031 – 035 of 365

More of my Project 365 images!

Day 31 of 365, hanging with Vivi.
Vivi is one of my oldest and most trusted friends in SL.

One of my favorite things about Vivi is the way she plays at dressing up in SL!

Day 32 of 365 (02.01.10), chairs.
Carson and I sitting in our matching chairs in our skybox.  I was in an experimental mood and played around with different filters on this shot.

Day 33 of 365 (02.02.10), logout edit.
I didn’t take any pics this day, so I cheated and grabbed the screenshot from my logout.

When I pulled up the image I thought my av looked a little lonely so I played around with the image in an attempt to make it a little blue and cold. I tried, anyway.

Day 34 of 365 (02.03.10), random headshot.
Sometime last year, I wrote a blog post on giving your avatar subtle facial expressions.

I’m still trying to look for ways to give my avatar facial expressions that aren’t cartoonish, and I use the lip sync feature a lot. I think I’ve managed to make my av look like she’s surveying a scene with a little bit of surprise and contemplating saying something?

Day 35 of 365 (02.04.10), testing poses.
I’m testing some poses I made for a blog post! Making poses for my blog is fun

Some style credits…

Day 31:
Vivi’s outfit is from 110 prims (sorry, don’t know what it’s called)
My hair & skin is from LAQ (Tasha hairstyle, Imani2 skin)

Day 33:
Outfit – Deviance, Blue Belle (Magic & Romance Hunt item)
Hair – friday, Eloise
Shoes – Shiny Things, Hyasynths

Day 35:
T-shirt – T Junction, Team Lizzie custom t-shirt (T Junction will create custom tees)
Hair – Truth, Caroline (tinted the barrettes to match t-shirt)
Jeans – Armidi, Grace Jeans
Shoes – Detour, Mixflip Sneakers – Pink Hearts

Make Your Friends Smile :)

My friends Gogo and Wilma recently put up a couple of pictures on Gogo’s blog, in which they were sporting some really cute pink t-shirts intended to brighten a friend’s day and make her smile.  I thought it was really sweet of them so I got one of the Team Lizzie t-shirts, too

I don’t even really know Lizzie except for what I see on her blog from time to time, as well as from all the hard work she puts into helping run the iheartsl bloggers group. Something about seeing my friends wearing these pink Team Lizzie t-shirts just kind of spoke to me, though; I guess it made me reflect on friendships and relationships. Let’s face it, SL is like any other community and will have moments of toxicity and it can be pretty easy to dwell on that.  In the end, however, what’s really worth the expenditure of our energy?  Not the negativity and drama fests, that’s for sure.

And so, yeah, while my wearing the Team Lizzie t-shirt is an acknowledgement of Lizzie and all her colorful commentary, great blog pics, and her contributions toward making the iheartsl bloggers group work, I’m also wearing the t-shirt in this post because I feel compelled to acknowledge the other message that’s behind it:  that there are good people out there who have their friends’ backs and are willing to proclaim it to everyone.

Yeah, I realize I might be sounding a wee bit Pollyanna-ish right now, lol.  But you know, when someone does something simple like put up a plurk saying “Hey, I really like you a lot ” (something I’ve learnt from personal experience with Carson  haha) or make a t-shirt letting you know they’re rooting for you… it just feels really, really good.  And I like being a part of that, even if it’s just peripherally and with a t-shirt.

Okay… on a side note, I’m becoming addicted to making my own poses for specific blog posts.  I made four for this particular post and I’m going to make them free just for this weekend at my store! I’ll probably have them up sometime later tonight. <3

Other credits…

T-shirt – T Junction, Team Lizzie custom t-shirt (T Junction will create custom tees)
Hair – Truth, Caroline (tinted the barrettes to match t-shirt)
Glasses – HOC, Rectangle Framed Glasses
Jeans – Armidi, Grace Jeans
Shoes – Detour, Mixflip Sneakers – Pink Hearts
Earrings – Diamond Studs from Vivienne Graves, unreleased
My skin is from LAQ.

