#AG CYO

[doll-collecting-aerialist]

This week’s school spirit prompt is cultural traditions!! Look at how beautiful these girls are!!

[oddballsducks]

I’m Worried About the American Girl Create Your Own Generator

I haven’t gotten an AG CYO yet because they’re so expensive and I haven’t wanted a particular doll that I designed enough to justify the price, but now I finally have a doll in mind I really want. She would have:

* The lightest skin tone (pale, ex: Blaire)

* Josefina Face Mold

* Light blue eyes (ex: TM 88)

* Freckles (Aren’t CYOs now using the new freckle pattern, ex: Evette? I want the new freckle pattern)

* Natural Short Hair (the same haircut as TM 58)

* Red Color Hair

The problem is that the CYO seems to have removed a lot of options, as if certain skin color/face mold combinations and certain hair color/hair cut combinations are out of stock. But usually when an option is out of stock, it will still be present and there will be a notice telling you when it will be back in stock and ready to be made and shipped.

On my CYO generator, many options are just not available anymore. I don’t see ANY hair colors that still have the Natural Short Hair option available. Have they retired it? I hope not! I can’t get the lightest skin tone with the Josefina mold, or the Sonali mold, or the Addy mold! The blue eyes don’t seem to be available, either, because they’re not showing up as an option.

I’m worried that American Girl getting rid of the CYO generator, because the only reason I can think of why only select combinations are left is because they’re running out of stock and not replacing them.

Now, I really hope I’m wrong and that ALL combinations will be stocked and available again soon.

The other option is that maybe they’re planning to completely overhaul/reboot the CYO generator? I don’t know. If they do, I hope they don’t get rid of the Natural Short hair. I love my TM 58 and I’d love to have her wig in other colors. It’s also an important option for representation purposes.

I want to know if anybody else is having these problems with the generator?

What do you think is happening?

[futuristicsaladparadise]

This is Emily.

Emily is excited because she was promised a new friend. Who can it be? The box is really big, bigger than Emily's old one.

"She's one of a kind, just like me!"

"Hello, friend! I'm Heidi!"

The finger rings swivel, which is nice. It makes the game more poseable.

The little button has a clip for putting on a doll's lapel.

The purple bracelet matches the shirt for Julie's school outfit really well.

And the bag fits over doll shoulders. It also holds everything that comes with the accessories set. (The glasses were separate.)

So far, the most frustrating part of the whole thing is the hairband. It keeps trying to fly off and I'm afraid it's going to end up jumping into my trash can if someone bumps the doll wearing it.

Heidi and Emily are already planning their first adventure together.

*Heidi may not end up being the new girl's permanent name.

[agfanforever]

Visited home and got to see my doll collection for the first time in over 2 years. Didn’t have much time to take pictures but I absolutely had to show off my little Lottie in her new dress. It was so nice seeing my dolls again and I really hope I’ll get to see them again soon!

[gluevah]

I got a super exciting package today! Since I got into American Girl, I've wanted to design a Create Your Own doll to look like me when I was a kid. Growing up I always wanted an American Girl doll, but they were expensive and my parents absolutely refused to spend that kind of money on a doll. Being an adult with adult money means being able to grant your childhood self that one big unfulfilled wish, so I started a small collection and today my CYO arrived!

Seeing the box with my name on it was so exciting, and made me feel nostalgic for some reason. The box is a really nice, sturdy box with a ribbon tie. Definitely going to store this one in the closet for safekeeping!

For my lookalike, I chose the Josefina mold with the lightest skin tone, freckles, and blue eyes. I chose long, straight, brown hair. I wish bangs were an option, because I always had bangs as a kid. I chose pigtails as the style she came in, but I ended up re-doing them myself because they were kind of messy right out of the box.

I picked the "unicorns and mermaids" outfit specifically because of the shoes, they are SO cute and I want them for myself. I chose the "win the weekend" accessory set because the cat ear headphones are adorable. I also picked glasses, because even though I didn't have them as a kid, I do now and she looks so cute with glasses; and pierced ears, because I did have piercings when I was younger, but they're all closed up now.

