewarned as to her nature :P).

Flamingo Bay Living Collection

I'm back to creating some new recolours. I had one more theme in mind for Holy Simoly's fabulous Bijoux lounge set - a super cute and tropical print of grazing pink flamingos on a bright and cheery yellow background. I've paired this print with a dark brown wicker colour for a rather dramatic contrast and am quite happy with how it's turned out - hopefully others will agree. :)

Next up on my list I'm going to try and finally finish the two bathroom sets I started ages ago. I'm actually scrapping pretty much everything I did on them and am going to start from the ground up with new meshes and hopefully new inspiration. We'll see how that goes. ;)

Beacon Falls: Singh Family

The Singhs are the first family I've contributed to Beacon Falls. Truth be told, they are in fact a broken family with a sad and unique story:

Mekala & Carmina Singh

Mekala Singh fled her homeland after her husband made a betrothal agreement promising their daughter, Carmina, to the son of one of the local maffia members in lieu of the protection money they could not pay on their business. Mekala ran as far as fast as she could, hiding Carmina and herself in dingy hovels and working any job she could find that required no skill and no background. Never allowing herself to rest for the sake of her daughter's safety, the pair moved sparatically, never staying in the same place for too long. Newly arrived in Beacon Falls, Mekala finds herself concerned that their nomadic lifestyle is having an ill affect on Carmina and she hopes they can finally stop running, settle down and grow some roots here. Despite this dream, Mekala lives in silent terror that one day her husband will track her down and take their daughter back to her planned betrothal.

Tamal Singh

Tamal Singh is on the hunt for his errant wife and daughter, who fled their homeland after he was forced to betroth his daughter to a local maffia member's son. His wife's betrayal cost them their business and put a price on all of their heads. Having lost everything he once was proud of and held dear has left a hollowness in him, a hollowness that Tamal fears. He believes he is getting close to finding his missing family but no longer knows what he should - or will - do when he does.

If you'd like a copy of the Singhs, I would first and foremost recommend checking out Beacon Falls but if you'd rather just the family, I'm happy to provide their individual packaged Sim files (no custom content included) and personalized information files containing all personality traits, skills, etc. that you will need to recreate them as I envision them or just get you started. Drop me a PM if you're interested.

Beacon Falls

I've been a bit quiet on the creation front since the weekend. Part of that is due to Midsummer celebrations but in part it's also due to a new project I've gotten involved in: a new collaborative neighbourhood creation called Beacon Falls.

You may have heard of Maple Valley over the course of last year. It was an amazing project where many forum-goers banded together to create a pre-made neighbourhood similar to Plesantview, Strangetown or Veronaville by Maxis that came with pre-made houses, stores and families with backstories, etc. In fact, Maple Valley became the inspiration for several other collab neighbourhood projects (which you can find in the Lots & Challenges forum) and now Lechapeau has stirred up interest again. :)

If you're at all interested in joining the project, which I highly recommend, you can still get involved. You can find the forum thread here: Beacon Falls, although I'll warn you that there is already quite a lot of writing and posts continue to pile up quickly throughout the days even now (we're a very active, chatty bunch). Beacon Falls comes from a town of the same name in Connecticut, USA and as the name suggests, the base neighbourhood resides on the coast with a quaint old lighthouse (Bluewater template map). There is a local university with campus and a downtown/shopping district (I'll admit, I'm not entirely sure which one we decided to go with here, I think we're still testing things out).

We've had several people making houses, starting with some cookie cutter townhouse types and others have made some unique houses for specific Sims and there are some community locales but more of this type are definitely required. Custom families are starting to appear and we're currently submitting custom Townies, so no worries if you're sick of Ben Long showing up with the welcome wagon. :)

Right now I personally am creating some custom families with backstories and will more than likely submit some houses. However, seeing as I don't usually consider myself the Sim-creator type and I've had a massive creativity jolt for backstories, that's what I'm focusing on at the moment. I'll probably post these families and their stories here to read in my blog and if people find them interesting enough to want a copy, I'll happily email them since TSR only accepts celebrity Sims.

Fruit Pies & Piazza Terracotta

Mmmm... Pie... *drools*

Who doesn't love pie? Warm, sticky sweet and baked with loving care. I used to spend summer days baking fruit pies with my granny (apple was always my favourite ;) ) - but now thanks to Windkeeper, your Sims don't even need to do the baking!

