Merry Christmas to All

I hope you all had a happy holiday, and if you didn't, I hope you at least got some swag to ease the pain.


I sent out presents to my update group on Christmas Eve, and I set them out underneath the tree at the store in case anyone missed them. Inside, you'll find three gift boxes that you can reuse for your own presents, a pair of wreaths (low prim and high prim), a red choker and matching arm bands (shown in my picture, with the wreath) a candy cane, and a blast from the past: the Christmas Indigo plushie. He matches the Merry Jingly coat and he's very snugglable.

I'm going to leave the holiday stuff out until January 1st. If you're wondering what will be taken down, it's everything with a little santa hat on the vendor. So the Lussinat crown, reindeer antlers, snowflake and merry jingly coats and the holly jewelry are all going to be stashed in my inventory until next year.

The only thing never going back up is the Odocoleinae Lumina of course. So if you want to get your hands on my amazing, flaming hot rack (hehe), you only have five days left.

I also would like to say... in this case, I'd be fine with someone reselling these. One of the reasons I hate doing limited edition items is that people end up regretting missing their chance. I would rather people still have a chance to grab one through opportunistic fans. If you want to grab multiple transferable ones and wait for a while, my guess is that the price will appreciate. Something tells me there will be a few desperate voices in the months to come asking Masqueraderie if there's anyone willing to sell a pair.

Lussinat: Happy Solstice

There's more than enough red hats and christmas lights and sexy santa outfits. They're everywhere, the jingling bells and the holly. But this year, as I think you guys noticed, I'm getting down to the older and deeper roots of yule. It was frightening, to have a long hard winter ahead of you, and be facing the longest nights of the year at a time in history which had no electric lights, and barely the flicker of a flame to keep the monsters of your imagination at bay. Come together and feast while you can, enjoy your family, because you could never be sure who might not make it through the cold.

From those times of fear, we have rituals of light. Hannukah, Yule, and the lesser known Lussinat.



Lussinat is the root of the modern St Lucia's day (most celebrated in Sweden), which is associated with the Christian St. Lucia/Lucy. The story of St Lucia's crown is that back in the days of the Romans, she gave sanctuary to persecuted Christians. She hid her fellow believers in the city catacombs, and needed both hands free to carry supplies. So, she fashioned a crown of candles to serve as a primitive miner's helmet. Today, young girls wear crowns of candles set in wreaths of lignonberry, and greet the morning of December 13th with pastries and a yummy breakfast. There's often a procession, where one girl wears the crown, and others follow with single candles in their hands.

But originally Lussinat was a celebration of the solstice, and less a celebration than something to be afraid of. Lussi, in the original Scandanavian pagan beliefs was a dark fairy or witch, who would ride with her followers in a wild hunt on the wind. In fact, in an odd way, she was the birth of a lot of the Santa Claus mythos, in that she flew, and would come down the chimney to punish bad children. And if you think about her chasing and hunting deer, it's not too much of a push to think of a sleigh chasing them instead, is it? That doesn't honestly have much to do with the crown, I just thought it was cool.

Also, I apologize for this being late, RL solstice/christmas comes first :)

The Odocoleinae Challenge

Apparently I inadvertently threw down the gauntlet with this quote:

I realized when I first put them on that the people able to wear these are few and far between. Me, Selos, and of course the incomparable Swirly Cyclone can all pull these off but... who else on the grid could be fabulous enough to wear these?

Terry Toland especially was eager to make me eat my words, and so she illustrated her Tale of the White Stag with my antlers. Winter Jefferson as well wanted to show me what's what with a winter ensemble, and so I decided to go ahead and make it official.

I hearby issue an (official) challenge, in the form of a Flickr contest, for you guys to rock your Odocoleinae antlers and make me revise that list of fabulous persons! The winners will receive the limited edition version of the antlers, or a 1750L refund for those that have already purchased a copy.