026 to 030 of 365

More of my Project 365 images.  ^_^

Day 26 of 365, home sweet home.
I have a sweet looking SL home, thanks to Carson. <3

Day 27 of 365, admiring donna flora’s doberman.
Found a Zooby doberman wandering around Donna Flora. Makes me want to go play with my yellow lab ^_^

Day 28 of 365, baby & dog.
I’ve had my yellow lab from Zooby’s for probably over two years, now. The dog has been updated lots of times since I got it, Zooby’s is really good about that. If Zooby’s stuff was cheaper I’d probably have an entire zoo by now, lol.

Day 29 of 365, red gown at rose theatre.
I was experimenting with one of the photos I took for a recent blog post.

Day 30 of 365, caroline’s jewelry: M&C pendant.
I cheated and used one of my blog pics for my 365 pic, too. I didn’t have time to take any other pics that day! This image is from my post about skins and necklaces.

Victoria Scarlet and Mela’s GE Poses

I recently got my hands on a red gown from Nardcotix that features bare shoulders, a plunging neckline, and a leggy, thigh-high slit.  Sexy!

The gown comes two skirt versions.  The version I’m wearing in this post features an adornment at the hip; the other skirt version comes without the adornment.

The back of the gown also exposes a lot of skin.  I like how my LAQ skin looks in certain lighting conditions when I have shadows enabled in SL, so I did that for these shots.  :D  The only drawback about enabling shadows is the lack of anti-aliasing.  :(  It’s not as noticeable when you scale the image size down, though!

As soon as I put on this gown, I knew I wanted some poses that would show off some leg! I decided to make my own poses for this post, and I ended up making a total of four. I’ve used the poses in the images above.  :D  I had made a set of four poses for a previous blog post, too, so I figured I may as well set these out in my store, Mela’s.

If you’re in my store group, you’ll be getting these poses for free; I’m sending them via the subscriber group right before I post this.  Random group gift for tonight only!  :D  The poses will be up for sale in my store later tonight.  ^_^

Other credits…

Hair – LAQ, Tess
Earrings & Necklace – Paper Couture, River Stone set
Shoes – Nardcotix, Absinthe Scarlet
My skin is from LAQ.

New at LAQ: Imani 2 skin!

I remember when the Imani skin first came out at LAQ; I thought the skin was beautiful and ended up wearing it for several days and enjoying the different makeups.  I’d felt the skin was perfect as it was, so when I logged in today to a notice about an Imani 2 skin, I was surprised.

Anyway, I shrugged off my momentary surprise, went ahead and rezzed the box, unpacked it’s contents to my inventory, and then put on the first skin.

And it was love all over again.

The Imani 2 skin remains faithful to Imani’s face overall, but various updates have been made that refine her appearance.  Probably the very first thing you’ll notice are the lips.  The lips are, for the most part, same as the original, but there’s some subtle enhancement to the shine on the lower lip.  There’s also some shading along the upper lip that’s new, and there’s a noticeable difference at the “cupid’s bow” section.  While I still love the full, pouty look of the lips on the first Imani skin, I’m really happy to see the definition on these new lips.

The next thing I noticed were the eyebrows.  Imani 2 has essentially the same eyebrows, except they’re a bit more fleshed out and more full.  I adjusted my hair base (the system hair worn to create a bald pate) slightly; the first Imani skin has slightly thinner brows and I felt that the level of pointiness and arch of my personal brow shape could be taken down slightly for the new Imani 2 brows.

Imani 2 also sports a very subtle beauty mark in the area of the left cheekbone, something that is not present on the first Imani skin.

Finally, I also noticed right away that the “glow” or “shine” on this skin has been distributed slightly differently.  It’s really amazing to see skin designers work their magic on the avatar mesh with the subtleties of shading and highlighting.  I feel as if the face of the Imani 2 skin has an overall slightly softer, more feminine feel to it because of the new glow/shine that Mallory has used on it.