Her backpack is really cute, it came with a little cellphone, a lollipop, and a cup of Boba tea. Her glasses came with a soft case, which is in her bag also. There's a closeup of her freckles, she's my first freckled doll!

When I ordered her, I also ordered some outfits for her. Here are two of them! The blue outfit is the December birthstone outfit, and the pink one is the October birthstone outfit. They're both super pretty, and look so nice on her!

I have no idea what to name her. It feels weird naming her after myself, but with her being a mini-me that would make the most sense.

[dorkydollco]

🦋💙

[dolphelecat]

Meet Nadine! I can't believe I did this, but I ordered a Create Your Own Doll. She is so cute!! I bet you'll never guess what her favorite color is.

[enevera]

ppl are so. stupid. please look anything up

[wigs-and-wonder]

I know it's been a moment since I've posted anything, but I wanted to wait to show off last month's outfit and this one together, since they somewhat share a theme/inspiration.

Jason and Lee Turnley are die-hard theatre kids, but while Jason is most at home on stage, Lee is a stagecrew girl all the way, and I wanted to make both of them a theatre outfit that wasn't just another costume for Jason (who will be getting plenty and already has his Robin Hood one).

So, with that, I made him a rehearsal/practice outfit for his stage combat classes he's just starting to take: black pants, purple t-shirt, red-and-blue kneepads and fingerless gloves (hat is from his meet outfit, the sword is a hair accessory purchased at a Ren Faire for this exact purpose. As for the bonus pic with Umbreon, I made the gloves first because I was making up the pattern myself and wanted to give myself time to try, fail, and try again, and when I put them on with his meet outfit, I just got pokemon trainer vibes and couldn't resist, since umbreon was about the right scale.

Lee, meanwhile, had to get a set of crew blacks—black pants and long-sleeve shirt, and I decided to make her fingerless gloves a part of the sleeve, rather than the separate pieces I'd initially thought. I also wanted to crochet her a black beanie, and that took the most stop-restart tires, since I was modifying the pattern as I went due to using a different yarn and hook size than the original. Fortunately, it (just) fits under her head set (from the Our generation Film BTS outfit, along with her handy waist-apron with all her backstage tools!

Wether onstage or backstage, there's no doubt the Turnleys are best at home in the theatre, and now their ready to take the (back/)stage!

[thelightwillbreakthrough]

like i don’t even LIKE the marie-grace mold but having kavi sharma be a theater kid from new jersey, with a fun alternative wardrobe, who has adhd is SO personal to me that it’s like. if i don’t get her then what are we doing here

[annies-dollies]

I did a review and comparison of a few Kit items, comparing some of the new and the old, if i have both to compare, that is.

[doll-collecting-aerialist]

Updated AG iceberg :)

[lostandbackagain]

someone sell me the dark red curly create-your-own wig before I cry please please please please please

[futuristicsaladparadise]

First experiment with the print from Kirsten’s school dress.

The pattern had an underdress and I like the way the red from the roses matches the overdress. The fabric had a Swedish maypole pattern.

[pyreofsunflowers]

How to make the Sims 3 look its best in 2022

so simming is a long time pastime of mine, and I've - in my humble opinion - perfected the look of the game without turning it into a yassed out modeling agency. (if you've ever looked for cc you know what I'm talking about) so in this first of probably many posts - here is a complete list of all my graphics mods!

Firstly, though, I should note that I have a very strong pc with a very strong graphics card. Please please please don't overload your computer, and explore options that will work best with your specs. What looks best for me might not look best for you.

Ahem, with that out of the way let's start with my default graphic settings.

This keeps my game looking beautiful while running smoothly (hence the low reflection and edge smoothing)

Now let's get into the mods!

Lighting and Environment

Burnt Waffles' Moonrise Kingdom Lighting - Self explanatory, textures for the skybox, weather overlays, and general lighting. Make sure you pick the water that matches your world!

