Otherworldly

For the last two weeks, I have been taking on a new project in Second Life (building our own “castle” with Jammin’s sets seems to have sparked a desire to be more creative), namely texturing a mesh template. It all started when Leto announced a sale on some of their mesh resources and I couldn’t resist picking up the Tudor 006 semi-exclusive fitmesh template, even though I didn’t have a clue if I would manage to use it at all. But I wanted to give it a try, since I’ve been wanting to create clothing inspired by our Westeros heraldry for myself for quite a while. After a lot of cursing and a rough introduction to Photoshop, I’ve finally managed to put something together that I am happy to wear. Anyone who says that creators that use templates have it easy, you just need to slap on a texture, need to try doing it themselves. Sure, you can slap on a texture, but it won’t look good. I have a lot left to learn before I could get anywhere close to some of the excellent template users out there.

The December round of the Arcade is just around the corner, and Aisling will be participating with the Nini’s Living Room gacha. Here, we decided that the set made for a nice backdrop as we take a closer look at our latest skin purchases from DeeTalez and Birth as well as remind you why Slink Physique is a great choice for both male and female avatars.

As I mentioned earlier, the commons from the Plaisir set by Fallen Gods and Faida for the Fantasy Gacha Carnival are very pretty. So, today I am wearing half of the set, combined with an upcoming necklace from Aisling.

The theme for the new round of Genre is Underworld and I have to say this is my favourite round in a while with some really nice items available. My first post is entirely focused on a new-to-me brand called Anachron. They have two releases out for genre, a hair called Veiled Promise with an attached veil and a robe called Queen Persephone. I love the mesh work on these pieces (draped fabric everywhere!) and I love the choice of colours and patterns which result in a really Grecian feel. The texturing sometimes feels like it could have a little more structure, but overall I am quite thrilled with these pieces. At L$99 per piece, they are a steal and a great introduction to this brand.

We’ve reached the end of May and with it the end of the World Goth Fair is near; the last day is tomorrow, June 1st. I am saying my dark farewell in a gown by Pale Empress and slithery accessories by House of Rain.

Senzafine‘s release for The Fantasy Collective is a gown with some of the most lush textures and striking colour combinations that I’ve seen in Second Life. As often happens when I have something really pretty to blog, I found myself a bit daunted—how could I do it justice? I’ll leave it up to you to decide how well (or not) I managed. I did decide I needed to call in my favourite prop, aka Ran, to make more of a scene of it.

This all started with this robe from Peqe for The Secret Affair, which appealed to my naughty side and definitely needed to be showcased. But it took me a while to come up with the rest of the pieces, which ended up being hair by Truth, accessories by Zaara and some lovely lights in the background by Jian.

Yesterday, we showed you a few glimpses of the Fairelands for this year’s Fantasy Faire. Today, we have let the Muses inspire us to stage a feast in the woods. Titania is your hostess and she’s bedecked in jewellery from the Plastik and hair from Analog Dog, while her handsome knight wears garments by Stitched and hair by Wasabi Pills.

HopScotch has the Pretty Doll cage in two colours out for ROMP‘s Fresh fair. After a visit to Collabor88 today, the right look for it finally came together for me as I added accessories from Japanese creator Silvery K to the lingerie by alaskametro.

ROMP‘s winter fair, Fresh, opens today at noon. As with ROMP’s other events, the focus is “elegant kink” and from the preview that was offered yesterday I would say it does a fine job of living up to that mission statement. There’s furniture and props, clothing, accessories and of course poses. As with most events, there’s more clothing and accessories for the ladies, but there is some for men as well.

bauwerk, the furniture line from 22769, is offering a furniture and prop set where the pieces with animations in come in either pg or adult versions. I decided to set it all up in the new Aspen Villa from Convair for FaMESHed and slipped into some lacy things from Cannibelle, also from ROMP.

It is time to beat down the doors to yet another event; We Love Role-Play‘s February round has just opened. My first post features items from Luminary, Calico and ieQED, which came together for a rather Dornish-inspired look that I headed off to Kingdom of Sands to photo.

Time to revisit my series of portraits from The World of Ice and Fire, this time with another Targaryen; Princess Daena, who would come to be known as the Defiant. The eldest of King Daeron the Young Dragon’s and King Baelor the Blessed’s sisters, she was wed to the latter until the extremely pious king annulled the marriage and imprisoned her and her two sisters to keep their beauty from tempting anyone.

The Secret Affair is in full swing again and the theme for their January round is Untamed Purity. One of the designers tackling this theme is lassitude & ennui with a beautiful ensemble called Virtue.

The first round of We Love Role-Play for the new year comes with some serious attitude courtesy of brands such as lassitude & ennui, Eudora 3D and Calico. It made be grab a trusted spear from Tekeli-li and set out to conquer some new land, which I happened to find among the sims of the Arcipelagus of Fallen Gods Inc such asAnnon and Athan Selidor.

Sometimes, the best present might not be something you buy…

I am much too stuffed from enjoying the fruits of all the cooking done the last few days at our julbord to write anything particularly lengthy, but I should manage a little festive post at least. It all started with the lovely Aphrodite jewellery and matching shoes from Sax Shepherd Designs. It is texture change using a HUD and after a bit of playing around, I settled on this striking black and red combination. Then I saw a post on Flickr using the Giselle lingerie and Alexis corset from erratic which I had completely missed at Uber in November. Once I went to try it, I found to my delight that one of the sizes was fitted mesh based on the Slink Physique body. This is now without a doubt the best-fitting piece of mesh lingerie I own and I think it looks stunning. You still use some alphas around your midsection to properly simulate a corset and that works perfectly.

But what really inspired the specifics of the photo was the “A Libertine Christmas” gacha from Libertine. It features a very nifty scripted Christmas tree that you can decorate with the ornaments that you win. But you don’t need to fiddle around with placing the ornaments and you don’t need to worry about winning 50 red balls. Oh no, you just click the tree, select decorate, and after marking an ornament you have one, you hold down CTRL and drag it to the tree. You will then be able to active that ornament in as many or as few of the pre-defined spots as you want. It was actually quite a lot of fun!