I’m not sure which is my favorite skintone for Imani 2; I keep wavering between Ebony (the darkest) and Cocoa (the second darkest).  Imani 2 is also available in Nougat and Peach for those who want a lighter version.  There are ten makeups available for each skintone, and for each makeup there is an optional hairbase (for use with some of the hairstyles at LAQ; using a hairbase skin with one of the hairbase styles results in a nice looking, realistic hairline).

By the way, the pendant I’m wearing in this image is from Caroline’s Jewelry.  When I’m not wearing my beloved hibiscus pendant that my partner Carson gave me, I find I tend to put these lovelies on.  Caroline’s offers these sweet sculpted script font initial pendants so that your neckline can be adorned with your and your sweetie’s letters.  <3

You can choose between a heart symbol or an & symbol.  To get the initials of your choice, just pick up the order form from the vendor at Caroline’s Jewelry and follow the simple instructions.  I think this would make a really cute Valentine’s gift, which happens to be right around the corner!

(Other credit:  Tess hair, by LAQ.)

space queen

When I visited the Rezzable 2010 event at Greenies to check out the Exile Laya hair, I was immediately drawn to one of the Bare Rose outfits.  Bare Rose is one of my favorite stores, after all.  ^_^

Then I hit up Inspire Space Park and played at being some space warrior queen, impervious to the perils of floating about in outer space.  :-P

Hair – Exile, Laya
Outfit – Bare Rose, Echidna
Eyes – Body Politik, Total Darkness
My skin is from LAQ.

60L Sunday Sci-Fi Sweets

The 60L Sunday group is HUUUUUGE and so yes, there’s a ton of stuff that gets listed each week.  Last week’s list was well over 150 items.  :-o

Thanks to the organizational skills of the people behind 60L Sunday, however, going through the entire list is entirely do-able.  They use a subscribo system to deliver a notecard to members, and the notecard is basically just a list of all the stores that have a 60L offering for that day.  For each store listed, there’s a landmark and picture embedded.

I was able to look at all 150 textures within a reasonable amount of time, and since the notecard is sent with Modify perms I’m able to edit the list as I go through it.  I simply deleted the items I knew I would not be picking up for whatever reason, while leaving intact the listings for items that caught my eye and interest.

Last Sunday, I picked up three items that really got my attention as I looked at the ads:  the Blind Mag eyelashes from Crimson + Clover, a Donna Flora dress called Jillian (it was available in four colors, I chose platinum), and celt carved earrings from Beautiful Jewels.

The eyelashes are fantastic. At first I paired them up with my white orbital eyes from Nomine (I’m not sure if these eyes are still sold, it seems I’ve had them forever and after all this time they’re still among my favorites)…

… but I paired them up later with my all dark eyes and I think all that black makes the lashes pop out more!

I wore the Donna Flora dress and C + C lashes with my new Laya hair from Exile, my white knee high boots from LAQ, and my Luck Inc. wide leather belt for a kind of science-fiction-ish look:

The Jillian dress uses a system skirt, so I busted out my dress shape for these pictures.  (Time for a little shameless plugging of my own store:  I include a “dress” version with all my shapes, to be worn with clothing that employs a sytem skirt layer.)  I’m generally not a fan of system skirts because of the way they seem to inflate your avi’s ass like there’s no tomorrow, and because of the way they often appear to be floating around your torso, but the skirt on this dress was very nicely done and any wide belt will work great at the waist area.

Last but not least, the pair of earrings that I picked up from the 60L Sunday event:

Don’t let the sheer size of the 60L Sunday listings prevent you from picking up some gems! The organizers make it easy for you to filter through everything, it just takes a little bit of time to look at notecard pictures. (Plus, I think they’ve taken the size of the group into consideration so now they’re making it a weekend event that actually covers Saturday and Sunday.)

