Otherworldly

Yesterday, I set about getting this post ready, uploading images to Flickr and the blog. Then, dogs and deadlines happened and here I am, a day and a half later with nothing written yet. And since the deadline is still hovering over my shoulder, this will have to be short and sweet. As I mentioned when reviewing the Quinta Palace from Fanatik, they also had a new castle out. In contrast to the palace, the Stalker Castle is a compact build with a footprint of 30 x 28 m and 170 prims.  There are three levels (plus the roof) and the castle is lit by torches and braziers. The beautiful lighting inside is what made me want to shoot it in the snow and even have it snow inside, which of course is perfectly plausible when you’re a snow queen courtesy of the latest deviousMind release.

Sometimes, even virtual floors need a good scrubbing. Of course, when your scrub bucket is made by Dutchie, you may end up being distracted from your work and things are very likely to get dirty rather than clean! Though there are two actual scrubbing animations and if you’d like to keep your roleplay safe for work, there’s a PG version. This, however, is the adult version, which has 30 couple animations and 2 sequences.

This past weekend, Fanatik released two new builds. I’ve done a video tour of the largest of them, the fantastic Quinta Palace. At 375 prims and 52 x 52 meters it is not something you easily tuck away on a small parcel. However, if you have the space for it, it would make a wonderful centrepiece of a sim. This beautifully crafted and textured build is inspired by the Quinta de Bacalhoa palace in Portugal. In the video, I walk through the two levels to give you a good look at the whole palace. I have also included some pictures below and of course the credits to what I am wearing in the video.

The Plastik has a new gacha called Karynis Mage out at the Epiphany, another massive set with lots of different options and of course tons of texture choice via the HUDs. To match the pale, opalescent skin from Fallen Gods I went for a frosty, shimmering look in my texture choices as well as an almost-white hair colour. The fantastical swirls of ice come from the “Of Fire and Ice” prop from chanimations, with the fire options turned off.

Today is actually our RL anniversary, so it seemed particularly appropriate with a romantic moment in SL as well. After all, sea monsters need love too! I have also spent a few days dragging Ran over to the world of Bakes on Mesh, so now he’s fully kitted out with a Slink Physique Redux body and the latest Slink Visage head for men, Finn. You will see more of the head in a dedicated review, but first we wanted to show off a couple of cool free gifts at Slink, the Monster Ears and Monster Teeth augments. We are both wearing them in this picture and it is as easy as putting them on which automatically hides your default ears and teeth. Slink also offers (but not for free) six other types of addon teeth and three other types of addon ears. We’ve got plans for those as well, so keep your eyes on the coming blog posts.

No, I haven’t opened a new store in Second Life. The little shape collection lives happily on the Marketplace and will probably remain just there for now. However, if I were to need a new store build, MyStore—the new modular store-building set by Fanatik—would be a serious contender. Want to get a closer look at it? I made a video showing the building blocks and the five pre-made store builds.

Alia Baroque of Fallen Gods has this truly poisonous green skin out at the spooky Hallow Manor event. It is of course available for both male and female avatars, as with all skins from Fallen Gods, and it includes Omega appliers and system layers which means I was able to use it with the new Slink Visage Jacquie head which uses Bakes on Mesh. I think Jacquie makes for a very cute green girl, especially in the Halloween edition of Lil’ Miss Snow from deviousMind which fits the poison theme perfectly. I would definitely think twice about trying her apples!

A short and sweet post today, the dogs have been two handfuls today and I am absolutely exhausted. But as soon as I unpacked the review copy for deviousMind’s latest release, the Naga gacha, I knew I wanted to head down into my caves by Fanatik and photo this extra special dragon-tail version. And thanks to Bakes on Mesh it was easy to find a skin for it; this is Draco by Fallen Gods. The hair is the windblown version of Elenoire from Wasabi and the magic effect from the Dreaming Thicket.

La vie en pose is now open, so hurry up and check it out before the 25th of October. The event offers poses, props and backdrops and for this round you’ll see quite a few pumpkins and witches. The set I am showing today is one of the latter, a cute prop/backdrop set from Secret Poses with eight bento-enabled poses that include a bottle of love potion.

It is almost time for the October round of La vie en pose (it opens on the 10th and runs until the 25th) and it will be offering you plenty of fall-themed poses, props and backdrops. I went for another occult-themed setup myself using poses from WetCat, a backdrop from Cubic Cherry and decor from Dark Secrets. But it all started with the fabulous Bellatrix outfit from Velvet Whip and Faida, which I accessorized with rings from lassitude & ennui and a hair from Wasabi. I think the end result has something of a “sexy superhero witch” vibe.

I am continuing the theme of the previous post with more oldies but goodies skins through Bakes on Mesh and a ton of October-appropriate accessories and decor. This time, I am hanging out in my little witch’s shack from Jian which I have decorated with paper bats from Paper Moon and a furniture set from Roawenwood. The outfit is another Voluptas Virtualis release which worked great for showing off the fantastic Zodiac tattoos from Fallen Gods. I’ve also accessories with a jewelery set from the Plastik and a hair from Wasabi.

For the September round of the Imaginarium, deviousMind has a new gacha out. This one definitely has a naughty flair and does justice to its name, Kinky. To show it off, I went back to the stage and stage lights by Dutchie that I first showed a while ago and combined it with the performer chair, also by Dutchie. For the backdrop, I rummaged around in my Libertine folder and found a set of decorative wall panels.

It is the first of September already and it feels like August went by entirely too quickly. The Hair Fair certainly did! It ends today and I have not had any time at all to blog it until now. Though, I did think it felt a bit smaller and had far fewer styles on offer than previous years. Event fatigue, the increasing complexity of hair or something else?

The hair in this post is from Wasabi, who did two styles for the fair, though both come with multiple options. The one I am showing here, Venere, has a regular option (shown in the first picture) and a windblown option (shown in the second picture—just imagine a fan off to the side!). These two options are actually separate hairs rather than HUD-controlled, but HUDs for sizing are still provided.

I am taking a brief break from packing for our trip to the WorldCon in Dublin and I couldn’t resist putting together a little scene with the vintage kyodai gacha from kisetsu for the Gacha Garden. At first, I couldn’t think of an outfit that would work with the poses, but then I decided that the only outfit needed were these pretty thigh highs from Luxuria.

The latest release from Dutchie is a wooden stage, made to fit in a corner, with a vintage-style rig with lights. The stage and the lights are separate pieces, so you can adjust how high above the lights sit or even use the stage or the lights on their own. There are several colour presets for the lights via a menu and it is also possible to set each light to a separate preset or even to go in and make manual edits. That opens up a lot of options for how the lights look as long as you are comfortable with a bit of editing. Instructions are included in the information notecard.