Otherworldly

Del-ka Aedilis has another building in their Civitas series available at a 50% discount at the current round of Redeux (which ends in just a few days!). The Ludus Magnus is a villa with an attached gladiatorial school. Those who watched the Spartacus TV-series may recognize the design of this complex. I decided to focus on the gladiatorial arena for my photos, though the rest of the villa is a very nice build as well. The arena is nicely sized and surrounded by the cells in which the gladiators lived; the gladiatorial school was essentially a prison.

I am still playing with my new skins from Skin Fair; this time I am using Rachel from Adam n Eve on LeLutka Simone and I am really fond of this combination. Simone, of course, is the first bento head from LeLutka, but I still find that she (and Cate) are my favourites. That said, I tried their new release for Skin Fair as well and Korina is a really nice head. I may just have to splurge for it, though I have a couple of other expensive items on my shopping list that come first (animesh horses, yay!).

For today’s little scene, I browsed through my Dutchie folder and came across this writing desk and chair combination. It has some perfectly modest animations for various innocent activities at your desk, like reading a book, writing or working on your computer (or being in Second Life!), but then it also has a set labelled “Skype” which are a bit less modest. That seemed like the perfect match for the Giulia set from Voluptas Virtualis, which is out now at the current round of Kinky.

We’ve finally gotten some proper winter temperatures (but no snow, alas) so it seems perfect to warm things up with a review of Dutchie’s latest release, the Cocktail Lovers Chair. As it is packed full of carefully chosen animations, I opted for doing a video to show a selection of the PG couple animations as well as preview some of the additional menus available in the adult version of the chair. In addition to that, I have included a selection of photos with this post. There are naked pixels below, though nothing too raunchy even if there is plenty of options for that among the animations. The Adult chair comes 20 female and 20 male solo animations, 20 cuddles and kisses, 80 FP and sex animations and 11 sequences. It includes auto-attaching props (PG and Adult) and supports auto-tilting for Aeros (Adult only). Both versions of the chair offer 3 texture options for the fabric.

The Jaz hair from Wasabi, their release for the ongoing round of Uber, also includes a version with a hat. The bra & knickers from Junbug (which I picked up at her massive sale) include three versions for the bra and two for the knickers, at varying stages of undress.

When you combine deviousMind and Roawenwood, you can end up with some pretty nice naughty results, like this saloon girl in an iron cage full of dirty dances. The Maeve set is the latest gacha from deviousMind, available at the Fantasy Gacha Carnival, and I just love all the ruffles on the bustle and the details on the bodice. It also makes great use of materials as seen in these shots.

Today is George R.R. Martin’s 70th birthday (happy birthday, George!), so it seems only right to be blogging Senzafine’s Elswyth gown which comes in 12 colour combinations inspired by Westerosi Houses. To show a bit of the variety available, I tried something I haven’t done in a while, namely to setup my avatar in three different looks and photo each separately. I had to be a little more careful than usual with lighting so that it work fine to splice the images together, so it is a bit flatter than I would like. But I think I need to play around with this more; it beats having to buy mesh body parts, skins, hair and clothing for multiple alts!

After debating it for a while, I recently picked up the Axis HUD from LeLutka. With this HUD you can make your own expressions for your bento mesh heads and no, it doesn’t just work on LeLutka. In this video, I demonstrate the HUD on three different heads: LeLutka Cate, Vista Zoe and Lightstar Maya. Full credits for what I am wearing can be found at the end of this post and I have also included two photos to show the outfit from On a Lark and the jewelry from the Plastik better.

Another post about my favourite event as well as one of my favourite designers, the Muses. And this time, Nephilaine has outdone herself with a gown closely inspired by a portrait of Anne of Cleves, who was Henry VIII’s fourth wife but survived both him and all his other wives. The red and gold version seen here is the original colour scheme, but the gown is also available in black and blue. As it covers the whole body, it is only made in a single fitmesh size, which falls quite close to bodies like Maitreya and Slink Physique.

I paired the gown with a hair from Fantavatar & Moonstruck which isn’t quite right for the period but suited it perfectly well. I then switched out our massive Iron Throne for a smaller throne from Dysfunctional Designs to complete the scene. I had also planned to show off some new banners from the Dreaming Thicket, but since I opted for such dark lighting, they barely show at all. I will have to get back to those!

A very image-heavy post today. My idea of one “on location” shot and a couple of skin shots quickly fell by the wayside as I wanted to show more details of the decor used in this photo and as I really wanted to do a tone comparison for this skin since it is more of a full review. The skin in question is one of three new faces from alaskametro for Skin Fair 2018 (which opens on the 9th) and I’ve paired it with a new outfit from the Dreaming Thicket and a decor set from the Plastik.

During the weekend Froukje Hoorenbeek of Dutchie dropped her latest creation on me—a sauna! Since it definitely needed both photos and a video to do it justice, it took a few days before I found the time to properly play with it. I kept the video PG (there is a PG as well as the Adult aka “Swinger” version of the sauna) but the photos in this post are rather more NSFW. Alas, neither me nor Ran have any alts setup with mesh bodies, so we couldn’t test out the poses intended for more than two avatars, but I do give a look at the menus to give a sense of what’s available.

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.

At 12.01 am SL time on the 10th of March, the Skin Fair will open its doors to the public. At the fair, produced by Pale Girl Productions, you will find two sims full of skins, makeups, tattoos, shapes and mesh body parts, with each booth containing at least some exclusive items. Have you yet to find the perfect skin for your mesh head? Or perhaps even the perfect mesh head? Then you will want to fill your inventory with demos and do some thorough testing. You can already start preparing by joining the Pale Girl Productions Info Group to which the designers are sending their demos.

And if you want at look at a few of the designers and an overview of the fair itself, I’ve done a little video for you. In addition to skins and heads, it includes a look at the just released bento update for the Slink female hands. After the video, I have also included close ups of four of the skins that I showcase as well as information about all the bits and pieces worn.

Just a bit of a cosy winter scene for today, featuring a new hair from Wasabi Pills and a new-ish outfit from Paper Moon that has just the right feel for cuddling up in comfort and style. We did finally get some RL snow as well, though today it is melting again and making everything terribly slippery. So much for the nice walk in the woods we had planned with the dog for today.

I am continuing my quest to recreate various of my shapes using LeLutka’s Simone, with varying success. I am pretty pleased with this attempt, especially with the Heidi applier from PXL, which I’ve had around to blog for a good while but not been able to until now as I didn’t have a LeLutka head earlier. That is certainly one aspect I am looking forward to know that I have a bento head, namely being able to do some skin shopping and skin blogging again as there has been a bit of a shortage of system head skins of late.

It took a lot of demoing, tweaking and thinking, but eventually I did decide to purchase LeLutka’s Bento-enabled mesh head, Simone. And even though there’s already a great video by Strawberry Singh looking at the head in detail, I wanted to make one myself, discussing some of my thoughts about mesh heads and shape-making for mesh heads. I talk a bit about what I like (and don’t like quite so much) about the head, go over some of the functions of the hud and test a few different shapes that I have been working on for this head.