portvale

If you are not yet aware of my baby, Portvale, go over and check it out Right. Now. If you are, you will also be aware of how addictive it has become. Anyway, since I'm such a terrible blogger and have not yet done a post about Portvale, I shall do so now.

Back in February, right after Jillie and I had become friends, I sent her a PM on her forum, ACE, with an incredibly brief outline of this town that had been built upon witchcraft, but was better known for its nightlife, that sounded like it would make a good RP location for the Sims 3. This PM was the beginning of Portvale, an RP forum which Jillie and I finally opened at the start of October, in time for Halloween.

Portvale is located in Conneticut, in between Salem, Massachusetts and New York, New York. It's surrounded by mountains, and has a river running through the middle of it, down to the sea. On one side of the river is the suburbs, the park, the school, the forest, and on the other side is the mall, nightclubs, etc.

It's been a success so far, which is fantastic. All of the different storylines and plots and characters are so much fun, and it's wonderful to see them all weaving together. Hopefully it'll continue to grow as more people discover it.

My only character so far is Natasha Bedford, a sim I created, then new instantly that I had to do something with her. Portvale was perfect, since I had her entire basic personality in my head when making her. Obviously parts have been modified, tweaked and developed for Portvale, but she's completely wonderful to play. I'm waiting until I have an instant love for another sim (a male one, this time), before creating a new Portvale character.

technicolour dreams

In my dream the other night, I posted on here twice. Which is strange, because I don't really update this a lot at all (in an attempt to save you all from spammed blog updates). I have lots of things that I've promised and have not really progressed that far with, so let's just ignore them.

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This is my first LBB entry. The assignment was to put our model on a white swing, with a solid background colour to match our model's underwear and to use accessories of a composite colour. I chose purple for my main colour and yellow for the accessories. I like how it turned out. I really wanted to use flowers, but the plait was an afterthought. It kind of reminds me of Rapunzel from Tangled.

I drew the swing myself. The rope was kind of difficult, but it came out well, I think. I won the round (squeee!!!), so it has to be pretty good!

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This is my second LBB assignment. We had to do a beach photo. I live pretty close to the beach, however sadly I'm not very fond of it, so instead I opted for sunbaking at a secret cove (I'm not much for sunbaking either, but oh well). I copied the swimsuit from one I found on Polyvore. Once I'd drawn the base, then clipped the pattern over the top, I added the frills from the original and shaded it.

My one big worry was that the background was too large compared to Delilah (my model). I really wanted to show the lighthouse and the ocean. I came in second this round, which I was very happy with, considering everyone else's entries. I love when the entries are posted, because eye candy is guaranteed!

LBB is fantastic. There are so many amazing contestants and the rounds are always fun and challenging.

I joined another contest called You Can "quote" Me On That. So much for my modelling break, haha... The idea of the competition is that you are given a quote, and must come up with an image inspired by that quote. This round our quote was:

"If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower." ~ Samuel Smiles

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I haven't done ingame shots for a while, so this was interesting. I know that flowers are sort of cliché, BUT IN MY DEFENSE, they went with the quote and I tried to give it a whimsical type of twist. For an ingame shot it has a lot of editing. My concept was that you need to open your mind/imagination and happiness will follow. The poppy represents imagination and dreams. It is the symbol of the Greek god Morpheus, the god of dreams (and the namesake of morphine...yum). This concept came about, obviously, because poppies are used to make opium which is used to make heroin.

I know too much about poppies and Greek gods.

gift with purchase

Hey guys, it's my birthday today! Is that pathetic, that I'm sitting at home on my computer on my birthday? I think it probably is, but I'm not big on parties or anything at the moment. My parents are bringing KFC and a cake home tonight, and then we're going out for lunch on the weekend. I'm getting a new computer for my birthday because my current one is slow. It takes me 20 minutes to start up the sims, and then sitting around for an hour waiting for CAS to load... I don't really WANT a new computer (they're so freaking expensive), but I do need one.

I also got some perfume. It was a limited edition of 'G of the Sea' from the Harajuku Lovers collection. It's a mermaid! I think that I might have mentioned by obsession with mermaids before. And I also got a bento box makeup thing which was a 'gift with purchase'. I don't wear makeup much, but it's so cute, I'll have to try it. Wait a minute, I'll take a photo...

...or two. I got other things as well, but I don't want to be boring!

