The skin sale is now over at Adam n Eve, and the skin store is closed down until the restructuring is completed. Some skins are being retired, and in their place there will be several new releases.

Want to get a glimpse of the upcoming goodies? Here’s a bit of elegance, and a bit of sweetness.

For the last few weeks, there’s been a great sale on all female skins at Adam n Eve, except the brand new, photoreal Angel skin. Tomorrow, work on restructuring the skin store will begin, and this will mean the retirement of several skins, including Adore, Alexandra, Celeste and Eve, to make room for several more photoreal skins.

So, this is the last chance to pick up the skins at sale prices (most skins are down 50%, except for Lily, Jodie and Persephone which are down 33%), and in some cases its probably the last chance to pick them up at all.

I didn’t have the time today to get any new shots taken of all the skins, but I dug som up from my Flickr, featuring Angel (not on sale), Persephone and finally a trio of golden graces, Jodie, Persephone (again, now from behind, and what a great behind it is) and Lily.

Okay, so I lied a little. There were no pretty pictures in the previous post, that’s true, but they’re coming here instead. You see, Evangeline Miles of Evie’s Closet put out a new gown last night. I have kept an eye on her store for a while (of course I would, its fantasy gowns after all), and I have seen the quality climb steadily upwards. Up until now, however, nothing had really grabbed me as an immediate must-have (though I do have several lovely group gifts in my inventory), at least not in the way that the new Muse gown did.

The only problem was the colours, I am not really a pastel girl. I did consider the white, very Grecian after all (or rather, what we think is Grecian based on all those statues that have lost their original colour…), but then I saw the second notice, about a limited release ... in red and black. I was very disappointed when I teleported over and found it sold out already, but fortunately that was only the first batch of 50. A second batch of 50 was released a few hours later, and off I went to pick it up (I didn’t even change out of the lingerie I was wearing while modelling the new Angel skin at Adam n Eve ;P).

There are no pretty pictures with this post, since Ran and I spent all our picture-taking time this weekend doing shots for my Flickr, so that is where you will have to go if you want to see some sexy shots (naked pixels alert) featuring Adam n Eve’s latest skin, Angel.

If you’re already a fan of sachi Vixen’s skins, you will want to check this one out. And if you haven’t found her hybrid skins to your liking, you will still want to give this one a closer look. It is the first photoreal skin from sachi, and while I have to admit bias since I work at Adam n Eve, I really do think it is gorgeous (and so does Ran ;). If you drop by the store, you are very likely to find me standing around in just lingerie, because its such a shame to cover up more than you have to when you have that kind of skin on.

And if you like skins, you really ought to drop by the store, because right now there is a skin sale going on. All female skins except the new Angel skin have been temporarily reduced in price, some as much as 50%. So, get yourself over to Adam n Eve.

I am going to begin this post rather off-topic, so unless you know what MUSH is, chances are you’ll want to skip ahead a bit. And if you do know what it is, you may wonder what it has to with SL and this post? Well, the thing is, Ran and I have been MUSHing for ages (we actually met on one), and I only got interested in joining SL when I realized I could use the avatar to create visual representations of my MUSH characters. And that’s exactly what I ended up doing, which is why my avatar is a bit of a chameleon. However, I have tried to stick to just creating shapes based off my existing MUSH characters, and to only buying skins that suit those characters.

That is, until the last two Skin Within skins. With Anaise, Ayesha was kind enough to offer me a review copy, so I decided that a new character I had in mind would just have to end up looking like that. However, when Alaysia came out, my initial decision was that I would not buy her, even though she looked very pretty indeed, because I really don’t expect to be able to fit in a character with an Asian appearance. Of course, I had not counted on Ayesha adding a MobVend to Skin Within and placing the very Alaysia makeup in it that had caught my eye the most. So much for my decision not to buy the skin. ;) At L$ 500 instead of the regular price of L$ 1200 I simply couldn’t resist picking her up and getting to work on a shape especially for this skin.

I have never dressed up for Halloween in RL. Its not really that big in Sweden, the attempt by shops to import it as another consumer-oriented holiday didn’t really work out. It was popular for some years, but now the only reminder is annoying kids showing up to trick or treat. ;P We already do something similar during Easter, so that’s plenty as far as I am concerned.

In SL, however, I have to admit that Halloween is a pretty fun season. Not that one cannot dress up every day in SL, but its always nice to have an added incentive. This year, Ran and I decided to attend the Goblin Masque held by Siyu Suen of Illusions, and of course we had to put together some fabulous costumes. He was rather quick to decide on what he wanted to do, but I found it harder. In the end, it was a releases from Adam n Eve that saved me, as well as a currently unreleased skin that sachi made for herself for her own party last week and then allowed me to have as well. With those bits in places, I was able to find the missing pieces.

The topic for today seems to be freebies. Are they the bane of SL? I commented on a couple of posts, but since I am long-winded and rambly, I figured I need a post of my own, too. ;)

These last weeks I’ve been lucky enough to win some amazing photo contests with incredibly generous prizes from the content creators involved. First there was the Jewelry Exposition contest, where this photo took the grand prize. The there was Fleur‘s contest celebrating the retiring Vivant makeups. Well, technically, the actual win happened a while ago, but it was this week that the prize—makeups from the new Allure skin line—were delivered. And as if that wasn’t enough, my partner Ran Garrigus shared first prize in their contest to name the new line, and since he doesn’t usually wear a female skin (only now and then—one of his avatars look divine in Blowpop’s Mellie3 ;) the Allure makeups that were the prize for this contest were passed to me instead.

The Allure skin line will be the focus of this post, together with yet another fabulous contest prize, the entire line of new lingerie from Ornamental Life‘s new release. Fleur’s Allure will be making its début tomorrow at noon and Ornament Life’s lingerie be released today in conjunction with a fashion show at noon at Salina Beach which will be followed by the opening of Shir Dryke’s new satellite store, Ornamental Boudoir.