Style credits…

First three images:
Hair – Exile, Laya
Eyelashes - Crimson + Clover, Blind Mag lashes
Dress – Donna Flora , Jillian platinum
Boots – LAQ, Knee high boots white
Belt – Luck Inc., wide leather belt solid
Eyes – Nomine, orbital (first image); Body Politik, Total darkness (second and third image)

Last image:
Hair – LAQ, Tess (must be worn with a hairbase skin)
Earrings - Beautiful Jewels, celt carved silver earrings

My skin is from LAQ.

You can also visit the Sixty Linden Sundays blog.

021 to 025 of 365

I think my latest images from my 365 project thingamajig kind of reflect the way I currently see SL fashion.  For me, it’s basically like being a kid again with all these crazy fun possibilities for letting your imagination go.  You can dress up as an alien, a superhero, or a mythical creature… it’s just endless!

None of it would be possible without the amazing content creators that grace our grid with their talents.  <3  I normally don’t do the gushing fangirl thing and reach out to designers at random, but when I laid my eyes on the Laya hair demo from Exile I *had* to IM Kavar Cleanslate just to say “THANK YOU”.  I liked this hairstyle so much, I actually used it in three of the five shots I’m posting about!

Anyways  Here are my latest…

Day 21 of 365, at Inspire Space Park.
I was *trying* to give this image a comic book cover feel because I felt the pose came out looking sort of superhero-ish, but I’m not really sure what else I should do to it.

I think it’s looking a bit busy, though, with that background >.<

Day 22 of 365, snagged.
Lol. \o/

Have I mentioned that Carson is awesome? <3

Day 23 of 365, lashes.
I really like these eyelashes that I got during the latest 60L Sunday, from Crimson + Clover. 60L Sunday has an INSANE amount of stuff but at least they’re really organized, allowing you to go through their notecard and quickly filter through everything.

I’m in the group as a merchant but I haven’t done any 60L releases myself. I am a lazy bum. I think I need to fix that!

Day 24 of 365, insilico plant.
I shot some pictures for a blog post that I plan on putting up soon. This is one of the shots I took. I tried playing around with it to make it look like a painting? Not sure if I really succeeded in doing that. ^_^

Day 25 of 365, casting a spell.
Kouse Singh made a recolor of her Hope gown and I had fun setting up some shots as a wicked fairy. I actually blogged this earlier and you can find that here.

Some style credits…

Image 021:
Hair – Exile, Laya
Outfit – Bare Rose, Echidna

Image 022:
Hair – friday, Neva.2
Dress – Musashi-Do, Tender Blossoms (limited edition color)

Image 023:
Hair – Exile, Laya
Eyelashes – Crimson + Clover, Blind Mag Lashes (60L Sunday)
Eyes – Nomine, orbital

Image 024:
Hair – Exile, Laya
Dress – Donna Flora, Jillian platinum (60L Sunday)
Boots – LAQ, Knee High Boots white

Image 025:
Gown – Kouse’s Sanctum, Hope for Haiti recolor
Wings – Fancy Fairy, Bloodvine ebony XLarge
Skin – Curio, Moonbeam Light Elf Happy Holidays (group gift)
Hair – Mau’s & Mej’s, Daiyu No Needle
Particles for hands – Pixel Mode, Pixel Dust Dance Particles white/pink
Eyes – Body Politik, Total Darkness
Poses – from my store, Mela’s

My skin is from LAQ.

016 to 020 of 365

More of my Project 365 shots.

Day 16 of 365, dancing on the moon.
I found out that the Life Is Good sim is actually going to remain open for another month! Porta Fosse happened to be present at the sim so I asked him, and he said it’s scheduled to close on February 15, not January 15th as I’d previously thought.

While I was there, my Plurk friend Quaintly appeared and I watched in amusement as her little green arrow on my mini-map chased his green arrow down, lol.

By the way, speaking of Plurk!  Plurk is fun, there’s tons of SL’ers on there and it’s become a great tool for networking, getting to know your SL acquaintances a little better, or sometimes it’s just good for laughs.  It’s also addictive and they’ve sort of made it into a kind-of-game by awarding “karma points” for your activity.  I’m currently trying to enlist three more people so that I can unlock the “idiot” smilie (lol) sooooo… if you don’t have a Plurk account and want one, please please sign up using my link?!  CLICK CLICK, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO HELP ME GET MY SPECIAL SMILIES!