Simsi45's Reworked and Improved EA Lights - tones down the brightness of some lights, fixes directional lighting for covered lamps, light colors made more consistent, and other such fixes.

dDefinder's Outdoor Lighting Tweaks - removes that nasty blue hue at nighttime, adds more dynamic shadows, adds new weather types and can make nighttime darker!

Neim's Sims Blog's Default replacements for Garden Bushes and Orchard Trees - Replaces the textures for plants like tomato vines, apple trees, and onion plants - creating a much more lush looking garden.

Aminovas' Plant Retextures - softens the bright, garish colors of EA plants to be more appealing. In two parts, and available as non-defaults.

CAS + Create-a-Pet

Kurasoberina's Primer Skin + Buhudain's You are Real - my skin mod and a default replacement pack with upped realism. The skin was designed to be used with You are Real, just a heads up.

I don't use any nudey mods out of personal preference - but I hear good things about Cmar's and Geck.o's work. Here is a link to a bunch of nsfw sims stuff, if that's what your into. I also don't really use sliders outside of the hat slider, a glasses slider and a height and posture slider. this is again out of personal presence, as I am generally making an entire neighborhood's worth of sims at a time and don't have the energy to be nitpicky with sliders on every single sim. That being said, OneEuroMutt complied a really nice list of CAS sliders AND a list of animal sliders if your interested in that.

Bloom's Sexy Feet and Cyo's Cute feet for children - realistic foot retexture, the op is long gone so this is a forum post. May not work unless sim detail is set to high!

Shady's Loney Eyes - subtle eye retextures available as both a contact and a default replacement. I'm currently not using any eyelash retextures - mostly because I haven't found any that work. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

MaryJane's, Firefox's, AND Agnelid's Hair Replacements - replaces defualt hair with much better looking CC from other creator's - I mix and match between the three. Note that these are far from complete, and I still work with pleanty of EA hair.

I like teh Sims CAS overhaul - less shine, and hides rather than deletes mostly unused items (i always have this weird paranoia that deleting them form CAS will delete them in gameplay...)

One Euro Mutt's Less Shoe Shine - self explanatory, fixes that weird shine that's on so many default shoes.

Simple Life's Lipstick, Blush, Eyeliner, Beards, Eyebrows, and Age Details - Simple Life is my go- to for facial updates, do note however the textures may look funky if your sim detail isn't set to high. (They don't have individual pages for each item, so you'll have to scroll - my apologies)

Ketheira's Freckles and Moles - self explanatory, more realistic face marks.

Eternal 2nd Kira's Insect Wing Replacements for Fairies - replaces the EA textures with high-def insect wings, I just think it looks neat mostly.

Brinwood's HD Dog Coats and Eyes - Also includes more colorable options for dog coats, such as inner ears and individual paws.

Lazy Duchess' cat and dog addons - adds whiskers, primarily, but also edits some face textures and adds more facial markings

Kale and Traelia's HD cat skin and eyes - better meshes for cats.

Dimitri Dane's and Elin Fredriksdotter's EQHD - a FULL retexture and remodel of EA horses with better textures of coats and eyes, and optional stallion junk if that's what your into (I'm not... lol). you will have to download custom saddles, bridles, tack, and poses as EA meshes will be incompatible - but I will probably make a separate post with all my horse CC... lol.

Misc. Textures

Pretty obviously, I use the No Build Sparkles and No Intro mod that everyone gets when they set up there CC folder for the first time. These little details make a big difference!

JustMiha's Clean UI reskin, which is currently still in development (hence the default graphic menu... lol)

Velocity Grass's remove stencil tool to remove any unwanted stencils from cabinets, beds, or toyboxes.

Simsi45's Tileable Items Fix - you know how you go to place a row of bookshelves and there's the lighting gets all messed up on a few of them? yeah this mod fixes that.

Jane Sambroski's Wood Grain re-textures - fixes a lot of the EA woods to have much nicer looking grains, and fixed an issue that caused the grain to become pixelated when zooming.

