Otherworldly

They call her the Rose. Never forget that all roses have thorns. This one might hide hers, and the sweet scent of her flowers will distract you, but you would do best to handle her with caution.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time at the Rose sim since the Fantasy Faire opened, and between this dress by the Muses and a brand-new mask from Illusions, I couldn’t help but to imagine a mysterious courtesan who might just make her home in this kind of place.

On the second day of the Fantasy Faire, I visited the beautiful Dawn’s Promise sim, built by Marcus Inkpen and Sharni Azalee of The Looking Glass. Beautiful ruins and abundant flowers spread over this sim, where little islands are connected by arching bridges. Many of the elements used in the sim build are also available for purchase from The Looking Glass, which as a sim sponsor occupies pride of place on Dawn’s Promise. Many of them are sold as RFL items, including some shades of the gorgeous Blush Trees that sheds their beautiful rose/lilac flowers.

Fantasy Faire 2017 is finally open! The Fairelands are awaiting visitors and if you can’t manage to get in right away, you can get a look at three of the nine shopping sims in a video that I put together. I apologize in advance for some random panning around at times as well as a fair bit of rambling. The sims featured are Chaddul Ro, The Rose and San Mora and I also picked out a few creators on each sim to take a closer look at. I did learn after completing the video that some elements of the Rose were not installed at the time I made the video, so to see the Rose in full bloom make sure to visit the sim on your own (but you should do that anyway, it has some great creators on it).

With the help of a few pieces from Genre—most notably the amazing Underworld Gate from Anachron—I am preparing myself to step into the Fairelands as the Fantasy Faire 2017 is about to begin. The blogger preview starts today and then the Fairelands opens to everyone tomorrow. I have a few little previews to share with you today and there will be plenty more over the 10 days that the Faire is open.

Aisling launched their new brand Voluptas Virtualis some months ago, but it is only just now that the brand has received its own, separate store space as well as a subscriber group all of its own. From now on, the idea is that medieval/fantasy items go under the Aisling brand and more modern items, with a sexy and elegant feel, go under Voluptas Virtualis. The bodysuit I am showing today is one such item.

Genre has left the Victorian era behind and taken a leap into the Underworld with the opening of its April round. The theme was open to a variety of interpretations and while quite a few designers seem to have had a certain series of movies in mind, you will also find items such as demonic horns, portals into other worlds and dark altars, to name but a few.

Later today, at 12 pm SLT, the annual Pose Fair opens its doors. Visitors will be treated to a sim full of over 100 pose designers, so make sure to take the opportunity to add some new poses to your collection. If you have the slightest interest in photoing and/or blogging in Second Life, you can never have too many poses (even if it can feel like it at times if you haven’t kept up with sorting them!). You will find a mix of stand-alone poses and props with poses, though when I toured the sim yesterday I was surprised to see that there weren’t that many creators advertising bento poses.

It has been a while since I last did a video, but I finally got around to properly featuring two of the male LightStar heads. I say “two of” since there’s actually a third one out now, that’s how long it took me to get these done. The main reason for the delay? The lack of Omega appliers for male heads. I haven’t really found many (or any, really) that appeal enough that I’ve been ready to buy them (after all, I mostly wear my female shapes), but fortunately I learned that 7 Deadly s{K}ins were having an egg hunt with both male and female skins as prizes and they tend to do all their appliers in the Omega format. So, I set out to do the hunt and came away with a few really nice male Omega appliers that turned out to fit both Apollo and Robin really well.

Chandra Meehan of deviousMind dropped her latest creation on me the other day and it inspired me to shed my clothes and take a dip in the Nile—well, in our little desert oasis, anyway, which I spruced up with some new cattails from Dysfunctional. There’s a few other pieces from We Love Role-Play in the mix as well, plus new makeups for anyBODY from alaskametro.

It has been too long since I brought out my pony, aka my alt’s Teegle Bento Horse Avatar. But I recently sent her shopping for some fancy new tack so that gave me a good excuse to do these photos on horseback. Speaking of horses, the Water Horse wearable bento horse is also out now, but I am indecisive as to whether I should get that one too. It could get pricey to dress up two horses, if nothing compared to what it costs in real life (I just bought a new leather halter, and those don’t come cheap).

Also featured in this post are two new We Love Role-Play releases and a hair from a relaunched brand.

I am not quite sure what to call the look that came together today, but there’s certainly a bit of a futuristic flair to it with the tattoos from Fallen Gods, so I headed off to Insilico to find the right surroundings. Fortunately these amazing sims were saved from disappearing into the dark void into which all sims eventually must pass, which is fortunate since I don’t know of any other nice sims with a futuristic/cyberpunk feel to them. Then again, I mostly look for places that suit fantasy/historical roleplay looks, so maybe I am just not that well versed in what’s available when it comes to sci-fi.

I may be entering another decor phase (actually, I am not sure I got out of the last one) which undoubtedly will mean some rearranging on the sim yet again. Today, an in-progress build ended up being exiled into the sky to make room for my latest acquisition from the brand new round of We Love Role-Play. As it happened, it also turned out to be a lovely backdrop for some more new items from the same event plus a belated look at a skin that was released at the Skin Fair.

Creativity can be a fickle thing and all of a sudden I struggle with my photos again, finding it hard to compose the scenes and fit all the pieces together. I think I am starting to feel as if I need to change something up, but I am not quite sure what. I will just have to experiment a bit, I suppose. In the meantime, I thought I would at least point you to some excellent bargains at the Wash Cart Sale.

The Muses are having a big Marketplace sale with individual items at L$125 and fatpacks at L$800. You don’t want to miss this if you like gowns, whether of a more vintage flavour or for your fantasy/medieval roleplay. You will also find a variety of vintage lingerie as well as some accessories. I am wearing one of the gowns on sale in these photos, as it happened to make an excellent match with the laden feasting table from Noble Creations.

We are heading into the last weekend of the Skin Fair and I thought I would revisit some of my favourite skins. This year I have focused a lot on closeups rather than in-depth looks at the skin bodies, so I decided to take a different approach with this post. It isn’t one of my old style skin reviews, with detailed comparisons of the body shading, but you do get to see a lot more of the skins than previously. I also took the opportunity to show some more poses from the Sovereign Born Royal Chaise from Roawenwood for the March Treasure Chest, though the very first image uses a static pose from oOo Studios.