Otherworldly

Have you visited the SL Christmas Expo yet? Apart from the shopping and the events, the sims themselves are all decorated for the holidays, making for some beautiful photo locations and lovely places to visit. I found a quiet spot to take some pictures of a wintry look featuring a lovely gown from Charisma’s Designs, a pair of crystal earrings from Crystal Witch and a prettily made up skin by Ab.Fab.

Fancy an evening stroll through a crowded market, perusing the wares and enjoying the atmosphere? With the Souk Building Kit from Del-ka Aedilis, you can create your own Middle Eastern-inspired marketplace. The kit includes the outer walls (wall, pillar and gate), the market stalls (walls, awnings, roof) and various additional pieces such as shelves, racks of shawls, display tables and jars and bags of products. While you might need more variety of products for building a larger market area, the kit would make an excellent base for adding additional decor elements to, for example from the Roman and Medieval series from Del-ka Aedilis. You’ll find the kit at 25% off at the Fantasy Room event until December 20th.

The 11th edition of the SL Christmas Expo has opened its doors today and you don’t want to miss out on visiting this event between the 3rd and the 14th of December. There’s a total of 15 regions filled with merchants, breedables and entertainment such as auctions, music and other special events, offering visitors many ways to help raise money for the American Cancer Society with a special focus on helping children with cancer. You can find the list of participating merchants, a schedule of events and much more at the official website. For my part, I will do my best to entice to you to visit by giving you some looks at a few of the things you can buy at the Expo!

This year I decided to combat the urge to shop for real things I don’t need during Black Friday by instead buying lots and lots of virtual things. I did get a few things IRL as well, but only planned purchases I had had my eye on for a while. The same was not strictly true for my Second Life shopping spree. ;) Some of it will be seen in this post, but there’s plenty left for later too. I’ve also got a brand new release to talk about, the first new hair from Wasabi for a while and it comes with some big changes for the brand.

With a touch of magic from Enchantment’s Nutcracker round a winter saga of a beautiful princess and a dashing prince comes to life. The fairytale gown in luscious holiday-red is Louise from R3D Studio, with lovely rose ornaments anda lace drape over the arms and down the back. The hairstyle is from F&M Oblivion, an ornate updo called Star Empress. The prince wears the elegant Marquis outfit from Last Ride and his pose is one of the offerings from Be My Mannequin for the event.

I am still enjoying my new, spicy self thanks to the Cinnamon body. Siddean Munro has a very nice starter wardrobe out at the Cinnamon & Chai store and I thought this little casual crop top and hotpants set was perfect when putting Cinnamon through her paces with some Nutcracker-inspired couple poses from Be My Mannequin. These are available at the current round of Enchantment; the second couple pose (Perfect Balance) and the two single poses (not shown) can be purchased individually or as a fatpack. The first couple pose (Pas de Deux) is only available in the event-exclusive fatpack, so make sure not to miss out on it if you like it. We did need to adjust our heights a bit for Pas de Deux, too large of a height difference was particularly noticeable in this pose, but that is unavoidable in that position and no fault.

In a few hours, there will be a new girl in town and I think quite a few of you might want to be just like her. Cinnamon (and her “sister”, Chai) is a new mesh body from Siddean Munro, the creator behind the Slink brand. This is NOT an update of the Slink bodies, nor does it mean those are being retired. Cinnamon & Chai is a completely separate brand and these bodies have been built anew from the ground up.

Why another body, you might wonder? What does it offer that we don’t already have plenty of in Second Life? Well, I am glad you asked and to answer, I prepared a little video. Note, there is pixelnudity in it.

If you prefer to read about the bodies, I urge you to check out the Cinnamon & Chai website, which has an excellent FAQ. As for the quick version of my opinion of the body (there’s of course a more in-depth review in the video),  I love the lower half of the body but would have preferred smaller or at least more natural breasts. I also think the new UV is a really cool and bold move and the seamless waist and ankles look fantastic. And the animated feet are great.

I’ve also included some shots of the body below, if you want to get a quick look at it without seeing the video. Again, pixelnudity follows. The poses used for the nude shots are from XTC and available at the new round of La vie en pose. Full credits are at the end, but since the store is not yet open the landmark will be added later. To be notified immediately when the release happens, I suggest joining the Cinnamon & Chai group.

Time to redecorate your SL bedroom? Dutchie has you covered with their release for FaMSHed for November, an elegant bedroom suite that can be matched to the sleigh bed released for the October round. The suite consists of dresser, lingerie chest, mirrored nightstands and a large wardrobe with mirror doors and animations which comes in a PG and an Adult version. Each piece offers 4 wood options (with the cherry wood matching the sleigh bed) and 2 metal options. The cherry gives an elegant feel, the rustic a heavier feel and the blue and white are very shabby chic with aged and flaking paint. To showcase a full bedroom setup I opted for the cherry wood, but I really like the other options too.