Here are the rules:

Wear the antlers (obviouslay)
Rock them righteously (a given)
Post them in the *~*Illusions*~* Flickr Group
I'd say title them with the challenge, but honestly... it'll be sort of obvious.
Get them in by Wednesday, December 31st to be counted

I'll be judging on composition, artfulness, awesomeness of outfit, and general fabulousness. I'm not sure right now how many people I'll choose to be winners, I'd like to keep that open in case more than a few people wow me. I might also bestow yummy extras to anyone who can really make my jaw drop ;)

(and yes, I believe it's oh-doh-co-leh-nay :)~ )

Ltd Ed: Odocoleinae Lumina

I haven't been really that Christmassy lately, even in my first life I only just put up my tree when it was ten days to go! People are sending out red and white things like mad, Santa is everywhere, all the TV shows are on their Christmas breaks and I'm... well... hmm.

I'm not Jewish, nor am I pagan, yet I'm very appreciative of the darkness of the winter solstice. On the solstice of course is the shortest day of the year, only a few hours of daylight before the longest night of the year. Many cultures have traditions revolving around keeping light through the long night. So being in the mood that I am to make antlers, I decided to make a way to keep a light with you while the night is at its longest.


On your head, of course. Beautiful drippy wax to fall into your hair, and bright dancing fire to catch your holiday decor aflame with. But seriously, I've been wanting to (and Selos has been nagging me to) make these ever since I first started working on antlers. They are also my first limited run item evar, since I felt they were a little too special and unique to be a normal release. I wasn't sure if I was even going to release the plain Odocoleinae so you can imagine how I feel about these.

After running into trouble with a lot of people being unhappy and upset at my limited number editions (the Gods of Illusions masks), I decided to never again do a limited number release. Too many people IM to ask and beg and then turn away sad and defeated that the mask they covet they can't have. So this is my first try at a limited run piece, and depending on how this goes there might be more unique things on the horizon.

I've included a copy of no transfer plain antlers with them, which is one of the reasons I told the folks who love them to hold off a bit if you were interested in the limited ones :) I've priced them at 1750L, and they'll be on sale until midnight SLT on January 1st. They still have the copy or transfer option, which is something I played with changing. I kind of like the idea of only the people who were there being able to have a pair, yet I realized people will want to give them as gifts or even hoard multiple copies and resell them much later. In that way, they might be a little less exclusive, but I hope everyone will be happy.

Oh, there's a built in light in order to get the proper candlelit glow; that picture was taken at the midnight setting with no other lights. Because of this, to get the best look I definitely suggest you don't wear a face light with them, or check and make sure your hair doesn't have any included lights in it either. They also look best with glow, as the candle flames are stationary prims and the glow gives it all of their flicker. But of course you can just try a demo and see how you feel about them, you don't have to take it from me ;)

Odocoleinae

I've been working on a slightly seekrit project, and then realized that what I was making has to be released on it's own, it's too awesome to be limited.

The Heorot antlers are an eighteen point buck antler. It's frankly unreal, really. Most of the largest, oldest bucks have about twelve to fourteen points (prongs, the sticky up things on the antlers), and a twelve point buck is known as a "royal" buck. A fourteen point buck is known as an "imperial".

What the hell would these be known as?
Odocoleinae is the genus known as the "new world deer". They're the moose, the white tailed deer, and the largest breeds that have the most marvelous and sought after antlers. Obviously there is no deer-ish name for just "epic awesome". I wasn't even sure if I was going to sell these. I realized when I first put them on that the people able to wear these are few and far between. Me, Selos, and of course the incomparable Swirly Cyclone can all pull these off but... who else on the grid could be fabulous enough to wear these?

It was Swirly who convinced me to just put them out. After all, how will my answer ever come unless I can see them out in the world being loved.



I'm planning a limited edition version of these, only available for a week or so. So if you're on a tight budget, save your pennies :)

Reindeer Antlers!

Everyone is looking to adorn themselves with something festive! What better than the headgear that is universally feared by pets and small children. All you need is a little red nose (not included)





I prefer to allow you to be your own reindeer. It's no fun to be Rudolph, working late on Christmas eve with a radioactive facial tumor. Best to be your own.

Good Gravy! 700!

700...

Is not the number of Spartans who marched south to Thermopylae.
Is not the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
Is not how many roads a man must walk down.

