Otherworldly

Enchantment opens tomorrow, presenting its final round which is inspired by Beauty and the Beast. I found my way to the lavish library on Caelestium Isle to represent Beauty exploring the Beast’s castle.

Time to revisit my series of portraits from The World of Ice and Fire, this time with another Targaryen; Princess Daena, who would come to be known as the Defiant. The eldest of King Daeron the Young Dragon’s and King Baelor the Blessed’s sisters, she was wed to the latter until the extremely pious king annulled the marriage and imprisoned her and her two sisters to keep their beauty from tempting anyone.

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.

I wish I was some place like this right now, in a cosy cottage surrounded by snow. Instead, I have am stressing with holiday preparations while it is distinctly green outside. Fuck global warming, I say. The only thing green around Christmas should be the fricking tree.

But oh well, at least I can get a little extra holiday feeling through Second Life. I went on a bit of a splurge during the Black Friday sales and picked up an enormous, heavily discounted (seriously, like 90% off) package of skyboxes and sim surrounds from Landscapes Unlimited. Some of them are getting on a bit in years whereas others use the latest features such as materials and there’s definitely some great options available for giving yourself some larger vistas to work with, whether just as a nice place to hang out or for photos. We’ve still not had time to finish the different environments on our sim (landscaping really isn’t one of my talents), so this will give some great options for different backdrops.

Need a new gown in your Second Life? Then pay a visit to Luminary‘s booth at Mystic Realms Faire and find your favourite(s) from four new releases. I’ll be showing two in this post, both against the backdrop of 22769 ~ [bauwerk] and their Game of Kings gacha from The Gathering.

I promised more of a proper skin review for the Serene skin from Imabee and that is what you’ll be getting today, enhanced by a just a small part of the extensive jewellery collection released by aisling for the jewellery fair as well as an example of the massive set of manicures and pedicures recently released by alaskametro.

Now that Slink has brought out an update to the Physique mesh body, I really needed to get some less dressed photos done. The Tortuga Princess gacha set from aisling for the Fantasy Gacha Carnival turned out to be just what I needed, especially in combination with the Garden Pavilion from Dysfunctional Designs for Collabor88.

Aisling has created two stunning jewellery sets for the current round of the Fantasy Gacha Carnival. The Sadhana is designed to have an Asian feel, which reminded me that I had a lovely tea house from Convair to blog. It seemed like a good setting for this seductive dancing girl, wearing a stunning array of jewellery and an eye-catching gown from deviousMind.

August 1st is almost here now and with it the new round of Enchantment, inspired by Bluebeard. In this version, the curious princess has decided that a bloody key is likely to lead to bloody murder, so she makes sure to be ready for her husband’s wrath.

A new round of Enchantment - the fairy tale inspired event where you collect stamp cards and stamps at the participating main stores that you redeem for exclusive prizes at a special location - is just around the corner and the theme for this round is Bluebeard. It is a quirky story as fairy tales go, with some very traditional elements and some unusual features that seem to be the resulting of legends and history being conflated. For my first photo for this round, I am showing a dress by Pixicat and a ring by aisling.

I really can’t seem to keep my clothes on for long lately. But when you have an elaborate accessory set like that Tallulah gacha from aisling for The Secret Affair I feel like you need to let it be the star of the show, so to speak.

This opulent gown by aisling was the perfect reason to head over to Venexia for some photos, and I had the perfect accessories in the rose wreath by ieQED and the boots by lassitude & ennui. Not to mention the gorgeous hair by Calico.

Is there such a thing as too much gold? Probably, but the Midas colour of the Ysandre dress from the Plastik isn’t it. In fact, it just inspired me to don some more gold, in the shape of some of aisling‘s recent releases as well as a pair of sun-golden sandals from Bliensen + MaiTai. Then I headed off to the Forgotten City for a bit of sight-seeing.

This post is the result of me nagging sachi Vixen to create a paler tone for her Genesis skin line. It showed up yesterday, in the shape of Taliya Fae and Taliya Goth, with appliers for both Physique and Visage. The Fae Visage HUD includes the return of some lovely flowery eye makeups that look just amazing on a mesh head and once I had put it all on I decided that for my next blog, I’d be an elf queen. Not a fantasy elf but a folklore elf, the kind that lures mortals to wondrous places beneath the hills. As it happened, a few pieces from We Love Role-Play‘s July round (which opens today) fit perfectly with what I had in mind.

The latest release from the Plastik is the Malchia Corsets. I knew I had to have one of these once I saw the unique design and the gorgeous patterns and colours. However, that particular cut of a garment is difficult to work with if you’re not using a standard sized shape. But as the very lovely Aikea offered to upload an unrigged version for me, I took the plunge and picked up the striking Rogue version of the corset. As the whole corset is one mesh, I was able to resize different directions independently and this allowed me to work out a good fit. Of course, the trade off is losing the advantages of rigged garments, but sometimes it is necessary for us “shape non conformists” to make such compromises.