A little further along in this post, I will get around to drooling over the Catalyst boots from the Abyss, but first some brief ramblings about SL contests and about shapes.

As recent posts may have revealed, Ran and I have a thing for entering contests in SL. Partly, we’ve taken a liking to it because so far we’ve done very well, sometimes thanks to putting a lot of effort into piecing together costumes and sometimes thanks to a lot of luck (like being the only entrants in a very lucrative contest arranged by the Second House of Sweden). Lately, though, its been mostly photo contests that we’ve entered, and that’s all me being a show-off and Ran liking to take pictures. ;)

So, of course I had to enter a couple of model searches for magazines, specifically Glam and Homme (for some of my submitted pictures, see my Flickr), even though I know very well that my shapes are anything but traditional model material. They’re all supposed to be good-looking (though, perhaps not traditionally beautiful) and I am personally quite happy with the results, as each of the shapes has a pretty distinctive look. Including, in some cases, rather strong noses, which cause all sorts of problems with masks, veils and similar attachments.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to the problems you face when squeezing an atypical body into prim clothing or, even more so, prim boots. I’ve put a lot of effort into making my shapes as realistically proportioned as SL will allow and to make their builds relatively normal (but still idealized to some degree, of course). So, they’re quite short by SL standards (5’4” to 5’7” with the usual eye-height measure, meaning they’re actually a little taller than that) and they have a bit of meat (and muscle) on themselves. Most prim skirts can be made to fit fairly well (except very short ones that end up too long when stretched to accommodate the hips), but boots? That’s a different story entirely.

And that is what brings me to today’s featured item, which ended up being the centrepiece of and the inspiration behind the outfit I used for the aforementioned contest pictures.

It must be our lucky month. Either that, or Ran really does take decent pictures. ;) We entered the SF Design Valentine’s Contest, for which you were supposed to take a romantic picture of you and your partner wearing clothing from SF Design. There’s plenty to choose from there for an elegant and romantic evening (especially for men, which is fabulous, and there’s even some gorgeous period wear for men), but of course we just had to break out our matching Pirate Captain outfits. The end result (much helped along by Windlight and the freebie couple poses from LoveLace) was a picture that looks like it ran away from a romance cover. And yay, it won!

Issue #2 of Sexy Second came out today, and I quickly scrolled through it to see if any of the pictures I submitted in their reader contest had made their selection of 50 sexy things to wear. I was quite thrilled to see three of my five submissions (all of which can be seen on my Flickr stream) in there together with lots of other sexy outfits. So if you need some good tips for what to wear to look a little special, the magazine offers lots of interesting ideas.

I do think competition wasn’t as fierce as it could have been if there had been a prize offered beyond being included in the magazine (which I personally think is plenty), but I am still really pleased that my pictures were chosen. After all, my shapes aren’t exactly standard model-material. ;) And I guess Ran was right about this being the best one as they placed it highest of my three.