It is however, the number of people who are in my update group. O.O

I can't even begin to tell you how nifty that is. I posted on this blog, it feels like last month, about how my tally was somewhere around 400. I remember when I first moved to my island, my group was only 256 people! I remember when it was 64 people! 700! Whoa!


Ok, enough of that. I think I might have found the reason for my steady decline of sales since Thanksgiving... I checked my classifieds in my profile, and realized that two of them had dropped. One of those two being my main Illusions one with all of my keywords and pimpage. I know a lot of people don't trust in the power of classifieds on SL, but for odd and hard to find niche items they're absolutely necessary. Hopefully, now that I've updated my classifieds and added a few more, I'll see sales pick up again. If they do, thank goodness the problem was so easily pinpointed!

I also literally just found out about a wonderfully delicious possible improvement to my store, which would be implemented in feb or whenever my sim rebuild opens. That is, if it's possible, which I certainly hope it will be! No, I won't tell you any details, because if it falls through I want to be the only one with their hopes up.

Face of Felinity

Sales have been down a little recently, ever since the Thanksgiving. I figure people are either out spending real money on real gifts, or out working so that they are able to afford those real gifts. But in any case, I felt I should probably release something just to serve the purpose of waving my arms and going "lookamee!"

I have a few pairs of Christmas oriented antlers planned, but in the meantime, I wanted to release something more independant of them. Now that I have a basic animal head model from the deer mask, it won't be too hard to make a few more animals. My attempt at a wolf failed (again, still working on it) but thanks to it being a very familiar face, I made a feline. A face very similar to the one staring at me willing me to feed it, right now.

A cat mask was actually one of the first masks I made, and funnily enough I made it in November, 2006. So it only seems fitting that on its anniversary, I release the new one.

I did nine different patterns of fur, my favorite being the tortoiseshell shown in the picture. It was so darn hard to get the speckly-ness all right but darn it I got it and it's cuuuute. Also included in its loverly scriptasticness, are black, white, gray, tuxedo, blue point Siamese, seal point Siamese, tabby (or as close to tabby as I could get), and orange marmalade.

I'll admit right now that the tabby probably doesn't look too much like a tabby. "But why on earth are you releasing it Siyu, being the perfectionist that you are?" I hear you asking.

Why, because it's so adorable!
Who could resist that faaace? Don't you want to give it all of your turkey leftovers?

So yeah, apparently even though tabbies are crazy common, I hope this one slips by.

For the past few days I've been laboring over a tiny little model of the island. After poring over as much concept art and photos of landscapes and interesting architecture as I could get my hands on, I started sketching out a basic plan. Planning is something new and odd for me, as my masks and designs don't tend to have any more design steps than sketch->sculpt. Yet, that's currently what bothers me most about my island home, is that there was no planning involved and no forethought at all. I'm trying very hard to reign in the urges to wipe a spot clear and start building the new design, because I know as I keep working on the model, new problems and new ideas are going to spring up.

The model is just adorable though, seriously. Tiny little trees, tiny little columns, tiny little paths and tiny little views. The wonderful thing about planning out the sim in prims is being able to actually move my camera down into it, and see exactly how a view will be from any given spot. Right now I'm playing with the pallet of colors and textures, but here is my plan so far:



The basic layout, clockwise from the top left: my store (temple), market, fairy grove (alternate event area), towers (homes), old courtyard (fishing area and sandbox) bonzai island (my sandbox), and out on its own grand little cliff is the event hall.

There are still little bits of wood in there, because obviously it's not finished. I have grander plans for the columns and architectural details, but this is just an idea of the style and size of each structure.

That border around the upper part of the island is going to be a huge stone wall, like a levee, which is just going to drop off to a sheer cliff. I especially like the enclosed, cozy feeling a very large island can get when it's walled in, considering that an open island can feel a bit vulnerable. I also like the excuse for a slope, without a mountain.

This is by no means a surefire "the island will look like this" plan, but so far I managed to cram in a lot of fun stuff and I've accomplished most of the goals that I wanted from it. Feel free to offer feedback and suggestions on things you want to make sure I don't miss :)

Ack, ok.

