The Island of Matisse

[drinkmyrivers]

Hi, everyone! I'm new here and love this idea of having a journal about the goings on at Matisse. We're located in the Northern Hemisphere and our native fruit is cherry. The island was named after the famous French artist and I had this idea of creating a quaint little island that's developed, but still fairly natural. It's a work in progress and hopefully this thread will help me keep track of what I've done so far. I take a lot of screenshots in-game so this will most likely be a visual-heavy journal. I sometimes time travel to move in residents, move buildings, and demolish/build bridges and inclines. If you happen to stumble upon this thing I'm doing, welcome! Do let me know if you'd like to pay a visit and comments are absolutely welcome.

As of 5/16/2020, this is the layout of Matisse. I don't see it changing drastically from this point on mainly because moving houses around is such a tedious task. I think I swore to myself I wouldn't do anything like that again for a while after I had successfully laid out my residential area. But we all know it *will* come to that again at some point. The one area I've reworked a couple times is the entrance. I do a lot of trading and free crafting for folks I meet online, so I always try to find ways to improve the area where I receive people.

Some of the areas we have: a cafe, another cafe, a TEA cafe, a tiki bar, a community spa, two rose gardens, a mini concert area, star-gazing spot, and a farmer's market.

Areas currently being worked on: campsite, beach set up, farmer's market.

Sufjan
Late-Night Shopaholic
Registered 03/22/2020

As resident representative, I'm in charge of basically everything. (Though I still answer to Tom Nook.) I am a Dodo Airlines frequent flyer since I'm constantly acquiring goods from other islands to bring back to Matisse. These gorgeous entrance arches came from the Southern Hemisphere. The mush lamps were a gift from my sister who's also in the Southern Hemisphere.

Former residents: Beau, Whitney, Apollo, Fang, Blanche, Anchovy, Alice, Candi, Deli, Antonio, Muffy, Rhonda, and Skye.
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[drinkmyrivers]

Hello! Today, I took some screenshots of key parts of Matisse to give you a little tour of the work I've done so far.

Starting with my favorite... the entrance. As I mentioned previously, I'm very active on the trading Discords and Nookazon in particular. I wanted an area for crafting and one for trading. I'll do a before and after post on how much this entrance has evolved, because it's changed A LOT many, many times. In fact, it changed a little bit again since last night with the addition of these two awesome hula dolls. The valiant statue behind me is a FAKE sent to me in the mail by Marshal. Thanks, Marshal.

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Spoiler: In case you don't want to see this yet....

Once you enter, you'll find the first of many cafes in the island and a tiny waterfall just to show that I can do a little bit of terraforming, no matter how basic. I was inspired to add a waterfall after visiting my sister's island and seeing her gorgeous waterfalls for the first time. I didn't want to put too many of these around because they're pretty loud!

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In front of Resident Services, is a whole band set up where we've been treated to metal renditions of Bubblegum K.K. (back when I had a rock guitar instead of a harp). Punchy is the villager who uses the instruments the most, surprisingly. Ankha is second. I usually put on something lively in the morning like my favorite K.K. Disco, and something more chill like Stale Cupcakes at night. On Saturdays, we turn the music off to show respect for hardworkin' troubadour K.K. Slider.

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And further out front...the first of two rose gardens in the island. This is a remix of a rose garden I saw on Reddit, so please don't give me much credit for this. I love showcasing this enormous Queen Alexandra's Birdwing model from Flick, as well as the garden wagon, which is my favorite DIY item.

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The museum is on top of the cliff for maximum impact and has gorgeous hyacinths surrounding it. I absolutely love the museum and it's one of my favorite parts of the game. I've wandered around the exhibits countless times just to admire how visually stunning every part of it is. I wanted to showcase this very important structure in the island by giving it its own spot. Sometimes Celeste walks over here when she's in the island, which I find very cute.

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I love coffee in real life, so Matisse was bound to have multiple cafe areas. This one though is for TEA, so different? I was just running out of ideas, to be honest, and I wanted to fill this space out. I will most likely change this into something else later. I can't do picnic blanket patterns because Nintendo didn't give us enough custom pattern slots and I'm tapped out. I'll show you very shortly why.

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A little stargazing spot. I absolutely love this area and at night, it really is the perfect part of the island to look up at the sky.

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We over here at Matisse understand the power of social media influencers, so we figured we'd create the perfect selfie spot for when they're visiting our lil island. This collection features every possible flower, with the exception of a gold rose.

