Otherworldly

Just a quickie heads-up. As a Valentine’s gift, Dutchie has sent out a new item to their subscribers, a charming breakfast tray with three bento poses. So if you’re not already subscribed, now is a good time to sort that out! Man-Freyja is not included, however. ;)

Redeux opened its doors to another round of discounted goodies yesterday and I have a few things to share with you. But first, a reminder about what Redeux is:

Redeux is a bi-monthly event taking place in the months of February, April, June, August, October, and December from the 14th to the 21st—Noon SLT.

In this event, you will find over 60 merchants offering both gacha and non-gacha items.  In each of the merchant stalls, there will be at least one offering 50L, and many will also have 50% off items and new exclusive items, highlighted with specific tags, and discounted by 25% for the event.

In this first post, I let the ornate Conquistador Bath set from Artistan Fantasy take center stage, but my corset and mini-mini skirt outfit from On a Lark is another great find from this round. I used the Isadora Rustic Cottage from Trompe Loeil to house the Conquistador set and this also gave me the opportunity for a cheeky shot through one of the tower windows as the closing image.

I think I am well on my way to becoming a virtual horse hoarder. I’ve now got six of the seven Teeglepets plus the Teegle avatar (on a separate account, so I can take myself for a ride) roaming around on the sim. The latest addition is the absolutely gorgeous Arabian, beautifully modelled to have the distinctive dish-shaped face, large eyes and nostrils and proudly carried tail. The movements of this horse are also very well suited to the breed and while I did not do a video this time, I tried to capture some of it in the shots I took.

The Arabian is currently an event exclusive at the Princess Bride round of Enchantment and the same goes for the lovely Arabian Nights tack from Jinx that I also picked up. This made it easy to decide how I wanted to show off the horse and so off I went to setup the Sahara Oasis solid sky landscape from Landscapes Unlimited. To this I added the new ruins from Fanatik and tinted these to blend in more with the desert sands. As for myself, I decided to be a desert prince rather than a desert princess—easier to find clothing suited to riding astride.

After a hiatus in January, a new round of We Love Role-Play opens in just a few days (on the 4th). The pretty top that I am wearing is Paper Moon’s release for the event, a tank top style with laces all the way up the back (which I of course failed to do a shot of…) which comes in seven colours with each including a fresh and a faded version. This is the faded version of Crimson, which I paired with a skirt from On a Lark. Matching two unrelated mesh pieces isn’t always easy, but these work wonderfully together.

We’re taking our Christmas tree in tomorrow, but I am not sure I will be decorating it wearing a similar “outfit”. Actually, I am pretty sure I won’t. ;) But since the decorator’s stool from Libertine includes both some tree-decorating poses AND some pin-up poses, the ideas kind of merged in my mind. I also had a few new items from Voluptas Virtualis that lent themselves perfectly to decorating myself a bit. Finally, the lack of clothing allowed me to wear the Slink natural bottom augment for the Hourglass shape and to really focus on the new boots from Slink.

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.

This weekend, Dutchie released four collar styles (plus a freebie leash handle that works with them), each packed with a carefully curated selection of bento animations. There’s 42 solo collar animations and 6 couple animations. The collars also include a bound walk, crawl walk, ankle lock and neck lock. Each style costs L$798. The best way to show the collars was with a video, so of course I brought Ran on to hold the leash and help me demonstrate the functionality of these collars. Hope you enjoy!

The current round of Romp ends tomorrow, so I wanted to squeeze in a look at two things from the event—a furniture set from Roawenwood and a pair of stockings from Luxuria. The furniture has poses for two and three avatars at once as well, but I didn’t have any extra bodies handy for these photos. The idea is that it is a “kennel” bed set (for girls, not dogs, even if my dogs would have liked the lower bed!) with solo animations that include various lays, a set of tasks (knitting, sewing, embroidering) and a set of beauty routine animations. The work animations auto-rez and attach props, but the beauty ones don’t, which I am not sure whether that is intentional or a glitch. There is also a “sisters” menu for two avatars, with hairbrushing and gossping, an adult menu for two female avatars, and a threesome menu (two females, one male) with cuddles and sex. The style of the set is pretty versatile, here I have it in a fairly rustic setting but I could see this kind of wood finish in a more modern room too.

