Otherworldly

She visits the stone they raised for his departure once a month, to look out over the sea for any sign of the striped sails on the horizon.

From Rakshasa/R3D comes the lovely Helga dress, a viking-inspired design with really great detailing both in the mesh and the textures.  It is available in four single colours or as a mix-and-match fatpack with twelve colours where you can achieve some very striking combinations. With sizes for eight bodies, chances are good it will fit the body of your choice. If not, there is also an alpha layer included. You’ll find Helga at the current round of We Love Role-Play.

Under a red sky cut through by lightning, the dark priestess sought to learn the future, calling up eldritch magic to do her bidding.

I love this EEP setting (Daves HD Thunderstorms 9), it is just the kind of dark drama that this scene needed. The centerpiece is the Silver Scrying Bowl from HEXtraordinary, with the magic effects coming from Dreaming Thicket. The hair from F&M Oblivion was first out at the Hair Fair and is now available at the Fantasy Room. And my outfit? Who else could it be from but Chandra Meehan of deviousMind. Its dark, sexy and full of attitude.

Sometimes, the muse inspires the poetess in the middle of the night and she writes by the flickering light of an oil lamp.

The Tablinium Desk Set Agrippa from Del-ka Aedilis will be out on June 1st at the Narrative Event. This table is based on Roman finds and included with it is also the curule chair (with suitable animations) and three different decor sets with text fragments from Ovid, Sappho and Martial. I placed the set in the previously reviewed Villa Rustica where it of course fits in beautifully.

My Roman poetess is not that accurately dressed, but close enough. The Goddess Gown by HEXtraordinary is more fantasy Grecian, but very beautiful, and the necklace and earrings by Bliensen + MaiTai are mosaic-inspired and seem quite appropriate. Finally, my hair by Nylon Outfitters is a pretty updo available at Collabor88 that I feel comes pretty close to some Roman styles.

When she entered the castle, rows of ice sculptures of strange creatures greeted her. She wandered among them, marvelling at how life-like they were. Not until it was too late did she realise why they looked so real—they were not sculptures at all!

The stunning Sarah Ball Gown by HEXtraordinary looks absolutely amazing and based on the brands first forays into clothing I cannot wait to see more. The texturing is top notch and the meshes beautifully made. This particular gown is of course inspired by the gown worn by Sarah in the dream sequence masquerade in Labyrinth (raise your hands everyone who has that as a favourite scene!) and at first I wanted to capture something of that in my photos. Alas, while I know a replica of the ballroom was made in Second Life, it was many years ago and I did not buy it at the time. But then I got the idea of instead using the ice sculptures that were also made by HEXtraordinary, creating something a little inspired by Narnia instead with the help of the imposing Stalker Castle from Fanatik.

Another great release from the Engine Room is the Monarch hair by Magika. This is a beautiful updo with long tendrils framing the face and a dramatic crown with tall spikes. The latter can be turned off for a more casual look. This round of the Engine Room closes in ten days, so don’t miss out!

Portal has a new gown out at We Love Role-Play and I am delighted to see that this relatively new brand continues to develop. Well-researches historical gowns are a major SL weakness of mine and the beautiful Isouda dress hits the right spot with a high-waisted and full-skirted model. The texturing is very nice and the choices of colours excellent. While you cannot demo all the colours, I feel that you can buy the fatpack (which is the only option available) with confidence, especially at the excellent price at the event (L$700).

We’ve passed the Winter Solstice, so it is getting lighter again, but so far you don’t notice much of it around here. Especially not when the weather is dark and dreary and there’s no snow on the ground to brighten things up. It is fortunate, then, that there are a lot of Christmas lights around. I haven’t gone quite so far as to wear them on myself IRL, but maybe I should to cheer myself up further? In SL, however, I am decked out like a Christmas tree, wearing lights from both deviousMind and Paper Moon. I’ve also redecorated the Christmas cottage a bit with some charming pieces from Paper Moon.

For this post, I combined a new release from Slink and a pretty, wintery gacha from Fallen Gods with some beautiful seasonal decor items from Libertine and Roawenwood. The Slink release might possibly have called for a video, but I’ve experimented with just showing it with an animated gif. What is it, then? You’ll have to read on and see. First, I wanted to highlight the Snowstorm gacha from Fallen Gods, which you can find at The Liasion Collaborative. It is a unisex tattoo gacha with snow flakes in gold, white and ice (blue) for head and body which includes both Omega appliers and BOM layers.

All ideas I had about catching up on my blogging prior to the start of Game of Thrones went out the window sometime last week when the interviews started to pile up. It also did not help that we brought home a puppy last Tuesday! However, Fantasy Faire is just around the corner, so I will just have to buckle down and get some pretty photos done. And while the Ice and Fire event is now over, you will probably be seeing a few more posts inspired by Westeros from me. Like this one, which does use some releases made for Ice and Fire as well as a new gown from Adam n Eve for We Love Role-Play.

As soon as I saw the Frozen Kingdom gacha from HEXtraordinary, I knew I wanted to setup a kingdom for an Ice Queen. Around the same time, Chandra Meehan sent me the Magick gacha and when I tried it out and saw the snowflake accessories, it was clear what my Ice Queen would be wearing. I also picked up the latest releases from LORE at We Love Role-Play to build the gate into her kingdom.

There was just one problem. I did not own the Maitreya body and while many outfits do work on Slink Physique, this was not one of them. So, I decided to bite the bullet and pick up another body to be able to blog more widely. But I remain firm in my opinion that the hips, thighs and bottom of Physique Original are far better and more realistic. Physique Hourglass is a different beast altogether, though I am pretty happy with how I have managed to “tame” it. But, I digress!

The last month of the year is here and I am busy with the usual stuff (decorating, baking, etc) and some unexpected complications (a lame horse), but once I get through this weekend I should have a bit more time to breathe at least. For today’s photos, perhaps I should have gone for a winter look rather than an autumn feel, but I really liked the look of this skin in deep reds and greens. So, I went for an autumn faun/satyr prancing through the woods and coming across a curious well with a sculpture of a little kinsman!

As I work from home, getting up early is not necessarily what I am best at. Today, a somewhat early dog training session had me up and about earlier than usual, which led to an unscheduled midday nap. Cosy, but not terribly productive, and definitely one of the pitfalls of setting you own schedule. Another is that you might just be drawn into doing something else in front of the computer, such as coming up with a new photo idea. This one, I am quite pleased with, especially the more distant shot as it came out very moody and dramatic (if I may say so myself!).

After two days of at least a little bit of cold weather and sunlight, its back to dreary and grey. Breeze, our boxer, is quite disappointed that he didn’t get to go tracking today as well (two days in a row counts as a new habit for him), but I had to focus on some less fun stuff such as book keeping. I also wanted to show off a recent acquisition, namely the Nicolina bathing tub from Trompe Loeil, available at the current round of FaMESHed. It went nicely together with some pieces from Libertine’s “In Praise of Bacchus” set and the Rustic Fireplace from HEXtraordinary for a past Deco(c)rate. I am not precisely wearing much, but I do want to point out the pretty crown from lassitude & ennui. I also had planned to show off the Logan head from Logo that Ran is wearing, but none of the shots turned out to be quite right for showing the head.

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.

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.

The current round of The Fantasy Collective is called Vikings and while there were some things on sale that mystified me as to how they connected to the theme, there were also quite a few creators present who did an excellent job. One of these is Hextraordinary with their release of a set of runestones.