sexy rolled up sweaters from bare rose

See, this is what I love about Bare Rose. In addition to being damn cheap, you can get all sorts of different looks out of what June Dion has to offer. Yesterday’s foray into scary sexy was fun, hehe, but I was in the mood for a more mainstream look this morning.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring! 

Bare Rose has these great little rolled up sweaters with sculpted attachments. As usual, everything’s modifiable and no copy, so you can edit to fit but exercise care while doing so. There’s four sculpt attachments altogether: two for the parts that are rolled up around your arms, one for the turtleneck, and one more for the part that is rolled up around the chest, just above the breasts. Editing was super easy; the only adjustments I had to make was to reposition the neck prim slightly and to lower the collar slider on the jacket layer.

For less than L$200, you get the sweater in a whopping six colors: black, blue, green, red, purple, and pink. Since they’re transferable, you can share with your alts! :p I’ve only shown black, blue, red, and green in my pics. It should be noted, these don’t come with shirt for placing under the sweater… you need to find something in your inventory to go under. Or you can give everyone a peep show :p

Credits:
Skin – Laqroki Claudia
Hair – Truth Grazia
Eyes – Exodi Zbilja
Body Shape & Earrings – Mela’s Curvy Yadira & candy corn earrings
Tank Top – Celestial Studios
Jeans – Armidi Grace

bare rose’s silent heart

I haven’t been to Bare Rose in a long time because, frankly, my old laptop did NOT like that sim.  I’m happy to report that’s changed

I went there to go pick up some cargo pants I saw on a friend, by my attention was quickly diverted by all the playful cyberpunk, goth, and fantasy outfits.  You know, as much as I love the great textures on mainstream clothes that we can find in SL, sometimes it gets boring and I want to play with looks I’d not wear in RL.  I forgot just how MUCH Bare Rose offers, and in so many colors, for so little L$!  I’m not sure that there’s any outfits there that costs more than L$200, so it’s easy to get carried away in there if you’re not careful.

I picked up an outfit called Silent Heart and I looooooove it, I don’t want to take it off:

There are a lot of prims and it’s all No Copy, so be sure to hop on a posestand and take your time with editing them to fit. Here’s what’s under the flowing prim skirt:

The outfit actually does not come with the fishnet parts and nipple tape.  The nipple tape is from some old store that has been closed for a long time, now, but I believe that Dark Eden has some, as well as Juicy.  The fishnet comes from an outfit called Belted that I got from Winter Moon quite a while back, too, so I’m not sure if that’s still available.  I wore the outfit without those items in the last pic; be prepared to have at least some of your nipples bared if you choose to wear the outfit without anything underneath.

I think the mouth covering mask is one of my favorite parts, hehe.  The sculpted part around the collar also emphasizes your avi’s neck; it looked great paired up with my new Grazia hair in the night color from Truth.

Silent Heart was less than L$200, and for your money you get the outfit in black, red, and pink.  ^_^

Credits:
Hair – Stringer Mausoleum
Skin & Boots – Laqroki
Eyes – The Body Politik
Piercings – Mela’s (my store :p )

Penelope at Le Pinceau

One of my friends Brianna Stenvaag and her partner Mogan Bezner are the designers behind the store Le Pinceau, and they recently released a new skin named Penelope. Prior to this Brianna has released an asian skin called Mei Mei that’s really cute, as well as another skin named Frida, but I think Penelope is my favorite from her so far!

Here is Penelope in Light Tan; this skin comes with seven fresh looking makeups.  Maybe it was because I was in a bit of a retro mood after picking up one of the new high-waisted hawaiian print bikinis from Artilleri, but my favorite Penelope makeup of the moment is 5, with it’s bright red bombshell lipstick and light dusting of pale blue eyeshadow.  You can click the images to view larger versions on my flickr page:

Brianna and Mogan also offer some very beautiful eyes; I always admire them on Brianna whenever I see her.  They’ve got a whole bunch of colors and so I’ve decided to show just my favorites here, but there’s a lot more you can choose from when you visit the shop.

