Otherworldly

Hair Fair is in full swing. I decided to battle the lag right away and managed to get out alive and with some nice new hair. My very favourite hair will be featured first, the Freya from Calico. And no, I am not just biased because of the name; this style is right up my alley and I don’t think there’s anything quite like it in SL. Such glorious braids. With it I am wearing the latest skin from Adam n Eve, the sultry Marnie, and the backdrop for these photos is a brand new ruined tower set from Botanical, available at this month’s Collabor88. The tower is beautifully crafted and textured and it will be the perfect addition to our plans for the next mini island on our sim. My dress, so perfectly suited to this hair and to the ruined tower, is the lovely Wolf Maid from the Muses.

We Love Role-Play’s new round is now open and today I wanted to show both a dress and some furnishings; as always, the event includes much more than just avatar accessories. The dress is my second one from Senzafine, a store that continues to impress me with their mesh clothing. The furnishings are from Rustica; Maxwell Graf has released a set of candle-holders that makes full use of the new materials options and they look amazing in the official viewer.

Get ready for another round of We Love Role-Play, starting tomorrow. Among the pieces on offer for this round is this elegant mesh gown by the Library. The Asia gown really shows how you can combine mesh with clever texturing to create a style that is more complex than the base mesh. It has a vaguely Grecian or Roman feel and would suit well for roleplay in a setting with a warm climate.

With it I am wearing the newest hair from Wasabi Pills, Tanya, and a set of gorgeous bangles from Maxi Gossamer, both out for this month’s FaMESHed. The San Remo bangles utilize materials so should be seen in the latest official viewer for the best effect.

Just as sachi put the finishing touches to the fabulous desert island in mesh that she’s created for the sim we rent from her, Zaara Kohime released a mesh bikini and a mesh coverup. The timing could not have been better; now we could photo both the new release and showcase a bit of the new landscaping at the same time. Even better, both the sim and the clothing uses materials.

To dwell a bit on the sim itself at first, this is the first of four mini-areas inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire (which most of you probably know as Game of Thrones) that we hope to have built on the sim. Ran and I are both huge fans of Dorne, so having our own little desert region in Second Life has been on our wishlist for a while. But with the limit of four textures per sim, desert seemed very limiting in terms of providing other photography opportunities. With mesh terrain, however, we hope to have both desert and snow all year around, plus a more temperate area as well. That should make for quite a lot of photography opportunities—plus a nifty home sim, of course.

Siyu Suen of Illusions may be best known for her masks, but she also creates a wide variety of other accessories, from jewellery to elf ears. Most recently, she has released a few designs that started out as commissions, including two different French hoods. Properly, these should be used to fasten a veil or a coif, but I think they look lovely (if not historically accurate) on their own as well. This, the Katarina French Hood, is the more elaborate of the two styles (the Anna French Hood lacks the stones and the outer pearl trim), but both styles are of course scripted for texture changing, allowing for a range of customisation.

We’re actually in the middle of a sim remodelling right now—we’ve got the crazy idea of trying to make some mini-areas inspired by different regions of Westeros—so shooting outdoor photos is a bit tricky. However, I just had to find some way of shooting the latest mesh creation from Maxwell Graf of Rustica: the mangrove tree bridge. Fortunately, we did have a corner of the sim where some creative angling of the camera hid any signs of the ongoing work.

The mangrove tree bridge is currently available at the Garden. It is 12 meters long, 73 prims and mod and copy. That means you could make it larger, though the land impact would go up. The modelling and the texturing is, as with everything Maxwell puts out, quite superb. For a beachy or tropical sim, this would seem like a must-have piece of landscaping.

Genre has opened its June round and this time Art Deco is the theme. Fairy Sola of Studio Sidhe has made a lovely pack of stylish Art Deco-inspired poses that produce some elegant and period-appropriate silhouettes. The Josephine gown from Senzafine, also available at Genre, was of course the perfect dress to wear with these poses.

Alia Baroque of Fallen Gods and Libertine has released an update for the latter brand’s flagship product, the Marquis furniture set. I was thrilled to receive a review copy since I have very much enjoyed the original release of the Marquis set and the new release promised to be even better.

And it does not disappoint. As you will see by the following seven photos—maybe Ran and I got a little carried away, but that’s still only a fraction of the options—the full set gives you a lot to play with as each of the pieces of furniture include a wide array of poses (many new ones have been added compared to the initial release of the set), many which also give out props. Furthermore, each piece is now texture change, offering a total of 10 lush textures. The full set also offers both mature and adult versions of most of the pieces, save for the lounger which only has “safe” poses.

We went for the adult versions, so there’s some not very safe for work images behind the cut.

Sanura Snowpaw of Somnia has a number of new releases out and this little mesh number available at the Thrift Shop event caught my eye. I decided to pair it with a new hair from Truth and a new skin from one half of what formerly was Cupcakes.

I’ve spent a little too much time yesterday and today butting heads, so time to focus on something else instead. Such as the Scandal dress from Volstead, released for the World Goth Fair (now finished) and now available in-store and on the Marketplace. This gorgeous lace dress shows that it is possible to make partially see-through mesh, you just need to make the fit a little loser. This vintage shape is ideal for it, as well as being ever so decadent. It also comes with clothing layers, to add a bit more modesty and help out with breaks resulting from movement. For these static photos, however, I opted for no additional coverage, though it would be needed for wearing the dress out and about.

Yesterday, I was in Egypt (or well, in an Egyptian-inspired gown, anyway). Today, We Love Role-Play has helped transform me into something more fantastical. Perhaps a woodland creature, worshipping in a strange underground cave?

Round 2 of We Love Role-Play has opened. There’s a wide array of clothing, accessories and props on offer, covering a number of genres. And, there is stuff for the guys, too.

I am starting off with the fabulous Egyptian-inspired Tiye ensemble from Arwen’s Creations, a store full of gorgeous gowns. This one uses a very nice mesh gown as its core component; I was very pleased with the proportions.

A new round of FaMESHed is starting tomorrow and if you like corsets you just have to try on Perception’s new Sweetheart Overbust corset. Brand new is also the gorgeous necklace from Mandala and my hair is a recent release from Analog Dog’s Point B line.

Adam n Eve has just released a new skin, the lovely Brooke, as well as set of foot jewellery for Slink’s mesh feet. sachi Vixen is definitely not new to making skins—I dare not guess at how many different skins from her that my inventory contains—but mesh jewellery is something new.

I am also wearing one of the gowns from Pale Empress for the World Goth Fair as well as one of the newest hairs from Exile.

Fairs and events have definitely come to occupy a central position in Second Life. Some love it, some not so much. My favourites are the themed ones; the odds are always good that talented designers will get really creative with those. Such as the World Goth Fair, running from May 15th to May 31st and benefiting the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.