you can be a freelance designer too!

On Project Runway this season it seems almost all of the contestants have the lofty job title of "Freelance Designer". Thanks to the wonders of the Sims 2 Body Shop, anyone with a PC and a Sims game can be one too. When I find myself with free time I enjoy using Adobe Photoshop to make new outfits for the Sims. Some of the clothes that come with the base game are pretty fugs; luckily there are great sites like The Sims Resource and others out there with tons of downloadable community-made clothes, furniture and even customized Sims. TSR in particular fosters a great community of artists and rewards creators with a point system that can cash in for subscriber credits, exclusive items for the game and other incentives.
I find it hard to come up with interesting original ideas sometimes when it comes to clothing designs, so my favorite strategy is to browse cute designs in online clothing stores, match them up with a mesh ("skeleton" of a Sim outfit) and recolor the "alpha" ("skin" of the outfit) using inspiration from the actual designs. In the last few days I just made and published a set of cute strapless dresses, and earlier in the summer I had fun making J. Crew bikinis and swimwear. I also find it super fun using game hacks (again, community-made) to pose my Sims like real models and take beautiful preview shots. I think a lot of people recognize the "playing" aspect of the Sims 2, but not too many appreciate the "creating" aspects.