OK Kiri, here we are. What I think we agreed so far and a few more comments:
1. We're interested in building some row shops, as per your preferences stated in the GoS Christmas in July (2020) thread and in response to my building Fromes Cheese Shop for you.
2. We both agreed that we like the sort of shops we saw in pictures from Ludlow (link to some source pictures). Ludlow's an old market town (there's a lovely market square) and is typical of this type of town in the west of England. It has some really quaint streets in the centre but isn't full-blown half timber as in Chester or York (though there are some half timber buildings here and there). It's a nice town, I've always liked it. I think I was channeling Ludlow when I started thinking about making Market Bannaby - which is a new hood project which, tbh, hasn't moved far past the planning stage. Maybe this will help me get started on the build.
I attach a lot file which is the sort of thing I use as a starting point when I build stuff like this. It's just the most rough outline - the stone floor tiles measure off the build area which will be chopped off when we shrink the lot. And I've put in the wall 'lugs' that will attach to the adjacent lot - measured to Fromes. We can change that, of course, especially at the back. I put four tiles of pavement at the front to give room for shop-front decor (for Fromes I mean) - this matches and will set, I'm afraid where the frontage must be if you want it consistent. Anyway, this is where I would start each time if I was building more than one shop.
I think the next question would be what sort of shops do we want to build? We could continue the comestibles theme and go for a butchers or fish shop maybe? Or maybe old-fashioned things like an Ironmonger or drapers (I love those old words that no-one uses these days)? Or perhaps the more conventional game-type thing like a toyshop or cafe? We could do a variety of course. What about you? What would you like?
So I made a Christmas in July present for Kiri over at Garden of Shadows - you can read about it here and the download on SFS is here. The shop is not finished yet and there is some more CC to come - you can read about it on my and Kiri's workshop threads over here. Once I have completed the CC I wanted to make, I'll upload an updated version of the lot to this thread. The pictures are here because they are linked to the GoS thread - also that cheesecutter, which didn't make it to the original present, is available at the SFS link too.
This is my entry for the SimPearls Wallpaper Makes the Room contest for July 2020.
The brief was to create two walls to a theme of a country kitchen. I'm never sure when people talk about decorating styles whether I miss something about that. For this I just thought about my grandmother's home when I was a child - miles out in the country. It was always colder there than it was at home in the city and everything was a bit worn but also clean and bright (because the air was considerably cleaner). I came across a picture with these lovely pastel painted planks which, I thought, got across the idea of that pretty well.
max_CKPastelPlanksWalls.rar (Size: 282.69 KB / Downloads: 949)
Swatch
I made two walls for the contest but there's also an extra wall in the rar file with just the planks going floor to ceiling which could be used as an outside wall. The interior walls, as is usual with walls I make, are designed to work with the ceilings in the game - so the crown board sits under the ceiling.
I've been doing a few of these contests and events lately and really enjoying them.
Here are two sets of exterior walls which I made a while back for a lot build I'm still working on called Lansbury House. The sets are designed to work together on the same build though, of course, you don't have to use them this way. Both sets are based on EAxis original textures.
The first set is based on a Life Stories wall called Vertic-all Siding in Winter White (lower floor in picture), while the second is based on the (I think) Base Game Scallop Wall Shingles also in White (upper floor).
The sets are quite simple really because what I wanted was a sense of a wooden frame for the build (as can be seen in the picture). I made for each version of the walls a wall with quoins (that is reinforcing for the corner of a building) - these match vertically as well as the walls matching horizontally so that you can make it look like the reinforcing quoin goes up the full height of the wall on a house. And then I also made a crown for the very top of a house wall. The wall variants are: base wall with crown; double-sided quoin (for fitting in one-space gaps); double-sided quoin with crown; left quoin; left quoin with crown; right quoin and right quoin with crown. That is seven variants for each wall. I have included with the Verticall set the original EAxis file because not everyone will have the Life Stories stuff. So there are eight files in that set (delete the base wall if you have the LS files). The Scallop Wall Shingles has seven files - all the variants - but I haven't included the original file because, as it's Base Game, everyone should have it anyway.
So I took part in Garden of Shadows' Daisy Chain 2020 event and this is what I said about that (my post is on page 2):
Eh well, when I signed up for this I told Shastakiss I'd been having a pretty troubling time recently what with the pandemic and everything so I wanted to sign up for the event because I wanted to cheer myself up with something creative and also get back in touch with the sims community because I've been away a while - things have been difficult at work too and I'm working at home atm (I hate it). Of course, Shasta was kind and took the pressure off and I was set - or so I thought. My prompt was Spring Forward, Fall Back and being a sim gardener (how many of us are there?), I was thinking about flowers and seasons and stuff. BUT THEN I actually got the virus. Not a pleasant experience I can tell you - I'M FINE and getting better, so please don't worry on my behalf. Anyway, I lost two weeks and got behind with work stuff and everything else and, well, I didn't have enough time for seasonal flowers. So I fell back on my good old reliable standby - making some walls - which I've done a lot, all things considered. I love messing around with colours and patterns and that cheered me up no end and I enjoyed doing something a little creative. I can whip walls up pretty quickly these days so I was able to get something done for my deadline and here they are. Hurrah!