Luxuria’s Heaven Thigh Highs (the writing on the back reads “this way to heaven”), which includes both appliers and system layers, comes in eight colours for easy matching with lingerie—or with nothing at all. ;)

I have teased it a few times already, since I have basically been wearing it all the time since I picked it up, but now it is time for a closer look at the new female skin from DNA. The creator, Brox Riaxik, is far from new to skins in Second Life and was previously behind the Signature brand. But with the advent of Bakes on Mesh he’s decided to launch a new set of skins that will take full advantage of the possibilities that BoM offers. The idea is to have skin bases, for male and female avatar, and tattoo add-ons for altering body type and facial features. Right now, you can get a pack of the male and female skin bases for just L$500, which is pretty insane considering that they include 64 tones. The pack also includes a set of “phenotypes”, variations in body type that you can overlay onto the skin bases for even more variation since these are also tintable.

Yesterday, I set about getting this post ready, uploading images to Flickr and the blog. Then, dogs and deadlines happened and here I am, a day and a half later with nothing written yet. And since the deadline is still hovering over my shoulder, this will have to be short and sweet. As I mentioned when reviewing the Quinta Palace from Fanatik, they also had a new castle out. In contrast to the palace, the Stalker Castle is a compact build with a footprint of 30 x 28 m and 170 prims.  There are three levels (plus the roof) and the castle is lit by torches and braziers. The beautiful lighting inside is what made me want to shoot it in the snow and even have it snow inside, which of course is perfectly plausible when you’re a snow queen courtesy of the latest deviousMind release.

Sometimes, even virtual floors need a good scrubbing. Of course, when your scrub bucket is made by Dutchie, you may end up being distracted from your work and things are very likely to get dirty rather than clean! Though there are two actual scrubbing animations and if you’d like to keep your roleplay safe for work, there’s a PG version. This, however, is the adult version, which has 30 couple animations and 2 sequences.

This past weekend, Fanatik released two new builds. I’ve done a video tour of the largest of them, the fantastic Quinta Palace. At 375 prims and 52 x 52 meters it is not something you easily tuck away on a small parcel. However, if you have the space for it, it would make a wonderful centrepiece of a sim. This beautifully crafted and textured build is inspired by the Quinta de Bacalhoa palace in Portugal. In the video, I walk through the two levels to give you a good look at the whole palace. I have also included some pictures below and of course the credits to what I am wearing in the video.

A few weeks ago, I showed off the five female heads from Slink. Now the turn has come to the two boys, Anderson (who was released together with the female heads) and Finn (who came along a little later). I brought in Ran to help me as well, since he has more male skins in his inventory. There’s not that many new Bakes on Mesh skins for male heads as of yet, but he found some nice options from Aeros and Birth among his existing system layer skins and I used a recent group gift from 7 Deadly s[K)ins.

Aeros still has their system layer skins available, both in-store and on the marketplace, and the creator (Pi Rain) states on their profile that new Bakes on Mesh skins are coming. Birth has most of their system skins still available and are currently updating various newer skins with BoM-layers. 7 Deadly s[K]ins has a few system layer skins available, including among their more recent male releases.

The Plastik has a new gacha called Karynis Mage out at the Epiphany, another massive set with lots of different options and of course tons of texture choice via the HUDs. To match the pale, opalescent skin from Fallen Gods I went for a frosty, shimmering look in my texture choices as well as an almost-white hair colour. The fantastical swirls of ice come from the “Of Fire and Ice” prop from chanimations, with the fire options turned off.

Today is actually our RL anniversary, so it seemed particularly appropriate with a romantic moment in SL as well. After all, sea monsters need love too! I have also spent a few days dragging Ran over to the world of Bakes on Mesh, so now he’s fully kitted out with a Slink Physique Redux body and the latest Slink Visage head for men, Finn. You will see more of the head in a dedicated review, but first we wanted to show off a couple of cool free gifts at Slink, the Monster Ears and Monster Teeth augments. We are both wearing them in this picture and it is as easy as putting them on which automatically hides your default ears and teeth. Slink also offers (but not for free) six other types of addon teeth and three other types of addon ears. We’ve got plans for those as well, so keep your eyes on the coming blog posts.