Otherworldly

You may be seeing horses in a lot of upcoming posts, thanks to the new bodies for the Teegle Bento Horse Avatar. Here, I couldn’t resist pairing the baroque horse with a black coat with this striking red outfit created with a Senzafine gown and accessories by Noble Creations. I love the effect of those strong colours against both the snow and the pale skin from Imabee.

While many of you are celebrating Christmas, the 25th of December is the second laziest day of the year in Sweden, with most everyone recovering from food-induced coma after eating way too much Christmas food on the 24th as we celebrate on the eve rather than the day. This left me with plenty of time free today (leftovers for dinner, yay) and after visiting the stables where I ride I decided to continue with the horse theme in Second Life to review three of the five new full body mods for the Teegle Bento Horse Avatar; the Baroque Horse mod, the Light Horse mod and the Pony mod. Please note that you do need to own the base avatar to use these body mods.

I had also planned to review the Spanish Walk and Spanish Trot from Teegle, but I wasn’t able to get these working with the riding system, only with the horse moving on its own. I just haven’t messed around enough with the AO to know whether this is something you can work around or not, but since the horse is more geared towards being used as a stand-alone avatar as opposed to a riding horse, some things don’t work when it is being ridden.

I’ve spent the day cooking food for tomorrow’s julbord—Christmas smorgasbord—and just managed to get everything finished before midnight. My brain is feeling a little overcooked, though, so I’ll be keeping this brief. I am continuing the farewell to genre with a piece from Noctis, combined with a lovely new skin from Fallen Gods and a gacha hair from Analog Dog. My winter nymph is accompanied by an arctic fox from Jian and sits on the elven throne by HEXtraordinary.

Alaskametro has recently released several, sparkly festive new items that fit the season perfectly. One of these is the shimmery Kristal bodysuit, here worn without the optional underlayer to make it less sheer. To make myself feel a little cosier, I added a cardigan from Cynful; the size I am using is actually for Physique Hourglass, but for a loose fit like a cardigan it worked fine on Physique Original too. The decor in the scene comes from Noble Creations, Senzafine and the Plastik.

I will have to keep this short and sweet with all the holiday preparations going on, but I do want to urge to to visit the very last round of Genre with the theme of Fantasy Winter Role-Play. The lovely gown from the Annex that I am wearing is from the event, as is the pretty necklace from Sn@tch which is a gift at the event. Also featured in these photos is hair from Stealthic and new decor items from Paper Moon.

The 13th of December means Lucia here in Sweden. I did not get up early this morning to sing and serve lussekatter (saffron buns) while wearing a crown of candles on my head, so I am making up for this with a rather saucy Lucia in Second Life, wearing the latest release from deviousMind. I also decided to pick up the new Christmas tree from Dysfunctionality and it was a lot easier to transport than the actual tree that I carried home from the store yesterday. That tree is now residing in our living room, a bit earlier than usual since we’re gone this coming weekend, though I’ve yet to decorate it.

Wasabi is having a huge sale on all hair using their previous, pre-HUD set of textures. I have a lot of favourites among those hairs and I thought I would do a portrait with one of them, the Donna style. This has been a really versatile braided style, perfect for both modern looks and period/fantasy looks. It also turned out to be perfect for showing off the Bianca jewellery set from Voluptas Virtualis. The set features a bindi, two earring styles and three different chokers, all very elegant and detailed. Of course it comes with a HUD for changing the metal and the gems.

The gown, which I will have to show in more detail in another post, is by the Muses and the wintry archway a new release from Noble Creations.

I have been making more shapes for Vista’s Lia head and the latest one inspired me to do this photo, featuring the charming new Briar Rose gown from Dreaming Thicket (formerly Anachron) together with two gachas from the Arcade by Wasabi and HEXtraordinary. The gown comes fitted for Belleza Freya and Isis, Maitreya and both Slink bodies. Wasabi’s gacha hair, Sloane, comes with and without a cosy knit hat. HEXtraordinary’s Owl Keeper gacha includes several varieties of owl as flying or perched and they can be rezzed or worn. The rares include the Snowy Owl in both versions as well as a brass cage and a brass stand.

