Otherworldly

My second visit to the Midwinter Fair takes a look at another lovely gown, this one from Figment, as well as at some mischievous squirrels from HEXtraordinary.

The 5th Midwinter Fair is almost upon us, opening at noon today. The fair will be offering new releases, sales, gachas and a blogger expo. After a day in town at Christmas markets, I am kicking off my coverage of the fair with a warm and elegant gown from Velvet Whip, here paired with a hair from Oblivion for Hairology and a skin from PXL for the Winter Gacha Festival.

Quite a few winter-themed events are opening this weekend, among them the Winter Gacha Festival and the Wayward Market December edition, from which I am featuring a few products (together with items from Hairology and Collabor88).

It feels a bit strange to be in modern clothing and on a modern-themed sim! I have fallen into doing almost entirely roleplay/fantasy looks (well, that and a lot fair bit of nudity), but in doing this shot I felt I’ve actually missed doing a bit of this and that. So, I am glad I was inspired to do this by the newest release from Zaara as well as a brand-new hair by Amacci.

I am in the middle of getting things ready for Christmas in RL, so it certainly seeps into my mood in SL as well. Our cottage from much-missed Alchemy Immortalis was picked as the perfect setting for a cosy scene featuring some new décor from Aisling and Paper Moon as well as a new alaskametro skin, a hair from Tableau Vivant and the last chance on a dress from The Muses.

Apologies for the random Swedish, but with Christmas closing in and adorable foxes from Jian for We Love Role-Play to review, my mind turned to a particular Swedish Christmas song. It does not, however, involve any naked frost fairies!

Ever since Ran and I started renting a full sim, home & garden items have become a more significant part of the blog. The latest move in that direction is that I’ve started blogging for Roawenwood, a brand whose rustic, roleplay-oriented items have been on my radar for a while. The set we’re looking at today is out now for We Love Role-Play at 30% off and its perfect for cold winter nights.

It is almost We Love Role-Play time and in addition to a great line-up of items for sale, there is also a hunt and a bunch of gifts. In this post, I am showing items from Noble Creations, ieQED and lassitude & ennui. At the same time, that always-frustrating gacha, the Arcade, is also going on and even though I stuck to a single machine my budget went out the window without a completion. Fortunately, the set in question—MadPea‘s Return of the Light—included some pretty cool pieces for use on their own.

I am having some success of late with luring Ran back to blogging (or at least modelling), something made easier by finding him some must-have clothing by new-to-us brand Last Ride. And as it happened, I also had this rather impressive piece of furniture by Noble Creations to show off.

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.

Figment has a great dress out for The Fantasy Collective and in addition to standard sizes it includes a fitted mesh size for Slink Physique, so of course I had to have it. As it happened, it went very well with the 25L Tuesday release from Noble Creations as well as one of their releases for We Love Role-Play.

I only came across the brand Noble Creations quite recently, but I was intrigued by what I saw of their releases. When the opportunity arose to apply as a blogger for them, I decided to give it a go. The first releases I will have the chance to feature are their offerings forThe Fantasy Collective, which opened Sunday at noon.

Its My Attic time at the Deck again, with new offerings at great prices from among others Bushu and Luxuria. In addition to that, ieQED has completed their Jellybean set with another release at Shiny Shabby and Trompe Loeil has a stylish settee our for Collabor88.

When checking out the past week’s round of 25L Tuesday, I came across the Tova gown by On A Lark. It has a bit of a rustic feel to the texturing, so I setup a few things in one of our Fanatik houses and invited Ran along to play a visiting noble to show off his new Lioncourt hair. No doubt he brought the beautiful necklace, which is Jian‘s release for the Fantasy Collective which opens tomorrow (the 22nd).