For Spring Forward, I made 10 walls based on a crocus pattern I came across while thinking about flowers originally.
I decided to make the crocus pattern into a silhouette, added a crown and skirting board (from my, ahem, collection) and then also added a wainscot. There's an underlying textured colour layer and there are five colours: pink, green, blue, yellow and purple. There are two versions of each wall, one with the texture over the full wall with crown and skirting and one with the wainscot added. I picked the colours from pictures of lovely spring flowers I'd looked at when I did my research for the project. I didn't realise till I did that just how vibrant spring flowers are. I was originally thinking these would be lovely pastels but the colours are stronger and more cheerful than that.
For Fall Back, I made 10 more walls but this time based on a silhouette pattern of autumn leaves (sorry, being English I'll call it autumn not fall).
Again five walls with a crown and skirting and five more with an added wainscot. I found a picture of a really nice oak wainscot and have used that to construct the skirting board and crown. I'm quite pleased with that - I really wanted a lovely oak wooden frame for the autumn leaves texture and colours. The mood here is more dramatic and the colours are rich, taken from pictures of autumn coloured leaves: green, gold, brown, red and blue (I know blue is not a leaf colour even in autumn but I wanted to round the palette out).
The walls are found in wallpaper and cost $7. Like all my walls, the crown is placed on the wall so as to fit under the ceiling when viewed with ceilings and walls up. Swatches:
I made these recolours when I made my Goldenrosen Landhaus Alpine chalet. I wanted the bathrooms to colour-match the bedrooms they were attached to. There are also some matching walls and floors here.
These are recolours of the EAxis rug Sveje that came with the Ikea stuff pack (so you need that pack for these to be useable). I've always felt these make a great bathroom rug and now we can have a wider set making them more useful. I added a brown, a purple and an orange.
I created these chalet walls for use with my Goldenrosen Landhaus which I built for the Wanderlust competition at MTS. They were designed to evoke the sense of being in an Alpen lodge - warm golden brown tones and natural wood surfaces. I also used in the build some older lodge walls of mine. If you downloaded the Goldenrosen Landhaus and its CC bundle, you will get these walls in that set of packages but I thought I would also upload the walls here as a free-standing set.
Included are:
Chalet walls and floors - there are two wooden interior chalet walls made using a texture from High Resolution Textures. These are found in Paneling and cost $8.
and a lovely wooden chalet floor with a texture from The Foundary, found in Wooden Floors and costing $7. WARNING - this is a high resolution file and the file size is large.
There are three lodge walls - a wide-logged one called Log Cabin Siding and two narrower-logged walls called Clapboard Siding, one horizontally laid, the other vertical. These textures were made by me (quite a long time ago now too). These are in Siding and cost $8.
There is a simple brown recolour of the in-game Goth Aged Wood floor (see comparison picture) which was used for the ceilings. This is also in wooden floors and costs $8 (that was a mistake - it should be $6).
There are two rars here - one contains all the walls and floors EXCEPT the Chalet Wooden Floor - this was separated out because it's a huge file size because I didn't shrink the high resolution texture (it looks great). I might remake that, as a matter of fact, reducing the resolution.
When I built my Goldenrosen Landhaus for the Wanderlust content at MTS, I made some recolours of EAxis's Modern Tile GO! walls which were used in the bathrooms. These were made so I could colour-match the bedrooms and bathrooms.
They come in yellow, purple and brown and I also made an orange which was not used on the lot but I wanted that colour for the set. They are in Tiles and cost $1 just like the originals.
I also made a quick set of matching floor tiles for the walls following the model of those done by Rosebine. These were not used on the lot but I've uploaded them because I thought people might like them since Rosebine did such a good job extending the set and making those walls useful and more usable. They are also in yellow, purple, brown and orange to match the walls. There are two tile sizes - personally, I prefer the smaller tiles but you might like the larger ones. They are in Tiles and cost $5 just like Rosie's.
There are also some recolours of the Sveje Ikea rugs here in matching colours.
I was inspired by MogHughson's postal system mod (here) to upload my first CC to MTS back in the day - I eventually made nine sets of cards. The mod itself is quite old now but is still very much a goody and I'm still using it. It's a great little addition to gameplay. So I thought I'd upload all these files even though they're quite old now. Go over to Mog's thread to understand how to use the mod and download the needed base object for the card system. My files are below and then I've included, at the bottom of the page, pictures from the upload threads so you can see what you like and what you don't.