I am in the middle of baking for Christmas, which leaves the house smelling wonderfully of cardamon, cinnamnon, cloves and saffron. Gorgeous spices that are essential for a proper Swedish Christmas, despite their distant origins. Given this, it seemed seasonally appropriate to use the Spice Merchant set from Roawenwood as part of the decor for this photo, which also includes pieces from Paper Moon and ANE. The new items featured are the dress from Noble Creations, the hair from Wasabi and the gacha jewellery set from lassitude & ennui.

I have been way too busy the last few days but now I finally managed to make time for setting up and filming the fourth Shadow Box in the first series of six from Death Row Designs. Once again I opted for more of a reveal than an unboxing, since I felt it would not do the items justice to simply rez them out. And there were so many of them that I had to make use of four rooms in my Hartwick Manor from Apple Fall to display both the Light and the Dark version.

To learn more about Shadow Box and how to subscribe, make sure to visit the DRD website linked above. And remember, if you get all six boxes in a series, you will get both a Light and a Dark bonus build.

I am in the middle of organising a puppy show (have to get up at 4.30 am tomorrow, ugh), so this will be a few short words and two pictures. It was that or nothing, I am afraid. The Plastik has been doing some bento attachments lately, tails in particular. This set features both a tail and ears as well as a bejewelled horn to turn you into part unicorn. This would be the more deer-like variety of unicorn, as evidenced by the tufted tail and the style of the ears. The pieces come with HUDs both for colouring and for controlling the poses of the bento attachments (if you get the fatpack rather than one of the six preset colours, you get additional options), allowing for both static and animated positions.

I am still playing around with the Lia head from Vista, making shapes and trying out skins. For these photos, I am using the YS&YS skin that was included with the head and I made a shape specifically for it which I also put up on the Marketplace. And, since I was also planning to showcase the Enelia set from Voluptas Virtualis, I made the shape for Slink Physique Hourglass, which is one of the three bodies supported for the set (the other two being Belleza Freya and Maitreya).

Just in time for the Black Friday/Weekend sales, Vista Animations released their first bento mesh head, Lia. I had heard nothing of it until I saw it mentioned on Plurk and to be honest I wasn’t expecting that much when I went to demo it. I have fairly particular tastes in mesh heads and I have demoed and discarded a large number. But, I was very pleasantly surprised and that, together with the excellent introductory price of L$2000 (20% off the regular price, which is still a great deal), led to one of my fastest mesh head decisions ever. In fact, I was so pleased with the head that I simply had to launch into making a review video for it. It should have been up earlier today, but I had some uploading issues. Fortunately, the sale price is still on at the store right now.

Also featured in this video is a new hair by Wasabi, a new tree by The Little Branch (who just opened up their mainstore) and clothing by Senzafine.

Tomorrow is the last day for the Coven where you can get Paper Moon’s lovely decor item, the Bolognese Tarot, which is an actual historical tarot deck from the 1600s, I am using three pieces from the collection as the backdrop for this image, which also showcases the Mirror Mirror dress from Noble Creations. The throne is an earlier release from Dysfunctional Designs and I liked the effect of leaving it empty and playing the power behind (or beside) the empty throne in this image.

Speaking of Paper Moon, you also need to make sure to check out the mainstore, as they are having a Black Weekend sale with everything except gachas at 50% off.

During the weekend Froukje Hoorenbeek of Dutchie dropped her latest creation on me—a sauna! Since it definitely needed both photos and a video to do it justice, it took a few days before I found the time to properly play with it. I kept the video PG (there is a PG as well as the Adult aka “Swinger” version of the sauna) but the photos in this post are rather more NSFW. Alas, neither me nor Ran have any alts setup with mesh bodies, so we couldn’t test out the poses intended for more than two avatars, but I do give a look at the menus to give a sense of what’s available.