I upgraded to Windows 10 this afternoon, and now my AMD graphics card doesn't work. Ugh. I am waiting for a working driver, or some kind of fix for it. What a pain. However, I am SO glad that I snapped today's photo yesterday, before I upgraded, because I don't know exactly when my card will work again. I heard the latest AMD drivers doesn't help the issue I'm experiencing, so I will continue to wait.

Anyway, my husband bought me an early birthday gift a couple days ago - a Wacom tablet! I've been wanting one for ages, and am over the moon that he got me one. Lolita's Sun is Shining in SL project was the absolute perfect opportunity for me to try it out! I spent a good portion of yesterday finding the perfect location on our sim and sky setting to snap this photo. The photo itself turned out great! However, I spent a good portion of last night playing with my Wacom tablet, editing it. I love how it came out, it's really fabulous. It really shows off the fashion in today's SL, and the beauty of our sim.

I am still trying to get the hang of the Wacom tablet, it's completely different than anything I have ever played with before, but I hope it will make editing photos better for me! We'll see, I still have lots of practice to do with this thing - of course it doesn't help that I have NO artistic ability whatsoever. Haha!

My in world profile has been so outdated! I took some time today to take a good photo to add to my profile. I have also updated the old photos on this blog to reflect the newer photos of me. It had been so long since they were updated, it was long past time!

I mentioned previously that on my return to SecondLife, Sai will not be creating anymore. However, I need something to get me out of my skybox and in the world. I have decided to get a job - a hosting job, specifically. All my talk about SL lately has also gotten my RL/SL husband considering coming back to it as well. When I told him I was considering a hosting job, he started contemplating DJ'ing again. So we'll see how that pans out.

I, however, had applied at a couple of clubs in SL, and arranged an interview today. It went well, and they had decided to hire me, yay! So, I'll be officially hosting in a club from now on. I am actually excited for it, excited to have a reason to come off of my land, and socialize with people. Even before I left SL, I never really talked to people, and was really in my own little world. I'm hoping to change that now. The fact that I'll be making enough money to feed my horses and pay my tier is definitely a bonus!

Be on the lookout for photos from the club I'll be working at soon!

I went to restart the sim my husband (eee! Haha, I'm such a dork) and I live on, and needed a place to go for a few minutes.... so I decided to go to Redgrave and check out if they have any new shoes. Little did I know... I wouldn't even make it to the shoes, instead I'd be standing there trying on skin demos.

I've always liked Redgrave skins. I love the cleavage on them, and the shininess of the body... well, shininess on the paler bodies, the orange colored skin tone with the shine always looks a little dirty to me. The faces look sooo cute one most people. But never me. At one point, I tried every single skin in the store, but still couldn't make them work on me.

Well, I had some time to spare, and I picked up a couple demos again, and tried them on. I came to one of the skins and actually did a double take at it. It didn't look that bad :O I did something - I swore to myself I'd never do: I modified my shape to fit this skin. Mainly just my lips, but still.

Then, instead of packing up more boxes to end the night, I decided to pretend I'm a photographer, snap some photos and post process them. xD I'm such a procrastinator, its really sad. I have 2 days until I move, and I'm still sitting here playing with photos and blogging. xD

I think, the photos I did turned out pretty darn good. I found out how to put a pattern in the background the easy way, and found out how to take a green screen out of the SL photo. I love this skin on me, and I actually think I might keep it for a while. Jeffry doesn't seem to mind, he seems to be like the 'whatever makes you happy' kind of mood with skins. xD


I even cropped it a bit, to make this my new profile photo! \o/ Can I just say, how much I love love love the lips on this skin? I'm really not fond of the eyebrows, and I can't seem to get them how I like them, but the lips make the face worth it. :D And yes, I LOVE this Farrah hair... its so perfect for photos. And don't even get me started on the clothes I bought from fri.day during the Labor Day sale.... *fashion squee!*

Now, its time I run off to do some more procrastinating by taking a nap! :D

I blogged about the Harvest Faerie gown from Sparkle Skye on Fashion Labyrinth, my fashion-ish blog, but, it just screamed at me to take more pictures of it - only, it called for a more natural environment. I asked the Ch'Know group if they knew of any "autumn" type sims, and one of the suggestions was Tempura Island. So, I headed there, and it was the PERFECT setting for what I wanted (Thank you Nikki!).

It's actually been a while since I did something like this, and I was reminded about how frustrating it was. I am such a freak with getting poses the way I like, lining up the camera.... but then just as I am about to snap my picture, someone walks behind me, stop, slumps over, and goes in Away mode. *bangs head on desk*


However, I think they came out well, and I did photoshop them slightly to make the colors richer. I do kinda feel bad when I say "I photoshopped them", because what I did was just added a blur and changed the layer settings, but they are not straight out of SL.


