Otherworldly

Sometimes, the best present might not be something you buy…

I am much too stuffed from enjoying the fruits of all the cooking done the last few days at our julbord to write anything particularly lengthy, but I should manage a little festive post at least. It all started with the lovely Aphrodite jewellery and matching shoes from Sax Shepherd Designs. It is texture change using a HUD and after a bit of playing around, I settled on this striking black and red combination. Then I saw a post on Flickr using the Giselle lingerie and Alexis corset from erratic which I had completely missed at Uber in November. Once I went to try it, I found to my delight that one of the sizes was fitted mesh based on the Slink Physique body. This is now without a doubt the best-fitting piece of mesh lingerie I own and I think it looks stunning. You still use some alphas around your midsection to properly simulate a corset and that works perfectly.

But what really inspired the specifics of the photo was the “A Libertine Christmas” gacha from Libertine. It features a very nifty scripted Christmas tree that you can decorate with the ornaments that you win. But you don’t need to fiddle around with placing the ornaments and you don’t need to worry about winning 50 red balls. Oh no, you just click the tree, select decorate, and after marking an ornament you have one, you hold down CTRL and drag it to the tree. You will then be able to active that ornament in as many or as few of the pre-defined spots as you want. It was actually quite a lot of fun!

I love the contrast between the frosty surroundings (and the streetlamp, for that Victorian touch) at the Neva River sim and the black and dark red of this outfit, which is based around a gown from Senzafine and jewellery from aisling.

Gothmas by Gaslight is now open, offering two full sims of dark, elegantly twisted creations with a christmas/winter feel to them. Nephilaine Protagonist has really outdone herself with her Pale Empress releases for this event so it is fitting that they are both names for goddesses, namely Skadi and Persephone. It is the latter ensemble that I am featuring in this post, with a bonus gothic gazebo from Souzou Eien as part of the backdrop.

Uber‘s “50 Shades” round is closing very soon (I do wish event webpages displayed the opening and closing dates more prominently!) and with this month having been crazy busy for me I had failed to blog the writing desk from Dutchie that I had picked up from the event. If you haven’t tried it already, you should really head over and do so. It is…inspiring.

The Fantasy Collective has opened for a new round and the combination of Senzafine‘s gown and ieQED‘s crown proved irresistible to me. I paired with a pose from Picture This! for Mystic Realms Faire (closing soon!) and found myself a stalwart knight to protect me.

As soon as I put on the Dona gown from Luminary for the next round of The Fantasy Collective, I knew I had to do something inspired by Renaissance paintings. It isn’t just about the style being perfect, it is about how spot-on the drapery of the gown is. Those folds look like they came out of a painting!

There’s Summer Loving going on at the Deck for this round of My Attic and I have some new lingerie from Luxuria to show you as well as shoes from the new brand Bushu. At the same time, there’s a kinkier sort of loving going on at Romp and of course Dutchie is there.

It did not take long for Dutchie to give me a reason to shed my clothes once more, as the latest release—the Art Deco living room set—comes in both a PG and an Adult version. Froukje Hoorenbeek was kind enough to drop the Adult set on me earlier today and I had to take it for a spin right away. As it happened, it turned out to be a great way to give my Physique mesh body another workout and to showcase my new stockings from Adam n Eve and my new heels from lassitude & ennui.

Usually showcasing furniture from Dutchie means getting naked sooner or later, but not so with this stylish dining/meeting table. Unless there’s something hiding deep in the menus, the most salacious act you will get up to with this is getting drunk at the end of your dinner. However, that does not mean there is not plenty of fun to be had with this table, not to mention that it is a very classy piece of furniture for your home.

In this post I will also be highlighting one of three new hairs from Alice Project for Rhapsody and this gorgeous new gown from Volstead.

When mesh eyes were a relatively new thing, Damien Fate released his FATEeyes, a scripted product that allowed for each user to make a wide range of spectacular eyes. Over time, individually coloured mesh eyes improved so much that I largely moved away from FATEeyes except for when I needed to whip up an eye colour on the fly. Now, however, version 3.0 of FATEeyes is out and it is definitely time to give them a second look.

With June fast approaching, so is another round of We Love Role-Play and I will also be sharing a couple of previews today, from lassitude & ennui and Luminary.

One of the things that mesh has brought is the ability to do really awesome cloaks and this is something that Damien Fate of FATEplay has embraced. This cloak is one of his offerings for the current We Love Role-Play round and since it ends in a few days I wanted to give a last reminder, because it is a truly awesome round! My gown by the Muses is also from there and yes, I know I have worn this particular design several times, but it is one of my all-time favourites and it looks particularly stunning in the Gold/Flame colour, inspired by the arms of House Martell. You may just see a few more shots this week inspired by Dorne, seeing as a certain upcoming episode of Game of Thrones has been on my mind a lot lately.

ieQED has been producing a nice series of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones inspired (but wholly original in design) crowns for various gatchas and for the Secret Affair the set included one called Sunspear. Being the big fan of Dorne that I am, I knew I wanted to feature it, so this look and these photos were largely built around the crown. The other item I really wanted to focus on was this brand-new henna designs from Chandra Masala’s Jalwa brand. It includes both arm and leg designs which you will see in more detail inside the post.

As my blogging of late has no doubt made plain, I love gowns. But sometimes you do need to slip into something more comfortable and practical, and thanks to The Muses latest offering for We Love Role-Play you can now do so in proper fantasy style with the Doronthor outfit (or the corresponding Doronthel, if you happen to be male). Four special colours of these outfits are offered at a discount at the event and will not be available afterwards, so make sure to check them out.

My accessories, the elegantly casual Spring Necklace and Headwrap, are from lassitude & ennui, also for We Love Role-Play, and the same goes for the tied-off pony tail from Epos, who are making their first foray into hair in a very nice way.

Normally, I’d write a fair bit more, but my arms are quite exhausted as I just came in from a riding lesson and Nelson (my horse for the day) was in a very frisky mood and wanted to run a lot more than I was keen on. So this time you’ll have to settle for these (hopefully) pretty pictures.

It has been a while since I tried out a new skin brand. I am pretty picky and I also have tastes that aren’t quite “mainstream” Second Life; in particular, I don’t tend to go for cute all that often. I often look for skins with a bit stronger faces and perhaps more character than classical prettiness or beauty.

When I visited this year’s Skin Fair, I ended up collecting quite a pile of demos, but out of the new-to-me brands I tried only one stood out for me - DeeTaleZ. I tried on several of their faces and found that they had something that interested me. However, none grabbed me strongly enough that I made up my mind (I am indecisive). But I did sign up for their subscriber and started following their Flickr. And then a new face called Shirin was released, catching my attention both with the name (I happen to have a role-play character going by that name) and its appearance. After quite a bit of demoing—I just couldn’t decide which tone to get!—I finally took the plunge yesterday, then immediately set out to create a new shape for the skin. As it happens, I think the look of the skin lends itself quite well to a Dornishwoman, so I made the shape with that in mind and decided to show off another of the Dorne-inspired gowns from The Muses.