Gracile

Not too long ago, I took a quick break from SL to take a trip down to the local Renaissance Faire to have some fun shopping and being all dressed up. I had a plan to ask an artist there whose work I quite admired her permission to render one of her designs in Second Life. It was a design that had captivated me with it's incredible grace, wonderful character, and just pure Fabulousness, and I longed to make my own interpretation of it.

This artist's name is Bonnie Trivizas, of "Fowl Play", a featherworks shop in which she sells beautiful hat pins, fans, and of course, her notorious, and infamous... Swan Hat:


Wearing a hat like this changes the way you walk. It gets you noticed, it makes heads turn, but most of all it makes you into a completely different person. The spirit of the hat takes over, and if you were the sort of person who sits on the curb and eats a cheeseburger, you suddenly become the sort of person who wears white lace gloves and takes tea at Fortnam and Mason's.

When I asked Bonnie, (who is most amiable and wonderfully whimsical), she couldn't believe that I thought that her hat would sell. "God, of course!" I told her, "It's FABULOUS!". I think part of her still didn't believe me, so I especially am asking everyone who wears it to take pictures of yourself, and post it in the *~*Illusions*~* pool on Flickr. I'll be sending the links to Bonnie so she can see people enjoying having a swan on their head! And not only that...

If you love this hat enough in Second Life... you can have it in your first, and for a very modest price at that for the work that goes into it. If you're interested and have a bit of spare cash, you can IM Bonnie yourself at bonnie@fowl-play.biz. She doesn't have her website yet, but she's an absolute peach and a pleasure to talk to!

Now... this hat was full of collaborations, not just with Bonnie but also with Jen Shikami of Seven's Selections, who has the most incredible wings... but she also was able to do commisioned feather textures for me. Not only did she make me a beautiful collection of flawlessly alpha'd feathers... she also did UV wrapped textures for my sculpted feathers, which is what allowed me to layer my feathers without any alpha flicker worries at all. She did incredible work, and now I can finally, truly, use feathers in my work. The entire reason I hadn't touched the wonderful world of plumage was a lack of perfect textures. Now that I have them... it opens so many doors.


Gracile turned out so beautifully, that it was blogged before it was actually released. Celebrity Trollop beat me to the punch when I made the "mistake" of sharing it with her in a fit of happy, giddy excitement when I was taking pictures. Her response was very flattering, and in her wonderful bubbly way she evilly coerced me into giving her everything I'm working on right now XD That witchy woman!! And witchy indeed as you'll see from the post! And you can thank her for the fact that I'm pushing up the release of some Halloween yummies quite radically :)