Well, my brain is like a badly trained terrier. When it grabs hold of something it will rip and tear at it despite possible harm to itself. Until something else shows up to grab and tear at.

So yes, I put a lot of work into the tree houses. A lot of work into the island. A lot of work into my event hall and my current store building. And guess what I can't let go of? I want to tear it all down.

Ok before you get scared that what you love will be gone forever... take a moment to breath and have faith that whatever I do make will still have my aesthetic. It will still have the same feel and the same mood, and the same peace about it. I intend to keep the same pallet and feel of golden stone and forests, but I intend to make it a bit more overgrown and more integrated.

What bothers me now is that most of the island was designed when I only had half of it, and despite my efforts, it still feels divided. It doesn't feel cohesive. It doesn't use the land efficiently and there's a lot of wasted space. Meanwhile, again, my abilities have improved and I have more landscaping tools at my disposal. My goal is to finally have a unifying theme that will work for all of the buildings that I need. My main store, event hall, homes, and limited commercial rentals, all need to work together with my pretty spots and a fishing area.

I've been looking at a lot of concept art, and I've decided even though more extreme things (like an elven swamp, or an underwater Atlantis) seem like a lot of fun, and I could certainly make them, they're impractical and this needs to be something I could live happily with for more than a year.

So I asked myself a question. Would you guys want to move in to the treehouse for two months, to have the sim be rebuilt during January, or just wait until you see the final product?

I've wanted to change the sim ever since I first had it transferred to my name, but without time or planning I threw something together so I wouldn't just have empty space. My brain tends to be so devoid of architecture and landscaping, I couldn't do it without heavy inspiration, planning and forethought. I built the tree houses because I was so sure I would not be able to handle tier on my own... but as I worked on them, my ears and pirate sets carried me through and I realized I could handle it. I break even on my expenses vs income from SL, but in the tough times to come I have the urge to start making enough profit to start saving, and for that I need rentals. I've been blessed with this time to be able to start serious planning, and to build floor plans and models and pieces ready for setting up through January.

As for the Christmas season, I'll be putting out my christmas coats and hats again, and I'll be finishing up a few random projects just to keep releases coming. I hope you guys aren't too worried about the island, really it'll be for the better.

I'm sure you've gotten used to my sort of patterns of a flurry of activity, followed by a long silence.

In that long silence, I'm dickying around and doing absolutely nothing productive, which is why I am silent, so that you don't hear about how proud of my Guild Wars character I am or how I ate mashed potatoes (mmm potaters). But I feel I do need to post about a few things.

Nyx Linden has started a regular office hour on Wednesdays at 12pm SLT, at his place in Borrowdale (I'll post a slurl when I get a chance). The focus is completely on content creation, and tools and suggestions that would make owning a business easier. Things like per pixel shading, mesh import, inventory controls or permissions systems are high on the list of discussion topics, so if you have anything you'd like to see in regards to content creation, maybe you should swing by next week :)

Also, there was some news about open spaces recently. For folks who don't really know, Openspace sims were introduced some time in April as an alternative sim for people who couldn't afford a full region at $1000 and $295 a month. They sold like delicious home made pancakes in an Amsterdam kafe and now, half a year later, LL decided to raise the price on them to a point hardly anyone could afford. Despite some haggling and some "compromises" they're pretty much still going through with the price hike. With this current bad news and with the knowledge a few of my friends and loyal regulars might soon be SL homeless, I've decided to open the tree houses to inquiries about rentals.

After being able to support myself on the sim this long, I've decided to go a little easier on the prices. The looming recession we're about the enter into had a little to do with it as well. As I've mentioned before I'm going to have both lofts and full apartments, and the difference will be size and prim allotments, and of course price.

I haven't figured out anything solid yet, but I'll get back to you when I have the actual numbers. You can start contacting me in world though, if you know for sure you want a spot. If you're still not sure until you actually see the prices, then don't worry, my next post should be a more detailed description with pictures of what you'll be getting.

