Otherworldly

The latest release from Dutchie is a wooden stage, made to fit in a corner, with a vintage-style rig with lights. The stage and the lights are separate pieces, so you can adjust how high above the lights sit or even use the stage or the lights on their own. There are several colour presets for the lights via a menu and it is also possible to set each light to a separate preset or even to go in and make manual edits. That opens up a lot of options for how the lights look as long as you are comfortable with a bit of editing. Instructions are included in the information notecard.

Butterflies are growing rarer in real life, but in Second Life they seem to be thriving. This beautiful, whimsical outfit is another creation from the talented Chandra Meehan of deviousMind. I love how the black outlines create something of a line-drawing effect, which looks really interesting in the light I picked for these shots. To go with the outfit, I picked up a brand-new hair from Analog Dog, an updo featuring the brand’s fabulous curls. After the latest update, there is now a mix pack available, which I really like! The hair also comes with a few style options, making the bangs as well as the pony tail optional.

To take in that beautiful evening sun, I am heading out to sea on Neptune’s Revenge by Rustica and wearing the brand-new Sola set from Adam n Eve for the Gacha Garden. Isn’t it pretty with the beaded strings on the top and the panty as well as the cute little sarong tied off to one side? The Sola gacha includes 10 commons (3 footbead sets, 4 sarongs, 3 slushies with holding animation), 5 uncommons (1 pair of sunglasses with steel rims, 4 bikini sets), 4 rares (colour-coordinated fatpacks that include footbeads, sarong, bikini and sunglasses with gold rims) and finally an ultrarare that includes everything plus the sunglasses with rose-gold rims. The Seed of Inspiration is a matching beaded bracelet. The available fits are Maitreya Lara and Slink Hourglass.

Nephilaine of the Muses has been on fire lately, releasing a string of fantasy/roleplay outfits, some for women and quite a few for men! She sent me a selection of these and of course I had to tell Ran to pick some up as well, so that we could do a photo together and show off a pair of the new releases. Since I don’t have a separate male alt, that meant changing myself into ManFreyja, which is always a bit weird since I’ve just got a female AO. ;) I am not sure what I dislike the most, standing around with the female AO on when I am dressed as a male or standing around with the AO off and looking like a noob. That may actually be more painful.

Anyway, back to business of showing off these outfits! We headed off to our tavern by Fanatik to play some nice, in the form of a working dice game by the Dreaming Thicket.

After a bit of a break during the summer, it is time for a new vlog, this time to show off the fully furnished version of Dutchie’s New Amsterdam houseboat. This is a fantastic creation, inspired by an actual houseboat created in 1900 and still in use today. The houseboat is a full-featured house with bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom and the furnished version comes with a great collection of mid-century furnishings made to fit within the houseboat. But of course, if you get the furnished version, you can also use the furnishings in other houses as well. If you would rather have just the unfurnished houseboat, that is available too.

In the video below, I show a walk-through of the houseboat, fully setup with the furniture package. I have also included eight photos of different parts of the interior, to give a sense of both the style of the furnishings and of how much actually fits into the houseboat. It really is a full-fledged house! At the end, I have credits for what I am wearing during this video.

Its amazing how busy you can be kept by a vacation and by the transition back to normal life after a vacation. The last week has just disappeared in a blur and there hasn’t been much time left for a Second Life. At least the insane heat has disappeared for a bit, so today I was actually able to sit at the computer for a while without melting. The result were some boudoir-style photos of the latest Voluptas Virtualis release together with a brand-new Wasabi hair, a tattoo from Fallen Gods and poses from Serendipity.

I do love animesh critters and I was absolutely thrilled when I managed to win two of the rares from Jian’s Warrior Wolves gacha for the Epiphany. One of them, the animesh companion wolf, is featured in this post and you’ll probably see the wolf mount soon as well. And I may have to go back to try and win the wandering animesh wolf too, it’d be fantastic together with my Teeglepet horses. But I can’t imagine I’d be that lucky! I absolutely love how well these animesh wolves move and of course how good they look.