You can check out La Pinceau on the Lost Sailor sim:  Lost 20Sailor 156, 102, 29

Credits for skin image:
Hair – Laqroki Fallen
Hair flower – G-field hibiscus

Laqroki knee high boots

Note:  All images are straight out of SL, except for cropping.  I loooooooove Windlight!!!!!

Winter DiPrima of Laqroki recently released some new knee-high boots, and I’m loving the look of them!  I’ve had them for a few days and I’m already getting some pretty good mileage out of them.

I realize the picture above isn’t the greatest for showing off the boots, but I couldn’t not show this because the beige ones go really nicely with the Last Call Dominica outfit and it’s signature Last Call decolletage. Yay for equestrienne sexiness!

But okay, here are some pics that are more close-up, and as always, you can click the images for larger versions on my flickr page:

These boots are a little different from most other boots I’ve seen in SL, because the boot itself is in one piece (not one prim! lol sorry), so you don’t have that odd joint issue at the ankle, which I think may have been necessary given the placement of the buckle and strap on this design. As far as texturing and shape goes, I think these pictures speak for themselves; they look beautiful and realistic.

The boots are sold with Copy/Mod permissions, which is really awesome for getting a good perfect fit. I did a little bit of editing to fit the boots to my shape, and I think it took me maybe 2 or three minutes to do both sides. I actually forgot to show one more color in the shot above; in addition to silver, black, red, white, and beige, the boots also come in brown.

These boots are located in Laqroki’s Apparel department.

Credits:

Skin – Yabusaka metallic skin (old freebie)
Glasses – PrimOptic
Outfit – Bare Rose
Guns – C-Tech Redemption

subtle facial expressions

(Note:  you can click on all of the images for this post to bring up larger versions on my flickr page.)

About 99.9% of the time, I run my avatar around with a neutral expression on her face. When I’m taking snapshots, I’ll sometimes hit the Emote function in my MystiTool to get her to crack a big smile or some other fun facial animation:

You can take the whole facial animation thing a step further with London Spengler’s Pandora FACE 2.0, which basically allows you to play two SL facial expressions at the same time, making for all sorts of possible combinations.

As much as I adore the facial animations that are available in SL, sometimes they’re a tad cartoonish for my purposes.  Just the other day, as I was setting up a picture of my av at a beach sim (Mori Pwani sim, my Plurk friend Lissa Pinion has now got me hooked on playing on the waves there) I realized I wanted my avatar to have a subtle, Mona Lisa-ish smile to go along with the looking-over-her-shoulder-at-the-camera pose.  To accomplish that, I decided to create variations on my avatar’s face shape and these are some of the results I got:

While working on editing my shape, I recalled talking with an SL photographer about a year ago on the subject of getting more facial expressions beyond the ones already built into SL.  Perhaps editing my face shape seemed like an obvious answer to me because I work with shapes a lot for my store, but it was something that had not occurred to him to try.

So, I figured I’d write about it on my blog, and share what sliders I edited to create my subtle facial expressions.  ^_^

To create my avatar’s melancholy expression, these are the sliders I edited:

Shape…
Eyes > Eye Opening:  slightly wider
Eyes > Outer Eye Corner: slightly more down
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  corner down

Your eyebrows are also an important part of creating a facial expression.   (To edit your eyebrow shape, you must go into Edit Appearance > Hair > Eyebrows.)   These are the slider adjustments I made for my melancholy emote:

System Hair…
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Height:  slightly higher
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Points:  smoother

For my avatar’s stern expression, these are the slider edits I made:

Shape…
Eyes >   Eye Opening:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Ratio:  slightly more lower lip
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  slightly more corner down

System Hair…
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Height:  lower (i.e., I went from 77 to 92)
Eyebrows > Eyebrow Arc:  slightly less arced