Day 17 of 365, baby pose.
Yes, I’ve become obsessed with my Zooby baby.

The baby has an AO built in so that when you ‘attach’ it, you can opt to have it sleeping in your arms, etc. The AO doesn’t touch the avatar legs, though, so you will have the noobish looking default anims on the bottom half of the av (but there is a nicely done walk anim included).

Getting my av to pose like this was slightly tricky, because my av’s head kept moving every which way and then her eyes wouldn’t focus where I wanted them to.

I finally got it though, and now I’m kind of toying with the idea of making baby poses.  Just for fun.

Day 18 of 365, last day of WinterChoice.
Carson and I went to the WinterChoice Event Hall to do some last minute exchanging of cards.

I <3 Carson

Day 19 of 365, me and Baby Coqui with our new friends.
I blogged about my visit to Innsmouth on a previous post, you can read about it here!

Day 20 of 365, I snuck a quick pic with Carson while we were both logged in. I wasn’t in SL very much on this day, and this was the only picture I took. I think Carson doesn’t like this picture, oops!

So there you have it, my latest set of five images for my 365 project.  :)  I’d originally intended for my 365 to consist exclusively of simple, unedited shots straight out of SL.  I quickly discovered that I sometimes want to play with the images, however, whether it’s simply cleaning up some sharp corners on the avatar body or just enhancing the light a little bit.  It’s fun!

I’m really just kind of fumbling about, though, when I play with filters and layers and what not.  Hell, I only just recently discovered how you can get more control over your black and white image by playing with the different channels under Hue/Saturate!  (Carson taught me that ) (PS CS3 has a black and white conversion tool that’s pretty neat, too.)

Hopefully, if I stick this project out and see it all the way through, I will see some kind of measure of improvement in my pics.  Hopefully.  :-P

+++

Some style credits…

Image 017:

Hair – Truth, Belinda
Nightie – Edelweiss, Night Wear Irie

Image 019:

Hair – Maitreya, Sasha
Top – MNK Shop, Knit Sweater Red
Jeans – Armidi Limited, A001 Jeans, black classic
Glasses – House of Curios, Rectangle Framed Glasses #001

Image 020:

Hair – LAQ, Tess (must be worn with a hairbase skin)

My skin is from LAQ.

Dark Fairy

I got the Hope for Haiti gown recolor from Kouse’s Sanctum last night and immediately began taking some fun snapshots with it.

For an hour or so, I was a wicked fairy alone in the forest at dusk, up to no good and casting spells for dark and selfish reasons.  <3

I really love Windlight.  The two shots I’ve posted here are unedited and straight out of SL, save for some cropping adjustments.

I normally don’t wear facelights, but I did bust out my old ones from Gaynor Gritzi that I got all the way back in 2007.  I’m not sure if she sells her facelights anymore, but every now and then I find them useful for lighting up pictures in interesting ways.  The lights come with roughly a dozen different color presets, and they’re not obnoxiously bright.

The wings are one of my favorites in my inventory, from Fancy Fairy.  These are the Bloodvine wings and they’re scripted to respond to chat commands that make them flutter or stand up rigidly.

If you like taking fantasy pictures or if you just plain love flouncing about in gowns, the Hope for Haiti gown is one option to look at.  Plus, it’s just a couple of bucks that will be sent where help is really needed right now.

Credits…
Gown – Kouse’s Sanctum, Hope for Haiti recolor
Wings – Fancy Fairy, Bloodvine ebony XLarge
Skin – Curio, Moonbeam Light Elf Happy Holidays (group gift)
Hair – Mau’s & Mej’s, Daiyu No Needle
Particles for hands – Pixel Mode, Pixel Dust Dance Particles white/pink
Eyes – Body Politik, Total Darkness
Poses – from my store, Mela’s!