Goblin King and Queen

So on Friday night, as always, the two best costumes at the masque were awarded with never before seen event masks, made especially for the king and queen of the masquerade. In this case, the Goblin King and Queen





In the case of the Goblin King, I wanted something inspired by the mask that Jareth wore in Labyrinth. I did know I didn't want to deal with the challenge of a handled mask (aaaaaaagh animations!), but I knew I wanted horns and a skeletal hand incorporated in it. A bunch of joints and a delicately made human hand later, I was starting to play with it. I brought up one of my mask bases and started playing with carving out shapes in the forehead and eye area, with a space for the horns, and then brought it all together in world. It was a lot of fun moving the hand around and seeing how I wanted it, when I found that the thumb moved so well into the eyebrow groove I knew I'd found how I wanted it.

After that, I knew immediately how I wanted the queen, looking like she had her head in her hands but also looking out almost from a cage of bones. This one, if I was ever to make a handled mask work, would be the first to be converted.

Despite the names of King and Queen, I tried to make sure that both would fit on either gender, unlike my other event masks. So if you're a guy and you don't mind wearing something with "queen" in the name (you'd sleep on a queen sized bed right?), you're welcome to wear it!

The Goblin's Night

Last night I was delighted to see the creatures of the forest called from their lairs to dance about and frolic to the pipes and beats of their native music. The costumes, as always, were incredible and only helped immerse us in the feeling of an unseelie gathering.




Elegant fairies danced and happily shared company with goblins, fauns, and... whatever this is.


As always though, a Goblin King and Queen had to be chosen from the crowd, for who would wear the royal masks? A vote was held amongst those gathered there, and two of most regal countenance were chosen: Mourna Biziou and Norathiel Silvera. They were given the masks of their station, and gifted with some "campaign funds".


The two masks will be released tomorrow :)

Oh, yes, and due to popular demand, the playlist that I used for the ball has been posted here, for your perusing and shopping pleasure!

The Magnificent Horn Post, Prt 2

Alright, so the thing that started it all to make me remake all those textures were the aforementioned antlers. Aaaah beautiful antlers that I delighted in taunting you with. But, I also realized that while small horns are cute and lovely, sometimes it's a lot of fun to wear big demonic or primal ones.

To start with, a cute pair of horns I was going to make one of the 100L expression ones, but I actually forgot to take a picture of it and so I lost that perfect camera angle. I also realized these were harder to do and more complex... so they're a whole 20L more, oh noes!

Cernwn is the Welsh name for "Cernunnos", who is a Celtic god often associated with horned animals, and ram horns. But he took on his own life in Wiccan and neo-pagan mythology, becoming more than just a ram headed snake and became the "Lord of the Wild Things", which is why I devoted another pair of horns to him.

Mmmm feel the manliness! He's commonly referred to as just "The Lord" in neo-pagan rituals, and is normally invoked to represent the forces of masculinity.

"Ba'al" is actually just a Hebrew word for master, or lord, so there are many Hebrew gods who ended up falling into the name, including some humans who were in positions of power. Most commonly though, Baal applies to a cultist image of a false god. He isn't depicted particularly with horns... but looking at them the name came to me. Some fun trivia, the term "Beelzebub" is actually a pun, based off of "Baal Zebul", which means "Lord Prince" and was an honored and divine title. "Baal Zebub" means "Lord of the Flies" which was a term that was coined to mock the followers of Baal Zebul and later evolved into a term for the devil.

Baphomet was actually a badly garbled name for Muhammad.. that was some crazy telephone game up from the Crusades, huh? He isn't normally depicted with these types of horns, due to a very famous drawing by Levi, but I was having enough trouble thinking of horned gods as it was :P But, I had to make a special set of horns especially for Herne.

Herne the Hunter was a ghost of English folklore, who's roughly based on Cernunnos but is based off of a story of King Richard II of England. The story goes that on a hunting trip, Herne accompanied the king where he cornered a white stag, but the stag attacked the king, and Herne sacrificed himself to save him. According to legend, he was brought back to life by a wizard who made Herne wear the antlers of the stag as a part of the ritual. In exchange, he lost his ability to hunt, and he was hung by the King's other hunstmen for keeping the loot to himself.