For my avatar’s subtle grin, I made these slider adjustments:

Shape…
Eyes > Eye Opening:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Lip Width:  slightly narrower
Mouth > Mouth Corner:  slightly more corner up
Mouth > Lip Ratio:  slightly more lower lip
Chin > Jaw Jut:  very slightly more underbite

System Hair…
no changes

Those are only three examples, but that should give you a pretty good idea of what sliders you’d want to touch when editing your own shape for creating more subtle expressions.  (As a side note, it is for reasons like this that I stopped selling No Modify shapes in my shop.  Modify shapes ftw!)

While I was working on my shape edits, I was conversing with Gogo.  I asked her, “If you could order up new facial animations from Linden Lab, what would you ask for?”  A couple of the things that ended up on our list of emotes we’d like to see were a slight parting of the lips, and a pout.  I learned from our discussion that one way to accomplish the slight parting of lips effect is to enable Slow Motion animations in the Advanced menu, then hit the smile emote and try to catch your avatar in a snapshot right as the animation starts.  This can end up involving a lot of repeat attempts as you try to capture the right moment of the animation.

The SL client now has a lip sync function built in for Voice users, so this gives us even more options now.  ^_^  Using Voice, lip sync, and my edited expression shapes, here are some of the results I came up with:

My favorites are the pouts with the slightly parted lips, hehe.  My friend Vivi told me that lip sync should be on by default for people using the 1.23 official viewer.  If you’re using an older viewer, you will need to go into your Advanced menu to turn that function on:

Okay, so how exactly did I use Voice/lip sync to get those shots? Simple:  after enabling the lip sync function and wearing my newly edited expression shapes/brows, I put Weezer on my WinAmp player and parked the microphone next to the speaker, lol.   The music over the mic caused my avatar’s speech animations to start up, and I was able to capture quite a few interesting results.  That’s pretty much it!  Perhaps one day some clever scripter will be able to come up with a HUD that takes advantage of all the possible mouth animations that lip sync utilizes, making this even more easy to accomplish…

P.s.  On an entirely unrelated note, I am really digging this new Anna hair that I’ve bought from LeLutka.  It kind of reminds me of the way your hair will look after you’ve spent the day at the beach <3

Credits:
Skin – Laqroki Kira
Hair – LeLutka Anna
Eyes – Exodi Twilight Anger
Hair flower – G-Field Hibiscus crystal pink

Hibiscus and lily

Wow, I haven’t touched this blog in literally half a year.  Where does the time go???

I finally got a new machine and Second Life has turned into this amazing, gorgeous new world and has basically renewed my <3 for it.  Ask any of my friends and I’m sure they will attest that all I ever said to them for the first few days after getting my new hardware was “OMGGGGGGGGG EVERYTHING LOOKS AWESOME”.  And it SO does.  I took some comparison pics:

Seeing SL like this has also renewed my desire to go out shopping, ha. Everything just looks tons better — shoes, clothes, hair, jewelry. So I guess it’s not surprising that I’ve decided to revisit my blog; I have pretties I want to document!

I’m from Hawaii, so I’m always tickled when I find Hawaiiana in Second Life.  I recently spotted a Bare Rose hula girl outfit on Tori Heart’s blog; I haven’t had a chance to go look at that yet but I will.  ^_^  Gogo also told me about a sale going on at the Yabu sim and I was delighted to see some amazing hibiscus flower sculpts at G-Field.  I picked up the yellow hibiscus because that is Hawaii’s state flower, and I also picked up the crystal pink hibiscus.  (The crystal pink one was 1L at the time I grabbed it, I’m not sure if it’s still that price.)  They’re modifyable so you can resize them; I had to resize them because they were huge.  Be careful when you modify, though, because these are no copy/trans.  You can click the images to see bigger versions on my Flickr.

