Making Maxis-Style Cosmetics Swatches

I've seen different methods people use to make their swatches, and I've found some of them to be quite visually unappealing. Instead of an orderly gallery of color samples, I have a weird mishmash of disparate thumbnails clamouring for attention. Here's a set of lips, there's a piece of lip, there's a dollop of something that looks like came out of a magazine... oy!

Okay, maybe you're not the aesthetic freak that I am, but here's how I do it.

First off, I always create Sim makeup by basing it off a face skin. That way, I know exactly where I'm putting what.

In the case of this eyeshadow I've just completed, what I do is grab my selection tool and make a selection about here...

Then I paste it into the swatch image...

Then I re-size it to fill the image.

After that, I paste my logo in the bottom-right corner. Note that the logo is inset a few pixels; this is to give it plenty of room for the border TS2 will put around it.

And here we are in BodyShop...

Not bad, eh?

For lips, I usually copy from about here:

And there you have it. You can copy and paste pieces from just about any piece of custom content, except perhaps eyeliner.