Plastic Box's Doorway Lighting Fix - fixes lots of the broken lighting with doors and archways, so now all glass doors will cast light through them and all arches of similar size will cast the same amount of light through them

Aminovas' Cow Textures - retextures the cow in the Milkin' It Corral store item to be more realistic. That's it.

And that's it! Yes, I know it's a lot, but I like my game GOREGOUS.

[agrosehamada]

I'm taking a moment to appreciate how healing AG-blr has been for me :) Growing up I was absolutely obsessed with AG, but I didn't really have any friends who were into AG, and my siblings didn't want to play with dolls, so I was kind of left in my own little hyperfixation bubble all alone. I mean my mom liked AG but that wasn't the same as having someone to play with. Yes I hosted multiple AG themed birthday parties and even put on a backyard productions of both the Molly and Felicity plays but no one... Really got it?

I remember the last AG birthday I had, having my brother tell me that my friends were all talking about how they were "too old" for AG when I was out of the room, and I think that was the beginning of the end for me because not too long after that I put my AG dolls in a cedar chest with all their things and closed it up.

I was still kind of interested in AG in highschool. I remember visiting the AG Store when the one in my state opened. And I remember desperately wanting a special doll I could make a wardrobe for and take everywhere with me. I had a little success with a few handmade dolls but nothing that really stuck, and my sewing skills were not up to par with what I wanted to make so I kind of gave up on that too.

Then the end of highschool happened, and I kind of went into survival mode. My mom's health got really bad. I had to start working and taking evening college classes on top of regular highschool and helping out more at home. Which kind of put my mental health in a crisis mode which kind of broke in my first year of college. Which finallygot me the help that I needed. But then I got kicked out for being queer and I was REALLY in survival mode, although I was lucky enough to have first a friend's family and then one of my siblings take me in through the end of college.

I remember getting mildly interested in AG again once I was working my first full time job and living with my first non-family roommates. I was (and still am) really into Big Hero 6 at the time, and when Luciana came out with her little robotics lab I ended up ordering her. Then I bought a secondhand Nellie, one of my grail dolls from childhood I never got to have. So that opened the door.

But then I remember being on Tumblr and finding some AG blogs and being like, "Hey! There's other adults who like AG and create their own characters?" And I really wanted to be a part of that. But I wasn't sure what kind of character I'd want to make. And then I remembered an old BH6 fanbaby I'd made in college and was like, "There's no way AG has a pink hair option." (I didn't really know about doll customizing back then so I didn't know wig swaps were a thing.) And then I checked the CYO generator and guess what was an option? XD

I was not in the best financial state, so it took a few months for me to be able to afford Rose, and then another anxious month of waiting for Rose to get here, in the meantime trying to plan out her wardrobe in the style of the og historical girls. And I made a placeholder blog for once she finally got here.

I finally came home to her delivery sometime in the early am after an event--if you go waaay back to the very beginning of this blog you can find a video of me very emotionally opening Rose's box for the first time XD Love at first sight for sure, I was happy to have my little girl home, and I had no clue how she'd change my life.

From there snowballed my deep dive into doll clothes making--I planned to buy Rose's clothes originally, but I couldn't find a school uniform I liked, and there was a very specific anime winter coat I wanted to make. I'd been making cosplays for a few years but then, so my sewing skills were finally up to the task. And then I just kept getting more cute outfit ideas and so... I just kept making them XD

And then I started posting pictures of the outfits on this blog. And adding new dolls to the family and posting about them too. And I am so honored you guys were so excited about my posts and brought me into the community! I saw your posts and got the inspiration to start taking Rose out places to get pictures, and she quickly became my emotional support doll, going everywhere with me and helping me through some of my worst mental health times. And I've been fortunate enough to actually get to meet some of you in person, and talk with so many of you online! And I even managed to rope my best friend into AG with your support XD It's really been such an amazing community, and I finally have friends who get my love of AG, and I finally have that special doll I take everywhere with me :)

So--thank you, AG-blr ^^ You're all amazing, and I look forward to many more adventures with you :)