With the Jewelry Exposition running this week, it seems only fitting to continue the theme of the previous post and showcase more glittering goodies, as well as a lovely bit of new lingerie. Lingerie and jewellery is after all a hard-to-beat combination. This time the jewellery comes from ~flirt~. Their booth at the Expo had caught my eye, so when I was offered the opportunity to review two of their recent releases I was happy to say yes even though their style is classical and modern rather than history- or fantasy-inspired as the jewellery I wear in SL so often is. The lingerie that I decided to pair the jewellery with is one of two new releases from Ornamental Life, and I think a red corset also qualifies as pretty classical.

One of my weaknesses in SL is definitely jewellery. Actually, its a weakness of mine in RL too, though it is ten times worse in SL due to the sort of jewellery that is available. Diamond rings just don’t do it for me. I love fanciful, fantastical jewellery, with unusual stones and metals like copper and bronze. And I just adore headpieces. Not precisely something one can wear with most clothes in RL, but in SL I have plenty of outfits where a fanciful headpiece is just right.

My two most recent jewellery acquisitions both feature a stunning headpiece, as well as several other gorgeous pieces. The first set is a new release from master maskmaker Siyu Suen of Illusions, currently only available at the Jewelry Exposition (arranged—and that very well—by Miriel Enfield) which anyone with any interest in jewellery absolutely has to visit. The second is the latest release from Tekeli-li. This is not an Expo piece, so when you feel like shopping for jewellery in less lag (but really, the Expo is low lag for an event of its size), you can head over to Tekeli-li’s store to check out this and the many other fantastical sets available there.

Gorgeous, richly patterned fabrics have defined the last few releases from Adam n Eve. First I couldn’t get out of Jura (found in the Boutique), and then I most definitely couldn’t get out of the gorgeous half of a dress called Gratis (also found in the Boutique). And then came Saathi, with an even more extravagant, oriental-inspired fabric.

With such a sumptuous fabric, I would generally be tempted to go for larger, more eye-catching pieces of jewellery. But given the oriental flavour, I just had to make use of the new Jade Longevity pieces from Eolande.

Both Ran and I have been rather lax about blogging lately, though hardly lax about shopping. However, we’ve spent entirely too much time taking photos for various contests and posting to our Flickr accounts (for the curious, here’s mine and here’s his) instead of actually reviewing the goodies. But today I’ve got a little something for the blog, in the form of a particularly fantastical jewellery set from Tekeli-li.

August has been a very good month for skin releases, at least when it comes to the creators that I am a big fan of. I have already shown a sneak peek of sachi Vixen’s Persephone (for which the first 12 makeups—out of a total of 28—were finally released this weekend), and I hope to be showing more of her soon, but today’s entry is dedicated to the latest skin from Skin Within, Anaise.

Ayesha Bisiani calls Anaise a creole skin, and has given her features and a skintone that suggests a mixed heritage. When I first tried her on, she fit one of my current shapes quite well. However, since that shape is firmly married to Blowpop’s Mellie3 skin, I felt I needed a new shape for Anaise. This actually marks the first time that I have created a shape to fit a skin, though I don’t doubt that Anaise will work well on many existing shapes too. This time around, I am also using the skin with the skintone unmodified, but as all Skin Within skins Anaise can be modified.

Inspired by this thread on SLU.

We definitely expect demos for skins and hair, and many creators of prim-based accessories such as shoes and jewellery have also started offering them for their products. It does add extra work, and extra upload costs, but there are many things I would not ever consider buying without first trying on a demo and there are many things I have ended up buying because I could try on a demo. However, when it comes to clothing, the option to try on a demo is very rarely offered. This may be more or less fine in the case of lower-cost items and items without any prim parts, but what about expensive items, which often have prim parts? Why do we have to buy these unseen?

I only know of one place for certain that have demos for very item of clothing that they have available, and that’s Adam n Eve. The demos are a big reason for why my first big clothing purchase as a new player ended up being at Adam n Eve, and why I ended up working for sachi and Damen. Bare Rose also offers the occasional demo, for very prim heavy outfits. Considering that their items are no copy, I wish they’d do it for everything. However, with their very low prices (and very high output volume), I understand why it would be difficult to do. Ran also mentioned that he thinks Blaze does them, at least for some things, but I have not confirmed this.

To sum up, I really wish that more creators, whether their items are copy/mod or trans/mod, would consider doing demos. To me, it shows that a creator has real faith in their products. If a few start doing it, one can always hope it might establish itself as the thing to do. So far, though, it doesn’t seem to have taken off, but if anyone knows of more places that do clothing demos, I’d love to hear about them.

Since the opening of the remodelled Adam n Eve store some time ago, sachi Vixen has been a very busy bee when it comes to making skins. She has released two male and three female skins. Ran has already covered the rather edible male skins, David and Nicholas, but I have been a lazy girl who has not gotten around to showing off the gorgeous female skins. So, I am about to remedy that, though in a slightly abbreviated form compared to my usual skin reviews. Partly, I wanted a shot at showing off the three skins next to each other.

A couple of notes before the closer oogling of my naked pixels commences. Ran and I still work for Adam n Eve, so we cannot claim to be unbiased in regards to the skins. However, we wear these skins with regularity, and we’re picky about how our avatars look (he’s especially picky about my avatar’s bottom ;P). Also, I made a little mistake in shooting the picture of Lily (furthest to the right in the pictures). She has mod eyebrows and mod pubic hair, and I modded the eyebrows via the bald cap but forgot to mod the pubic hair via the sliders. So, it is rather too pale in the picture.