I made cards for:
Bereavement 4
Birthday 13
Christmas 22
Engagement 1
Friendship 6
Get Well Soon 1
Graduation 4
Retirement 4
Valentine 1
Wedding Anniversary 6
Wedding 12
Most of the files have self-explanatory names but the first two uploads I made were mixed collections consisting of some Christmas cards and other cards. If you have a look at the pictures, I've noted which zip/rar files belong to the collections.
So, these are various card sets for use with Moghughson's Postal System Mod with which your sims can bother their friends in your neighbourhood. Sims will receive a small positive boost to their friendship levels when they read the card. I claim no particular artistic talent for these - the images came off the net. I fiddled about a bit and there is some creative input on my part (it's fun, what can I say?) but let's not overstate things, eh?
Each card has its own verse but be warned: I'm English, I don't do sentimental so they're not squishy and sweet but tart.
You will need the postal system by MogHughson which you can find here. That thread also contains all information about how to use these cards. You can even make your own cards for yourself with different categories.
Christmas Cards - the later ones. The file is ChristmasCards2015
Friendship Cards
Graduation Cards
Retirement Cards
Wedding Anniversary Cards
Wedding Cards
This is the first collection - 3 Christmas (file is ChristmasCards - on the left), then 1 each of valentine, birthday, get well, and bereavement (the file for these is labelled 7 - on the right)
This is the second collection - 3 Christmas (file is ChristmasCards2 - on the left), then 1 engagement, and 3 bereavement - there are only two on the picture but there's a bonus one in there as well (the file for these is labelled 6 - on the right). I think I must have been having a lot of deaths in Little Carping at the time.
This lot was originally posted at MTS after it was made for the Wanderlust contest held in 2018. This was my third submission to that contest. This is what I said about it at the time:
"A Ski Chalet in Waldigrenze Valley...
So, the first time I ever went skiing about a million years ago in Italy as a teenager, I didn't know it then, but I stayed in a classic Alpen chalet. I discovered a number of other things on that trip including cappucinos, that U-shaped and hanging valleys were, in fact, a thing despite what I thought about them in Geography classes and that proper Italian pasta, cooked by Italians tastes divine just dressed with olive oil and salt and pepper. So, in memory of that trip and in tribute to all things European (because I'm apparently not going to be one much longer), I present das Goldenrosen Landhaus, my version of an Alpine ski chalet (this one based in Austria by the name). These buildings are usually made of stone and wood and have interiors which feature warm wood tones, fur rugs and roaring fires - which is what I was going for."
max_GoldenrosenLandhaus.zip (Size: 1.76 MB / Downloads: 835)
(more pictures below - scroll right down to bottom. CC is in rar here on Sims File Share - explanation below of all included (or not))
This is a hotel lot. There are six rentable colour-coded bedrooms with attached bathrooms, a lounge with a bar, a dining room and a sauna. The rooms are a mix of single, double and family. It makes an ideal base for a mountain getaway (with skiing - how I wish sims could ski (I know about Chris Hatch's mod - just wish EAxis had done it, a winter sports EP would've been great)). The lot was made in AGS in an empty neighbourhood, has been cleaned of any sim references and then treated with Chris Hatch's lot cleaner. The Sims2Pack file was saved without any CC - you will have to download the needed CC (see below). You can load the lot without the CC but you will get a very stripped down version (decorate it yourself!) and a very pretty birch tree garden - not what was intended but nice anyway. Despite what the pictures show, the lot has never been played - those pictures are from a test version (so it has been play-tested).
Note
I used the Mountain Fireplace in this lot. This is a BV fireplace which comes without a base (why EAxis?). To get round this problem, I built a piece of foundation underneath the bottom of the fireplace outside the lot (using the Lot Adjuster to do so). However, you might want to investigate this fix by Huge Lunatic at MTS and delete-and-replace the fireplace (deleting the foundation tile first) to get a base to generate. I didn't include this in the CC because it's a default/recolourable replacement mod.
BTW, the phone was moved but might reset when you place the lot. This is where it's meant to be.
Custom Content
There is quite a bit of CC used in the lot and a complete list follows. I packed the lot up without its CC but there is a link at the bottom of the page with a bundled rar file with all CC included to save you chasing round for it. All CC is included in the bundle except two items - Reyn's Open Underneath Deck Stairs and an OMSP (see below for links). If you don't have those items already, I'd advise you to go and get them since they are both a great enhancement to the game.
Content made by me
I made some CC for the lot as follows. These are included in the bundle but are also available here on this site (with some extras not used on this particular lot)
Chalet walls and floors - there are two wooden interior chalet walls made using a texture from High Resolution Textures. These are found in Paneling and cost $8.
and a lovely wooden chalet floor with a texture from The Foundary, found in wooden floors and costing $7.
