Otherworldly

Despite all the landscaping I have done lately, I thought I would start off the new blogging year with a shot with less focus on my surroundings, in order to highlight one of my favourite things in Second Life: jewellery. And as it happened, the Plastik just released two gorgeous new earrings at their mainstore. An excellent excuse for a couple of profile photos, which also illustrate why mesh heads have not been a hit with me; try finding one that has a profile even vaguely in this direction and you will find its pretty much all cute button noses and rather flat faces. So, that’s my mini-rant for the new year, but now onto the goodies!

As I had guessed, the holidays were not conducive to blogging. But that’s alright, they were conducive to lots of good food and lots of reading. Now, however, I need to distract myself from the upcoming end (of the year, that is), so I have been doing a bit of landscaping on the sim again. With the help of the fatpack of Fanatik‘s Lofoten cliffs, red mountains and rocky islands have started cropping up on the sim. Our new desert area isn’t quite the way I’d like it yet (I need better sand textures and I need play around a bit more with the placement of the land forms set from Studio Skye), but its good enough to serve as the backdrop for these shots.

Botanical has released a really cool weather system that handles both snow and rain. After checking it out, Ran agreed with me that it would make a lovely addition to the sim, so now we have it setup for rain in one section and snow across our little northern island. That seemed like the perfect place to show off one of the Chyll skins by the Plastik as well as some of their latest jewellery.

We just finished putting up our RL tree, which put me in the mood for a tree in SL as well. I brought out the fantastic Christmas tree from Libertine from 2014 which has an amazing scripted system for decorating it with ornaments that you can obtain from various sources. There’s a new version out this year at the Midwinter Fair and new ornaments in a gacha there; you will need the 2015 version of the tree to use both 2014 and 2015 ornaments.

My second visit to the Midwinter Fair takes a look at another lovely gown, this one from Figment, as well as at some mischievous squirrels from HEXtraordinary.

The 5th Midwinter Fair is almost upon us, opening at noon today. The fair will be offering new releases, sales, gachas and a blogger expo. After a day in town at Christmas markets, I am kicking off my coverage of the fair with a warm and elegant gown from Velvet Whip, here paired with a hair from Oblivion for Hairology and a skin from PXL for the Winter Gacha Festival.

Quite a few winter-themed events are opening this weekend, among them the Winter Gacha Festival and the Wayward Market December edition, from which I am featuring a few products (together with items from Hairology and Collabor88).

It feels a bit strange to be in modern clothing and on a modern-themed sim! I have fallen into doing almost entirely roleplay/fantasy looks (well, that and a lot fair bit of nudity), but in doing this shot I felt I’ve actually missed doing a bit of this and that. So, I am glad I was inspired to do this by the newest release from Zaara as well as a brand-new hair by Amacci.

I am in the middle of getting things ready for Christmas in RL, so it certainly seeps into my mood in SL as well. Our cottage from much-missed Alchemy Immortalis was picked as the perfect setting for a cosy scene featuring some new décor from Aisling and Paper Moon as well as a new alaskametro skin, a hair from Tableau Vivant and the last chance on a dress from The Muses.

Apologies for the random Swedish, but with Christmas closing in and adorable foxes from Jian for We Love Role-Play to review, my mind turned to a particular Swedish Christmas song. It does not, however, involve any naked frost fairies!

Ever since Ran and I started renting a full sim, home & garden items have become a more significant part of the blog. The latest move in that direction is that I’ve started blogging for Roawenwood, a brand whose rustic, roleplay-oriented items have been on my radar for a while. The set we’re looking at today is out now for We Love Role-Play at 30% off and its perfect for cold winter nights.

It is almost We Love Role-Play time and in addition to a great line-up of items for sale, there is also a hunt and a bunch of gifts. In this post, I am showing items from Noble Creations, ieQED and lassitude & ennui. At the same time, that always-frustrating gacha, the Arcade, is also going on and even though I stuck to a single machine my budget went out the window without a completion. Fortunately, the set in question—MadPea‘s Return of the Light—included some pretty cool pieces for use on their own.

I am having some success of late with luring Ran back to blogging (or at least modelling), something made easier by finding him some must-have clothing by new-to-us brand Last Ride. And as it happened, I also had this rather impressive piece of furniture by Noble Creations to show off.

For the last two weeks, I have been taking on a new project in Second Life (building our own “castle” with Jammin’s sets seems to have sparked a desire to be more creative), namely texturing a mesh template. It all started when Leto announced a sale on some of their mesh resources and I couldn’t resist picking up the Tudor 006 semi-exclusive fitmesh template, even though I didn’t have a clue if I would manage to use it at all. But I wanted to give it a try, since I’ve been wanting to create clothing inspired by our Westeros heraldry for myself for quite a while. After a lot of cursing and a rough introduction to Photoshop, I’ve finally managed to put something together that I am happy to wear. Anyone who says that creators that use templates have it easy, you just need to slap on a texture, need to try doing it themselves. Sure, you can slap on a texture, but it won’t look good. I have a lot left to learn before I could get anywhere close to some of the excellent template users out there.

The December round of the Arcade is just around the corner, and Aisling will be participating with the Nini’s Living Room gacha. Here, we decided that the set made for a nice backdrop as we take a closer look at our latest skin purchases from DeeTalez and Birth as well as remind you why Slink Physique is a great choice for both male and female avatars.