Yeeeaah... well... avoid huntsmen and kings and you should be ok wearing these, I hope. Let me know if you end up in any oak trees.

These horns aren't actually what I'd call antlers, only antler inspired...those are still to come ;)

The Magnificent Horn Post, Prt 1

Like the soda that you drink and leaves an ache in your tummy, I had an enormous burp of creations I had to release before my cramp would go. I have had a few sets of antlers done since April, and a lot of people have been feeling taunted and teased by them. However, I refused to release them until I was happy with them, because that's what I do! The textures were absolutely unsatisfactory, and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to get them to the point where I wanted them.

Beware, there are four posts in this epic release, so settle in, get a drink and munch on some popcorn or something.

Well, I finally broke through that about a week ago. Since then, I've been working non-stop, making and upgrading horns and horny accessories. So to start off and show off the new textures a bit, and since this is a monstrous release (hehe), part one of this batch is going to be the remade horns I released over a year ago. These are all horns you've seen before, but I'm posting them because I just love the pictures. Each name is a verb, which can conveniently be expressed through a facial expression.

(Grrrrrrr!)

(Tehehe)

(What's that over there?!)

(Hrumph)
(Ooo gonna nom some skittles)
(You ate my skittles!? GRRRRRR!)

Obviously I had a ridiculous amount of fun playing with how I could use and combine the Linden default facial emotions to get fun effects. I also had a lot of fun seeing all those simple, cute, and adorable horns again. I realized I should make a few more and make it a nice block of nine. Which meant I could take more pictures! Hehehe >:D

(Nrmph!)

(Nyaarrr!)
Unlike the old horns, these all change texture to a selection of twelve different ones. Gold, silver and copper are all included as well as black, white, gray, bone, bleached bone, polished bone, light tipped, white tipped and dark tipped. This has made my job much easier, as well as serving as a fatpack, which is why the prices for the horns has gone up to 100L per from 45L. I think you'll agree that that's a fine compromise :)

I took all of these pictures with Selos' Heart skin, even though I ended up not showing off her scalp tattoo at least you still get to enjoy the makeup!

I've also started using an updated version of Miriel's vendors, which passes you a folder rather than a box for your object folder. What this means is I won't need to use boxes, which saves you having to unpack your things and saves me a lot of time on more complex releases.

More coming up in Prt 2 :)

The Magnificent Horn Post, Prt 3

Hahaha, I can't stop doing it, I always am such a tease with my glorious antlers. But I might as well finally scratch your itch and reveal my cards.

Most of the names of these are subgenuses of Cervidae, which is the sort of "deer" category.

A Sika is an east Asian deer, whose antlers were commonly used for medicinal purposes in Japan and China. They are very hard to hunt, as they are extremely clever and tenacious, and a single rifle shot will very rarely take them down. To my knowledge, they tend to have smaller antlers than other deer, but this is based on me looking at pictures :)~

Cervinae is the genus of "Old world deer" or "true deer". These are extremely classic, iconic deer antlers. They'd be found on any red deer or white tailed deer... except females obviously :P Not in my reality of course, girls can totally wear antlers! After all, where else could you have such a large, glorious and attention grabbing rack?
Seriously, who could keep their eyes off of a rack like that? Excuse me, my eyes are DOWN HERE.

Anyway, a "heorot" is the old English root for "hart", which is a stag. A heorot more specifically is a red deer male who has reached five years or older. The older a stag gets, the more glorious his antlers can grow, because they don't always fall off during the mating seasons.


I don't have much to say about this one, except to just say... watch out for Sarah Palin.

The Magnificent Horn Post, Prt 4

This is my last post of my Magnificent (and epic) Horn Post, but I'm well aware that your eyes are tired. However, please retain some enthusiasm, because believe it or not I've saved the best for last.

Now, how could I give you glorious antlers without something to wear with them?