And, I think this might be the best picture I've ever taken. I think it is absolutely perfect, with how I wanted the mood to be, the colors, and the pose. I think it's beautiful. ^^ If there was one thing I would change, is to be a little taller, so the bottom of the gown shows. But still, it holds it's own charm ^^

OMG. I've been sooooo busy since yesterday. Right after I finished the new ad template, I set to work on actually making the ads. I am totally excited because - I finished the ads for the mega-release on Wednesday! :D And, I think I want to share a few preview ads with you guys. ^^

Sorry, I branded both images with a giant "Preview" word across them, because I don't really want people to skim through and get confused that I'm releasing them, when I'm really not ready yet. XD

I am very happy with how this AO turned out. As I've said before, my goal with this was to create something natural, and I created this, based on how I stand IRL. I had actually gotten up out of my desk chair several times while making these, and copied how I stood. O.o; They might be boring to some people, but its really not dramatic at all. ^^ I hope this will help a few newbies out, in the long run.


The long awaited sword poses! I know several people have been waiting for these, and I apologize to them. TT_TT This was actually the last ad I completed, because I had no clue what to wear for the pictures! I wanted to wear a hakama, or some kind of kimono, but because they all had system skirts, that wasn't an option for me (I hate all system skirts!). So, I settled on this funky harem outfit thing I bought at an Analise sale a while ago. It looks more like a warrior outfit to me, than a harem thing. XD

Also, I have to say: I am extremely happy with my new template. I love the updated look, the background, the letters, the colored permissions, the gray scale look... its really the look I've been going for :D When I created the last template, my theme was to be "Silly", but as IE grew, I wanted a more, serious, elegant feel to it. This template, I think, says a lot to me. ^^

I felt utterly drained from making templates, ads, and finishing pose sets all night/morning - I kinda needed to do a little bit of exploring. I actually became fond of this outfit while taking sword pictures with it, so I wanted to go take pictures in the environment in was meant for. Which, I believe would be a Gor sim. However, I really didn't want to go into a random RP sim, and end up being collared against my will.

With the help of Cen, I was able to find a great no-RP Gor sim to tour around in, and snap a few pictures. And, I also learned a bit about Gor, as I hounded her with silly questions. XD


I was happy to have found this place - it was fun to tour around, and look at the Gor lifestyle, without having to worry about becoming someone's slave... or something. They have a few beautiful things, like bridges... but my favorite was this area here. Its pretty, with whirlpools and really nice looking waves. :D


Shipwrecks seem to be common in this Gor sim. It seems everywhere I turned, there was a shipwreck. XD I think it adds to the photo opportunities as well. :D Curious in checking out some Gor-themed scenery without the RP? Check it out here: Thassa (249, 128, 23).

BTW - Since when did Deviant Kitties retexture their hairs? I loooooved their black color, now it seems really light. I had to darken the one I wore to the Gor sim and in the katana ad by A LOT to get it to look black. I'm really depressed about this, because they used to have my favorite black hair texture.

I need some non-ad making relaxation, and I just bought Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly, so I'm off for some terrifying PS2 playing! T_T

I got in a HUGE blowout with some asshole on the road this morning, so I figure I'd make a blog post, to try to calm down. Its been like 3 hours, and I'm still seething. -.- I really wish people would stop being such jerks. -.- So, I apologies if I seem negative today; I'm not in a good mood XD

Anyway, I took this picture a while ago - after I purchased additional makeups for my favorite skin. I was playing with windlight settings, trying to get the sky and environment to match my makeup. I failed, considering the sky is more purple than my makeup, but I was ultimately pleased with the outcome.

My boat is a fantastic place to take pictures - There are just so many different ways to pose around it, that it makes it really fun. I've also taken a liking to fishing on it - its fun. :D


And, I took this picture right after fishing. I've been wondering why my water doesn't sparkle with my windlight settings - but after playing with the sun position, I've finally fixed it. I get really fantastic sparkly water now - so this was made to show that ^^

OMG, I think I've finally lost my mind. Well, maybe. I finished a male pose set last night, and at that time, I realized.... I don't have a male model anymore! Bats modeled with me for my poses and couple's poses, but now that he is gone.... I don't have anyone to model them. I am very anti-social, and my friends list only contains 3 females. So, I was at a loss, and at the time, I had no idea what I was going to do to make ads for them.

I pondered for a bit, went to eat dinner in RL... and came up with an idea. I'll make a man alt! I had thought about this before, so I could include men's fashion on Fashion Labyrinth, but I quickly decided not to do it because Bats was always there to do all my modeling needs. So, last night, I used my lack of SL man knowledge to create a man alt... And now, I bring to you.... Nuai Kumaki!

The sad part... he looks oddly similar to Bats. Bats was my ideal guy in SL, and whenever I said something looked great, he always had no problem going out and buying it, no matter what the cost... so it was difficult to find something that was a unique look to Nuai.... and not just making a personality-less copy of Bats. So, I chose a darker toned Abyss skin, and Naughty Designs hair for him. (And gave him a spare pair of eyes I had).