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If you think I'm using flowers to cover up my lack of creativity and ideas, you're absolutely correct. Behold...the second rose garden.

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Here we are at the residential neighborhood. The illustrated sign in front of every house is the reason I'm out of custom pattern space. I think it's worth it though! I really like having these signs especially when I have people over for DIYs and such. I do regret the fact that their yard spaces are so small, but I'm not crazy enough to rebuild this entire thing so soon.

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That being said, Marshal and Raymond do get larger-sized yards. It wasn't intentional! They didn't fit in the residential neighborhood I had picked so I just decided not to move their houses.

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Matisse might be an idyllic island, but we all have our bad days. We deal with those by going to our lil oceanfront tiki bar with spiked coconut juices and the like. Still working on this area.

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I meant to go in order, but the way these photos uploaded...I'm not even gonna try to fix it. Anyway, this is the campsite. I'm still working on this as well and might add more trees to add a more woodsy feel. This is supposedly my forest, but I had cleared out the trees a little bit while I worked on my gardens. We will replant!

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A little spa area for when you just want to chill and not worry about the intense waves at the ocean. Folks here are spoiled.

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An orchard, but barely. I couldn't fit more than three trees apiece. Still, they look quite pretty, no? I love these cardboard boxes a lot.

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Right in front of the orchard is a little farmer's market/garden area. This is still a work in progress as well.

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And one of my favorite little areas...the loom in front of Able Sisters. I got the loom and I had the kimono stand sitting in my storage and knew immediately what to do with them. This is one of the first areas I ever worked on and it will remain here forever.

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That is it for now! If you read this far, thank you. Please say good bye to our resident turtles Elio, Oliver, and Marzia. Later!

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[drinkmyrivers]

And perhaps another.

 

[drinkmyrivers]

Another reserved spot!

 

[drinkmyrivers]

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Today, I decided I'd focus on one main project on the island and try to get it done. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do really, so I started with terraforming by the orchard for some additional ambiance or something. I was really just blindly doing things just to see how they'd look. The beauty of the Island Designer App is things can be undone just as quickly, so I don't ever feel too fragile about anything I make.

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In the end, I think the waterfalls added a little something extra to this otherwise boring area. Anyway, this got done way too quickly so I decided to do more. I went all the way to the other side of my island to see about adding more waterfalls there and it felt too forced and pointless, so I reverted everything back and took a break. THEN I HAD A THOUGHT...

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How 'bout moving those rocks?! I kept seeing pictures of people's awesome rock gardens so I figured, why not? I watched a YouTube video that explained everything super clearly. I will admit that I wasn't at all nervous about doing the mannequin method because my island's kind of full of crap to begin with already. So I figured I could easily fill whatever open spots were left pretty quickly. I picked a pattern I was about to delete from my catalog.

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The entire process only took me about an hour (obviously with time travel involved because I'm not gonna play an entire week with these mannequins in my way). I think the only reasonable time to even think about doing a rock garden is when your island is pretty developed already. That way you're not driving yourself nuts trying to put hundreds of mannequins out.

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I added some hedges to fence in the rocks just so no one accidentally destroys one (no one = me) and ruin the whole thing. I'm really happy with how this turned out and I'm glad I went for it. It's just so nice to look at!!

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[drinkmyrivers]

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My real life job got in the way of my very real island duties, as well as updating this journal this week, but I come with some exciting news. At the beginning of the week, I started work on getting my ultimate dreamy villager in the island. First we bid our farewell to the island cutie, Beau. I liked this guy, but never really felt attached to him. I also already have Punchy and I decided one lazy was enough. Bye, Beau!

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Oh, it wasn't a natural move out. Beau had asked me to leave a week ago and I declined (and regretted). Once my Dobie Amiibo came in, I had to right my wrong. I was tired of a Dobie-less island. For the next three days, I invited him over and crafted some furniture for him.

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Finally, on the third day, after asking for and receiving a clothesline, he agreed to move in and formally introduced himself.

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I'd seen Dobie's house before, but I was still in awe when I got to come in for the first time (while he was crafting an ironwood DIY workbench!). It's just my kind of aesthetic—classic and chaotic. I'm so happy he's here now!

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A more minor development is that our flag is now in theme with our name—"Dance" by Henri Matisse. It's beautiful.

Thanks for reading!​