Chouxie asked me to do a clothing tutorial, which I shall do within the next few days. I'm kind of addicted to watching movies today and tomorrow I'm going to see the Dalai Lama speak (cool, right?). I'll try and get a photo taken today though so I don't have to go back into my game later.

Also, I mentioned in my last post that I'd like to start a berry legacy. I changed my mind to making it a normal legacy, and that should start once I have my new computer set up.

Hope you're doing well!

the light is going out

I have some...stuff going on at the moment. To be truthful, I'm probably in one of the worst periods of my life, and I'm not saying that to be dramatic or anything, but I need people to understand that I'm not just deciding that I'm too busy and dropping everything to live a happy, dandy life.

So, the point is I dropped my competitions, I'm getting out of all of my online commitments because I cannot handle anyone putting pressure on me at the moment.

I'm not leaving though. Oh no. I am going to live a life of blissful self-mediated simming. I want to start a berry legacy when Generations comes out, and photoshop pics of my heirs and stuff. I'm already working on the neighbourhood. Here is a picture of the bedroom of the house I'm decorating at the moment (it's the only finished room so far):



I'm going to take my time, do some yoga, not rush. Do something without the pressure to win or please people, but because I love it and because it's a new world.

I don't know how well I'm explaining this, but I hope it makes sense. I might go back to modelling next year or when things aren't so tense.

Love! <3

high flying adored

This will not go at the top of my list of 'edits I'm satisfied with'. It bothers me how careless I am and I'm scared of having reached the stage of not being able to improve. I can't wait to do my entry for The Gentlemen's Club. I hope to push my boundaries and really challenge myself.

At the same time, it's really sad that Little Black Bra had to finish prematurely. It was lots of fun and the people where really great (although most of them dropped out - why do people do that?).

I ended up practically redrawing the underwear. It was originally dark blue with white polka dots because I was going to do a sailor picture, but changed my mind. Also all clothes seem to mesh themselves to the sim's skin which looks really strange, so I got rid of that too. I like how the hair came out. It's taking less and less time to draw the more I practise.

I got my learner's license the other day, yay! I should have gotten it a year ago, but I'm lazy. I've gone driving twice and have had 1 minor accident (I expected the steering wheel to be a lot more sensitive...) on my first go. I'm hoping that I can go out some more this week.

My current song obsession:

this is the party

This is where it's all at, guys. My new blog. Now that it's here, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I mean, do I start posting every single edit that I've ever created?

Okay, I've made up my mind in the space between this paragraph and the last. I'll introduce myself. And then my header model, who is brand new and needs an introduction to the world.

Hai, this is Miss Harlequin here (which I assume that you already knew since this is my blog). There's an About section which gives you a quick briefing of About Me.

On a more personal note, I'm currently wearing my new pajama pants which have little peacocks on them. I really love peacocks. It was strange, because I saw the pajama window display, and as I was walking over to it I was thinking, "You know what would be really cool? Peacock pajamas." And then 2 minutes later, I realized that one of the pants had little peacocks on them.

I think I'm kind of psychic or something. I have many similar stories.

Like the time I was walking home from school thinking about mermaids and all the different parts of my childhood which nurtured my love for mermaids, and when I reached the door step, the pool salt was there (which the pool guy delivered - we don't leave pool salt on our doorstep) and the brand was 'Mermaid'.

Persephone is a new model who I created for The Gentleman's Club. She's as pretty as a picture, definitely my prettiest Sims 3 model, which makes sense given she's a goddess.


I didn't get to fully give her back story in her application since I was mainly focusing on introducing her as a character. Basically what has happened is that over time all pagan gods have been losing their power due to lack of belief, sacrifices, etc. Hades has grown so weak as to not have the power to keep his wife in the, now deserted, underworld any longer. Not that I think Seph is abandoning Hades because she hates or resents him since later myths do suggest she did live up to her title of Queen of the Underworld. Anywhoos, Persephone leaves the underworld to experience life as a 'human'. She's still immortal and she still has powers, they're just not as...much.

Andandand, I just want to take this moment to point out that I know that the Persephone myth is very popular. I promise that I'm not someone who has just read a version of the story online and ran with it. I love learning about different versions of the story, different details, origins, perspectives. I have literally put hours upon weeks of research into this myth. Not because I'm particularly thorough though. I'm just a bit obsessed, haha. Also I'm getting an A in Ancient History which says so much.