To show off the giant wolf I decided to make use of the Pinnacles from Spyralle for La vie en pose, the first set of air platforms for photography with an uncluttered background where you mainly want to show off the environment settings. Myself I dressed in a brand new gown from Faida for a brand new event, Spellbound. Spellbound, run by Juno Mantel of Junbug, features a very nice selection of creators and a magical/fantastical feel just as the name suggests. The Fate gown is sleek and elegant, with the belt being the perfect accent to the clean lines of the gown.

The latest set from the Plastik is called the Valin Fantasy Kini, which of course called for a beachy setting yet again. However, the set also has a bit of a eastern fantasy vibe, so I decided to setup a little Arabian Nights-inspired shelter made from a few different Paper Moon releases to give it the right surroundings. I quite like how it turned out, I need to experiment further with using the fabric fences and market stalls for another photo idea I have.

This post also features a new hair from Wasabi (from the Epiphany, just like the set from the Plastik) and more poses from La vie en pose.

In my previous post, I mentioned having picked up the latest makeup release from Alaskametro, Summer Beauty. In this post, you’ll see a gradual addition of makeup from that set, matching a few of the animations available in Dutchie’s fantastic mid-century vanity. This stylish piece is such fun, with an excellent selection of animations. I had no idea there were so many animations for putting on makeup and brushing your hair available, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when there are lifestyle/roleplay animations of so many other kinds available. I would have loved to do a video as well, but that doesn’t quite work when we’re not at home. As it is, I am really pleased with the photos, though I could easily have added twice as many because there were so many nice animations to pick from.

I may have managed to setup a lot of pretty photo locations on our own sim, but a proper beach is definitely still lacking. And the gorgeous Aegean Halter by Paper Moon for We Love Role-Play simply had to be shown in an appropriate location. So, I headed off to check out one of the recent releases from Studio Skye—the Pebble Beach building set—at one of their showcase sims, Skye Neist Point. It turned out to be the perfect place to show off the halter as well as some beachy poses from Ecru for La vie en pose.

Sometimes, it is best to plan your revenge carefully. Why not while lounging comfortable in bed, for example? The Revenge dress from lassitude & ennui for We Love Role-Play initially had me looking a “tougher” poses, but then I tried out this set from Diversion for La vie en pose and this one caught my eye. After all, revenge is supposed to be a dish best served cold, and then you’ll have plenty of time to plan and contemplate how to go about it.

You never know what you will find when you step inside of a fairy ring. It might be best to bring a friendly imp along—but keep in mind that imp’s love mischief!

The fairy ring is by Roawenwood and both the hair and the dress are new releases for the July round of We Love Role-Play, from the Dreaming Thicket and Velvet Whip & Faida. The imp is an earlier gacha release by lassitude & ennui.

A new pose event is just around the corner. La vie en pose opens July 10th (and runs until July 25th) and will feature poses, props, animations, backdrops and phototools. This should be a great event for photograpers and storytellers! I´ll be featuring a selection of the available exclusives from the fair, starting with this pose prop from Velvet Whip - Genie in a jar. To outfit my genie, I picked the recent Lootbox release from deviousMind, Nite & Daey.

We’re in the middle of packing for our annual trip up north but of course I need a creative break now and then. I though the new fantasy armour set from the Plastik for the Lootbox gacha was very nice and given the horns that are a part of it I decided that it probably belongs to a guardian of some underworld realm. So, I headed off to my trusty caves by Fanatik and made use of the Petra chamber once again.

The Crystal Heart festival is opening June 30th and two of the creators offering magical creations for it are the Plastik and Voluptas Virtualis. I thought their releases combined very well with each other—the set from Voluptas Virtualis is a revealing Sword & Sorcery outfit which the huge accessory sets in light & dark from the Plastik blended quite naturally with. As luck would have it, #hashbang! has a gacha of backdrops out with light and dark versions of each style which ended up being just right for showing both versions of the Plastik release. Finally, I am also wearing a new hair from Wasabi, out now at Uber. As all of their recent styles, Juniper comes with a few style options. Here I went with the windswept pony tail to go with the flying poses.