I also recently got the lily hair clip from Caroline’s Jewelry.  It’s copyable and no mod but comes with a resize script, and it’s also incredibly lifelike and pretty.

Credits:

Skin – Laqroki Kira
Eyes – Exodi Twilight Anger
Hair – LeLutka Venessa (or Vanessa? Folder says one thing but all the hair objects say another lol)
Flower vase in the comparison images – Morantique

Hijacking the Airwaves

Psst… is Melanie gone?

Hey everyone. It’s Whit Korobase. You probably don’t know me but, yeah, I am actually supposed to be here. I work at a design shop called Shelf Life Media in world and we’re helping bring a RL dressmaker’s designs and vision to Second Life. 

What does that have to do with Grid Expectations, you say? Well, I’m pleased to announce Shelf Life and Mela’s will be forming a business partnership and we’ll be moving our work space to the new Mela’s Main Store in Lo Lo.

But before we move, we’re selling our main parcel in Hattori and wanted to get the word out in case you or a friend were looking to buy a lovely, quiet parcel of PG mainland. 

Beautiful sim. Great neighbors.

Take a look at the pics of Hattori here. It’s 6144 m2 and holds 1406 prims. It also has a nice view of the beach and ocean.

We hate leaving Hattori, for sure, but are quite excited about joining with Mela’s soon.

P.S. We’re not totally leaving Hattori, as we still have an unattached parcel we’re using as a work space. It’s 3072 m2 with 703 prims and we’d entertain an offer for that, too.

I’m selling my beloved Meddledown beach

Update. The parcel has been sold.

Congratulations to the buyer, you’ve scored yourself a real gem of a property.  Enjoy your new digs, and take care, and thank you

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I’m sad about letting go of my Meddledown property.  It’s a gorgeous mainland waterfront parcel that boasts a gently sloping sandy beach and lots of water.  When I bought the property I made sure to get the parcels that had the entire beach coastline so that I wouldn’t have property lines cutting it up.  It also encompasses a huge chunk of the bay, and Meddledown’s only access channel to the adjoining water (void) sim, so there’s more than enough room to rez a variety of marine life, coral, etc.

It’s also a great home base for anyone who enjoys sailing in SL and loves exploring.  You can sail right out of the Meddledown property into the adjoining protected water sim and then start moving down the coastline.  There are over 75 water sims that my property connects to, including the ones surrounding the Nautilus sims (Nautilus is close by).

If you or anyone you know are looking for a parcel that connects to sailable ocean sims and gives you tons of prims to build on, please check this property out — this just might be what you’re looking for.  Here are some details:

* 12672 sqm, 2900 prims
* Includes the sim’s only water access channel to the continental ocean
* Connects to 75+ sailable ocean sims surrounding two continents and Nautilus
* Includes the entire beach coastal line — no property lines suddenly cutting you off at the sides
* Nice neighbors
* No covenant — you make the rules
* Mainland tier will be more affordable than the upcoming OS price hike

To see more images, visit my flickr set.

Please IM Melanie774 Kidd if you have any questions, thanks. If I am not online when you IM me, it is best to send a notecard because my IMs get capped quite frequently.

new skins at laqroki — word up to my azn grrlz!

Laqroki re-opens it’s doors today at 11:00 A.M. SLT, and is launching an all-new line of skins!

The new Renaissance Collection is being introduced with four new female faces — Suzu, Clara, Jasmin, and Emily — and boasts a beautiful new body-skin to go with them.  Each face comes with lots of options, from a variety of makeups to multiple skintone choices, making it easier for you to customize the exact look you want.

I’ve mentioned this several times in the past, but I’m ever on the lookout for skins that befit my own RL ethnicity (mostly Asian, some Spanish), and my jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw the new Suzu skin.  Mallory Cowen has moved beyond the usual lighter-skinned collection of skintones for this Asian-influenced face, and has made it available also in darker tones (nougat, golden tan, cocoa) that would befit someone of a Southeast Asian heritage.