The Deer mask is quite similar to my horse mask, in that the ears are included and there are different fur colors, based on common colors of deer. Bay, sorrel, chestnut, black, silver and white. NO I did not include a pink deer... I couldn't bring myself to do that you crazy people. I know you guys saw this one coming... but you didn't see THIS!! *throws something and makes a brilliant flash, and a bunch of smoke appears and reveeaals...*


Roaaaaaar. *snort*. Does this raise any red flags? Do you feel yourself overcome by labyrinthitis? These puns are all an ox-ident. Do you feel a need to axe me to stop bull-ying you? I'm feeling tauran about stopping. But ok I'm done XD


This beautiful minotaur head looks best on a big muscly strapping young lad, but I found I could really make it work on a lady too. The nose ring can change metal or disappear if you don't want to be domesticated, and the chest and head change texture like the deer mask. There are some issues with the chest piece and head piece not going well together if your AO makes you do more extreme head movements. Tilts to the side and some chest movements back with your head forward can show the seam, but in most cases you'll be good.

If you're wondering, the outfit is from The Body Politik's orc avatar, paired with Riann Maltese's faun legs

Now go get Theseus, that bastard! ;)

Two Years, Our Second Rezday

Yesterday was my and my dear friend Kriket's second rezday. We share our rezday and I see her quite like a SLister (tehe). I threw a party on the Indigo Rose, and shared some of the new music I have while I DJ'ed! Kriket and I asked everyone to dress up in purple or cyan, 'cause those are our respective favorite colors, and we danced away while sorting our inventories and making jokes about ham.

It's almost hard to believe I've been in SL for two years. Everyone says that, but it's true. Sometimes it feels like it's only been two years, and sometimes it feels like whoa two years O.o. While dancing, I pulled out some of the first things I ever made or bought... including the Mask That Started It All! Aquired October 27th, 2006, soon followed by my first ever mask that I made, marked November 3rd, 2006. Man... soon it'll be two years from my first mask! Wow, aren't I an oldbie! :)~

Anyway... I just am so very grateful I'm getting a chance to do what I love, full time. Being self employed on SL has its ups and downs, its problems and its benefits, and of course its hair yanking moments... but I'm very happy to be given the chance to be what I've wanted ever since I was a little girl. An artist.

Oh, and a beautiful Asian woman. Woot!

A sign of happy things to come:

Jewelry Exposition 2008

Yaaaaaaay! It's finally here, the second annual Jewelry Exposition hosted by my very good friend, Miriel Enfield. She's been through an awful lot of headaches to arrange as lag free and pleasant expo experience as possible, and so far, from what I've seen, wildly succeeded. So I just want to put a thank you to her, right at the top, for hosting it and organizing it again this year. Your hand is very evident as I move about the sim and things are taking only seconds to rez.

Originally, the expo folks had taken a vote on whether to do an Arabian Nights theme or a water theme, and water won. Apparently, not in my reality.

Remember this?


For ages I've had "remake sculpted, good veils without alpha flicker" on my to-do list. Especially remaking this Suleika veil, which, until I retired it, was my favorite and best selling veil. As lovely as it was, it just wasn't good enough to withstand my vicious scrutiny.


So the veil is back, and it brought matching accessories! A necklace, earrings, and arm cuffs can now go with the delicate tracery of chains. I end up having to keep answering "yes, they're prims!". The size may seem unreal, because I used a very diminutive chain link made by Miriel (yes, that Miriel, is my love for her obvious? I'm unashamed) which allows me to go even smaller than Aminom's lovely chains.

If you're noticing up top where it says that it's no transfer, don't worry, you still will have your options to get transfer/copy with the individual pieces, which are available underneath the main board. That picture up there is for the fatpack, and so like all of my fatpacks it's only mod/copiable. The different pieces you can get are the necklace and earrings (together), the veil, the headpiece or a pair of the arm cuffs.

It's scripted to change to six different metal textures, as well as twelve different stone and scarf colors. The scarf was a real struggle with me, I've never been comfortable with textures and I was scraping texture resources and stock photos looking for something I could use. In my venting my frustration, my lovely fiance offered to hand paint a texture for me. He had made banners for some of his friends and so he just modified it beautifully for me, and then I took care of the colors. So yay Siyu's man!

Anyway, Suleika wasn't the only thing to come from my head being stuck in a middle eastern fantasy. The first piece I did was actually just playing with sculpted pieces I had created in hopes of making headdresses. The results were surprising, and beautiful.