There are three lodge walls - a wide-logged one called Log Cabin Siding used on the upper floors on the outside of the chalet and two narrower-logged walls, called Clapboard Siding, used on the sauna and the roof level, one horizontally laid, the other vertical. These textures were made by me (quite a long time ago now too). These are in Siding and cost $8.
There is a simple brown recolour of the in-game Goth Aged Wood floor (see comparison picture) which was used for the ceilings. This is also in wooden floors and costs $8 (that was a mistake - it should be $6).
Recolours of EAxis's Modern Tile GO! walls used in the bathrooms in yellow, purple and brown (there is also an orange version in the walls section of this site - it's not used here but I wanted that colour for the set). These were made so I could colour match the bedrooms and bathrooms. They are in Tiles and cost $1 just like the originals.
Recolours of the IKEA SVEJE Rug used in the bathrooms in purple and brown (again an extra orange recolour elsewhere on this site and done for the same reason). I've always liked using these rugs in bathrooms. The rug is in Decorative>Rugs and costs $19.
Custom Content from elsewhere Not included and not in bundle
Reyn's open underneath wooden deck stairs here and you also need Numenor'srecolourable stairs too so that these work. The stairs used though aren't recoloured - they're just the base colour.
One of Silent Lucidity's OMSPs (small one, no. 3) from here.
Neither of these things is absolutely essential. If you don't have them already, both are really useful additions to the game but if you don't install, the game will just default to the regular deck stairs and give you a couple of free-floating wall shelves. You will need to replace the stairs in that case. I didn't include them in the bundle since they are such common CC and many, many people already have them.
Not included in lot file but bundled - you can use the links to find all the files or use my all-in-one bundle file, linked below. 4ESF Bushes here
4ESF Outdoor6 Olive bush
4ESF Outdoor6 Shrub and dark recolour
Aspire set by ulmillehere
Aspire Ceiling Lamp med
Aspire Placemats made by ulmille plus recolour 2
Aspire Vase
Aspire Fireplace Wood
Around the Sims
ATS Magazines plus englishdeco recolour from the Beauty Salon set: here
From the Irish Pub Set: here
ATS Irish Pub - Bottle of beer 001
ATS Irish Pub - Decorative bottles 001 plus 'more' recolour
ATS Irish Pub - Decorative bottles 002
ATS Irish Pub - Glass of beer 001 plus 'more' recolour
ATS irish Pub - Hanging bottles 001 plus 'more' recolour
Skis From the Sports set: here
Skis plus yellow recolour
Beddings - taken from several places as follows. Some are rather old and, in a couple of cases, I have edited the textures to remove fuzzy areas and other small blemishes.
pjbedding Quilt 03 - I cannot find this one anywhere. I thought it was a fairly recently released file. If anyone knows who made it, please let me know. It's the yellow squared quilted bedspread
S2D Red Crazy Quilt (edited) - by Sims 2 Day. It's a very old file (where I have tidied up the texture a little). Wayback Machine shows the site but no pictures - seems to be on p.35 of the bedding archive. Sims2Day is on the Graveyard as far as I know but the Graveyard is currently down so I can't check.
Simcastic Green Velvet Bedspread (edited)
Site long gone: The bedspread was one of four which can be seen on page four on the site's image on the Wayback Machine the files are also available at the Graveyard though that is currently down.
Contempo Good Livin' chair by Bedwyr
Recolours in chestnut, custard, damson, herbgarden, maple and ocean here
Belle Maison Basic and Flower Circle Carpets by SweetAmberkins in Espresso, Forest, Midnight, Rouge, Royale, Tuscan http://modthesims.info/d/583633
Pine trees and Snowdrops by Bienchen at http://sim2me.de. You can't give the direct download page link to this site but all are under Downloads>Objects>Plants and then 'Seasons Plants'
Pinie, gross
Pinie, klein plus blau, dunkler and gruener recolours
Pinie, lang plus dunkler and gruener recolours
Schneegloeckchen
Original EA Sims Content
Decorative Plate "Mountain World" This object has been exclusively created for "Das offizielle die Sims 2 Magazin". www.Sims2Magazin.de - this was a downloadable freebie with BV
Link to bundle
I have packed all the CC up into a rar-file bundle which you can download in one for convenience. You can find it here on Sims File Share. This is not all the CC bundled together in one package file (sometimes understood as the meaning of 'bundled') but simply a rar file containing all the CC files used separately (so you can delete those you don't want).
Thanks should go to Gayars for creating and hosting the contest, plus the judges and other contestants - that was a lot of fun! Also to Numenor for AGS and Chris Hatch for the lot cleaner tool.