I haven’t taken pics of everything — just a small sampling.  You’ll have to come visit the Laqroki sim (and check out the new build while you’re at it!) to try on the demos.  You’ll love them, they’re beautiful

Click the images to see larger versions at my flickr stream.  No post-processing was done other than cropping and adding text.

Visit Laqroki today to try the demos!

May I have a price break, too?

Well, it seem that the whole Openspace thing has REALLY set some people off.  Wow.  I’ve peeked in the forum thread and there was definitely a mob mentality in there earlier; I’m amazed we didn’t see posts like “OFF WITH JACK LINDEN’S HEAD!!111″.  o.o  I can’t help but imagine what it must have been like for Jack Linden, sitting there in his office, the blogpost all neatly typed out and carefully worded, just waiting for that fateful stroke on the Enter key… I wonder if he had any idea just how emotional and angry people were going to be over this?

Since my last post in regard to the upcoming babysim price hike, I’ve had a few more conversations with friends and some interesting points were made.  A friend of mind had observed that there were 13,000 babysims.  Yeah, that’s a LOT.  Making that number even more significant is the number of sims on the entire grid, which I think she’d said was 32,000.  Take away the Linden sims, and that leaves 26,000.

In other words, babysims make up just about half the grid.  Since they make up such an incredibly huge portion of the grid, the question begs to be asked: is the revenue currently produced by these babysims in line with the costs incurred?

In Jack Linden’s October 29th post to the blog, he states “We’re not saying that everyone is abusing resources. We are saying that the use has changed, and continues to do so as people find more creative ways to use them. So the revised pricing is about recognising that change of use and the additional costs and value associated with it.”

Additional costs?  I never really understood what kind of costs are involved other than buying the hardware, keeping it stored in a proper facility, and performing maintenance, and I’m guessing most other residents are in the same boat as me.  Okay, I can understand maybe needing more $ to pay for the physical space for storing the new hardware, and hiring more people to take care of the hardware or possibly paying overtime for existing staff to manage the added burden.  But did this really warrant a 66% price increase?

It was pointed out to me that another very real cost bandwidth consumption.  To put things in perspective, let’s look again at the amount of sims on the grid.  On February 13, 2008 (I would’ve preferred to find April’s numbers but I don’t know where to find that info so I used the wayback machine and this is what I got), there were 12,633 islands.  As of this writing, the Economic Stats page says there are 26,573 islands.  This would probably represent a HUGE jump in bandwidth consumption, especially if people are using their babysims for working and playing house, nevermind the clubs and malls.  I can’t say for sure how much bandwidth is used exactly, but one guesstimate I heard was maybe a terabyte for a babysim with a mall sitting on it.  I tried googling the subject and the most I got was Tateru Nino saying “a simulator can consume a ferocious amount of bandwidth”.

So… in light of all this, I have to concede that I can understand the price increase.  I think Linden Lab could stand to hire some experienced PR; if they’d taken more care with the way that previous announcement had been worded on their blog and had explained a bit more, I’m wondering if people still would’ve reacted quite so angrily as they did.

And, oh yes, that image that I slapped at the top of my post.    Ever since the babysim announcement, several friends have been faced with the decision to keep their babysims, drop them, or have them converted to full sims.  I don’t know, given the fact that the pricing is being increased by such a drastic increment, you’d think they’d be willing to cut loyal residents some slack and waive a conversion or moving fee, or two… but no, they aren’t.  And yet someone like Barb Carson is getting $100 USD discounts every month by paying grandfather tier rates on Class 5 sims?!

I understand wanting to ‘take care’ of your biggest clients and I know that Barb certainly ranks up there as one of the biggest, but really, if they can afford to give her huge breaks like this every freaking month then surely overlooking a $150 move & rename fee — which pretty much HAS to be done because of the new pricing policy — wouldn’t be too much for Linden Lab to absorb?