This sort of thing makes me happy. Danglies, tiny prims, little frilly bits, shiny things, all coming together to accent the beauty of your virtual expression of self. So this is why I made a few more, 'cause I can't help myself.




Now, already and just from wearing this around my circle of friends, I've had suggestions, requests, pleads and desperate supplications for me to make matching silks for these. I have to speak plainly that the likelihood of that happening right now is very low. I have quite a bit to do before Halloween and then I'll be simscaping Dreams Anubis's place, and then figuring out what I'm doing for the holiday season. So maybe if you're lucky good girls and boys, you'll have silks under the tree :)

Well, even if you're not necessarily going to be good, you'll still get a present at my stall. I've set out a remake of a design I first made three months after my rezday, which even then I didn't feel was good enough to put out in my humble little establishment. It's had a long hard road to freebiedom my friends, but finally it can be worn and enjoyed in its newfound sculpted glory.

(The pendant, I just took this with the veil as a nice excuse to be pretty). It's texture change like the other pieces, and can sort of serve as a demo for the stones and metals :)

Oh, yes, and about that. I've changed the textures for the metals, so there are new colors. The copper and gold aren't quite the same as my other jewelry and items, but obviously they're pretty close. I added a new color, rose gold, which looks beautiful with the red, and absolutely overflowing in estrogen with the pink scarf.



These items are only available at the Jewelry Exposition until the end of this week, when they'll be set out on the store wall :)

Phew...

Last night I stayed up until sun rays were pouring into the room, working on jewelry for the Expo. That's what I get for procrastinating! But I've always performed well when there's a strict deadline on me... just normally I let it go flying by. But when I actually do it the results are always good! This stuff is no exception.

I'll be doing a release post on Sunday, but I'll tease you and let you know the pieces are a middle-eastern theme. Most of it is definitely not your typical jewelry and I think I'm really going to stand out at the expo... if I can finish my stall!

Back to work with me, but hang in there ^_^

Gronch & Grim

If there is any other time of the year aside from Mardi Gras that keeps me busy, there's no doubt it's Halloween. With the jewelry expo coming up in almost a week, Halloween in a month, I need to get the many things I've been sitting on out from under my butt and out onto the walls of the store.

My last post was about the Goblin Masque, but how could I expect you to show up all gobliny if I don't give you something to work with? The next masks and accessories I release (exempting the new jewelry for the expo) will all be something you could wear to the masque!

Starting with Gronch

This is a much darker mask than I normally make, obviously. I think my favorite part about it, is that its asymmetrical. I noticed when I changed my head angle in my AO, turning and shifting its position changed its expression completely, so one moment it was giving you a devilish eyebrow, the next it was giving you a grim and solemn look. It's extremely versatile and looks good on women and men. I also strayed a bit from my usual pallette of rich true colors, to give it darker, grittier and more washed out look. You can see the colors when you try the demo :)

Speaking of grim...
Again, a very different mask from my normal repertoire. Who would have thought I had it in me! This one was very tricky to get right, but inspired and egged on by my friend Melly she pushed it to be what it is. Apparently this mask is kind of from a movie called Army of Two. Kind of, because Melly showed me a picture and told me what she liked about it, and then I took it and what I liked about it, and as usual made it my own. I wanted it to seem less like a mask than another face almost, sort of like your entire head. The mask has the same sort of dark, muted pallette of colors as Gronch, and they look great with fantasy colored skins. The buckles I put on for myself, and then realized they looked so good I'd keep them. The best part about them is that they work seamlessly with hair, so that anything other than the shortest of short hair or mohawks will hide them perfectly.

Auntie Siyu is coming by for dinner!

Oh, and because I think I might be asked, and also because I think this outfit is AWESOMESAUCE, here are the deets:

Top/Pants outfit: Meltdown by The Abyss
Jacket: Steampunk Jacket by Out of the Blue
Skirt: Can't remember the name, but it's by +Susie+
Hair: Gibson Girl by Miriel
Eyes and Skin: []TRAP[], and the grayscale skin should be released in October.