Using Windkeeper's cool new decorative fake baked goods, you can now add apple, blueberry and peach fruit pies alongside the default cherry version. Individual slice versions are also included.

Piazza Terracotta

Also, as promised, I've made a second living set using Holy Simoly's fabulous Bijoux lounge meshes. This version features a unique willow green wicker and earthy browns and terracotta red cushions. I think it looks fabulous inside and out - a nice twist to terrace and patio furniture, if you ask me.

Beta Testing

Well what do you know, I made the cut for the beta testing team. :D

Guess my previous tech support and testing experience in software development is going to come in handy again. Think I'll spend the day tuning up my clean installation in preparation.

I promise I'll get the terracotta version of my piazza lounge done very soon, though. And I was thinking of making a little Swedish Sm�land summer house for Midsummer, which is technically today but since we'll be celebrating on the weekend perhaps it won't be quite that late. :D

Piazza Sunshine Living

I long for a cozy sunroom or terrace to enjoy the summer weather. Alas, all I have is a cramped balcony. So in order to enjoy the pleasures of a relaxing sunroom, I'm forced to live vicariously through my Sims.

I also fell in love with JSF's Park Lane Palms wallpaper. It strikes me as the perfect sunroom wall treatment - bright, sunny and with relaxing palms - I can almost hear their leaves rustling softly in the warm summer breeze. I wanted to make a nice and cozy lounge set to compliment this beautiful wallpaper and so I give you the Piazza Sunshine lounge collection. :)

This set (includes sofa, loveseat, arm chair, ottoman & coffee table) should be available for download late this week - I expect there's still quite a bit of catching up to be done behind-the-scenes after the site went down for so long.

Addiction, Summer Theme & New Set

Man, 72 hours without TSR and I now fully realize just how addicted I am to this site; moreso that I'm now on summer vacation. Anyway, on to the less obvious...

Summer Theme - Hawaiian Beach Party!
Some of you have poked at me over the fact that I haven't posted my own custom banner. Should be easy, right? Wrong. You have to understand, nothing about me is easy. Period.

Obsessions, however, are another thing completely and after taking the preview photos of my men's crop circle necklace series, I totally geeked out over the summery/Hawaiian euphoria. Finally inspired, I decided to do a whole seasonal theme branding theme. So you can all stop poking now and instead go check out my new banner and new avatar. I even changed my blog colour scheme to orange, which I realize is perhaps a tad damaging to the eyes but living up here in Sweden with our short summers of ill-contempt weather, you have to take any grain of heat and warmth you can get.

New Set - Purple Aquatica Bedroom
My first room set! This is something of a significant accomplishment for me, as I find room sets difficult to visualize and even more so to complete - I have several started that have yet to see the light of day.

However, I realized after making my purple spotted fish rug recolour that Maxis didn't make a purple version of the underwater bedroom set that shipped with FFS. How disturbing - surely somewhere in the 'great blue' of the ocean a world of lovely violets also exists? Anyway, getting to the point of the fact, I made an entire bedroom set just to match my lonely little rug (now who's disturbed? :P ).

Crop Circle Necklaces

I know, the name is bizarre but these new necklaces are very stylish and work with everyday or formal wear. In fact, I think they're perfect with the Hawaiian outfits that came with FFS for the perfect beach bum look. ;P Each pendant is a combination of silver and gold and again hang on a black leather thong.

And because I started to feel like the ladies were being left out, I made a matching set for them. This collection includes more flowery designs but equally flexible and stylish.

These should come out around Friday, June 16'06 and I promise, I'll move on to something else for a while and give the accessories a rest for a little variety again. :D

Necklace Craze

So I finished my Nordic necklaces for men last night and was on such an accessory rush that I went poking around online for more inspiration. That, coupled with the shocking discovery that there are no additional guy necklaces beyond those Dr. Pixel made himself when he published his male necklace mesh, made me realize guys are in desperate need of more necklaces.

Long story short, I found some really cool dogtag necklaces that I decided to make my own versions of - I'm calling them 'dogtag motto' necklaces and there are again 3 in total, including the mottos LOVE, SEXY and DARE. So far they have already proven to be super fun to use. :)

BTW: They are also super shiny in-game - very eye-catching. I expect they will go live around this Wednesday or Thursday, June 14/15'06.