The wardrobe is my favourite piece, especially the Adult version. But both have the 10 solo animations setup with a special mirror view where the camera angle makes it so that it looks like you are looking at yourself in the mirror.  The couple poses do not have this setup, but you can cam around and approximate it,  it just gets more difficult to get it to look convincing with two avatars. Of course I had to try it for some of the adult poses. ;) There are 20 foreplay and 30 sex animations and there are some distinctly NSFW images in the latter half of this post that give just a hint of what’s available. All animations, PG and Adult, have bento hand poses and animations and where it is applicable they use auto attaching of props.

The second release from Del-ka Aedilis for The Fantasy Room is another entry in their massive Laketown set. The Captain’s Hall is a large and very grand house, fit to be the center of a town or village. The house has a total of 4 floors and plenty of rooms, including large ones suited for feasting and receptions but also smaller rooms suited as living quarters or as storage rooms. There’s also a dock where boats can be moored and the whole construction is set on stilts.

The spooky season may be over, but since October was a busy month for me, it seems I still have some darkness to work out. Or perhaps it is just a result of being inspired by some nifty releases such as the Arch to Hell from Fantavatar & Moonstruck and the Blind Prophet headcovering by lassitude & ennui. The latter is available at the just-opened November round of We Love Role-Play and features a peculiar kind of headcovering that covers your eyes and sports a pair of horns. In fact, it makes it look like the horns are part of you and the cloth draped over them and decorated with metal symbols. Its truly weird and unique.

The Fantasy Room is a new event focusing on fantasy-inspired items, from accessories to buildings and everything in-between. For the first round, I am showing one of two releases from Del-ka Aedilis. The baker’s table, part of their series of medieval kitchen furnishings, features a nice setup of ingredients for baking and an in-progress dough. There are no animations loaded into the table but I used one from another kitchen set to give the appearance of kneading the dough.

My dress is from Tres and I love the little details on this style, such as the wrinkling of the bodice at the clasps and the fine embroidery along the neckline and at the cuffs. It is both rustic and pretty, something for a reasonably well-off farmer or a merchant. The bodies supported are Kups, Legacy and Maitreya (including Petite), but with the right alphas it should work on Slink too.  The dress was available at the previous round of We Love Role-Play, but should hopefully be in the mainstore for Tres soon if it isn’t already there.

It is high time for some seasonally appropriate witchery. The Come, Behold Me! pose from Be My Mannequin? is suitably dramatic and here it is embellished with little flames in each hand and a magical aura swirling up from the ground. The altar behind me is from ContraptioN and was acquired for a mere L$50 last Friday, quite the bargain, and it features several texture options for the altar cloth as well as on/off switches for the lights. The build is from a previous Nomad gacha, a stone building with tall windows that works great as a small chapel.

The striking Morticia hair from Magika got even better when I realised it offers the option of a separate colour on a small section of the hair. By picking the multitone white and black texture for that section I was able to get this effect of white streaks at the front of the hair, which I absolutely love and really wish that more styles had. In this particular case, it also sets off the Herne Crown from Bliensen + MaiTai beautifully. You will find this lovely piece at the Narrative even and it offers several metal options via a HUD.

Old Treasures makes beautiful, historically-inspired pieces, at first accessories and furniture and now also clothing. The jewellery is of course particularly appealing to me, as I love to hoard shiny things. The Kleos Necklace and Earrings may be my favourites from Old Treasures so far, especially as jewellery inspired by Ancient Greece is not exactly common in Second Life. Gemstones polished into beads rather than cut and precious metals decorated with fine etchings and little metal beads fit well with the kind of work done in the ancient Mediterranean. I am showing the set in gold with red gems, but the texture change HUD offers a choice of five metals and, for the necklace, five gemstones. You can get the necklace at the current round of We Love Role-Play. The earrings were at the Warehouse Sale but since that ended on the 18th they should either be in the mainstore or on their way to the mainstore.

Fantavatar & Moonstruck has several Egyptian-inspired items out at the Fallen Gods 14th Anniversary Market, as well as an item in the Duat hunt, which led to this Cleopatra-inspired look. Given that, I could not resist placing her in a Roman villa and lounging on an opulent Roman both, both courtesy of Del-ka Aedilis though only the bed is a new release, for the Narrative Event.

I picked up this couple pose from Serendipity some weeks ago, but I didn’t have a clear idea in mind for it. Then Ran went shopping for hair and came back with No.Sand from No.Match while I got my hands on the Dynasty avatar set from Fallen Gods, this year’s Fortune Teller prize. I dressed up in part of the Dynasty outfit, though instead of wearing the (very cool) skin included I added the Temptation tattoo that is a free gift at Fallen Gods booth at the Halloween Shop & Hop. For the rest of Ran’s outfit, we looked to Stitched, and for the decor I used Dreaming Thicket and Paper Moon.