I think he looks pretty cute :D So, you will probably be seeing Nuai in a few of my store ads, and occasionally in a few Fashion Labyrinth posts. ^.^

And omg I need to say a little rant here - men's shapes and skins are so freaking expensive! Seriously, his shape was $1000L (which I am so glad Kmadd finally switched to Copy/Mod permissions... those No Mod shapes are such a pain!), and the Abyss skin was $2000L! Like, holy crap. I've always wondered why men in Second Life always wore the default newbie skin - the prices of good skins are so intimidating! TT_TT

I asked to be part of the iheartsl.com community blog, and when I was invited to it, I had no idea what to write for my first post. I knew I wanted to post a picture of me on there, but I didn't know what to wear, or what to portray, or anything. Then one day, I stopped worrying about it, and just wore what I wanted, and picked a pose that was like me - goofy, amusing, and totally dorky. This is the picture I came up with:

Fitting, no? I am glad and pleased it came out well... at least I think so. So, yesterday, I posted my first, introductory post on iheartsl.com. You can read it here, if you are interested. :D

Also, I realized my profile picture was out of date. It was taken back when Bats had his Dante skin, and I had my Last Call skin... which was a long time. Both him and I have changed our skins since then, and I wanted a new picture. So, I dragged him into the sphere with me to get a new one! And, here is the result:


Because the profile picture space is so darn small, I only wanted the detail in our faces, rather than the upper body. So, there it is! I like it, and I think it shows us well. ^.^

I've been hearing alot about Tillie's Posing Stand, so I hopped on SLExchange and bought it. I have been using a HUDDLES to hold and flip through all my poses, but I was getting bored, and I felt like trying something new.

This thing comes with a HUD that lets you flip through your poses, show/hide the stand, and even rotate your stand for the perfect shot. Sorry, don't mind my other HUDS hanging around my screen - I totally forgot to detach them before I took pictures.

Now, this is pretty cool and all - but... I have found an annoyance. Because I wear so many HUDs at one time (Mystitool, AO, Tiny Empires, HUDDLES, Trader Alert, Couple's Animator... O.o), I really need to be able to move the hud around to fit around everything else. Well.... when I move this, every time I click a button on it, it goes back to default position. I usually have all my HUDs situated and I wish I was able to move this around permanently. *cries* I will try this a few more days to see if I can get used to new HUD positions and such.

I am soooooo excited about this latest Windlight release! For the past couple releases, I got no water reflections, unless I render the pretty sky too. That was a real bummer for me, because I loved the water more than the sky, and when I turn on the pretty sky option, my PC has spaz attacks. However, this release brought back the reflections without the sky for me! OMG, I'm so excited! I wanted to take a few shots with the water, so I put on a bikini and headed out to the place I spend a lot of my time - the beach of Bats' and my home.


Another thing I'm excited about - transparent objects stay transparent! OMG, it was sooooo annoying zooming out of something, and seeing all the invisible things. Really messed up pictures with various particle emitters, facelights, and hair with alpha textures. It really drove me nuts.

I wish though - that snapshots would be fixed. I can't use snapzilla anymore because everytime I attempt to send anything smaller than my screen size, it only captures a tiny bit of the image. TT_TT So, to take pictures, I have to save them to hard drive, resize them in Photoshop, and upload them. So much work TT_TT

I bought this windblown hair, and thought this was the perfect time to play with windlight. I wanted to get a good shot of it. ^^ I love this hair, and it is totally awesome for pictures. I'm not very creative with finding good locations to take pics, so I just went out to the beach of Bats' and my home and started snapping. Turned out pretty well, I think ^^

Its been a while since I went exploring. I love The Far Away, with all its wheat field goodness, so I was curious if there was something similar. After coming across this post, I did an "OMG!" and tp'ed there as soon as I could log in. This place is really pretty with corn fields, tall grass, and I managed to get some pictures.


Though, this latest version of Windlight messed up almost every good photo opportunity I had. Transparent items are visible from a distance, and almost every shot I wanted, I was able to see gross, distracting white boxes.


But, I did find a few places to take pictures. This place was fun, and I'll definitely be returning to get more pictures in the flower fields.

SLURL: The Garden of Afterlife, Southhampton dAlliez (63, 124, 22)

Hehe, I thought this was a cute idea, so I couldn't help myself! Make your own at MagMyPic.com.

Anyways, I was sick pretty much all weekend, and when I came online, all I wanted to do was shop. Suddenly, my AO seemed boring, so I set off on a venture to find new animations. My AO is one of the most important items that I own, and throughout my time in SL, my criteria for the perfect one has changed. Before, it used to be good as long as the typing animation doesn't show. Then, after a few more AOs, I wanted something with a lot of fluid movement, one that is cute, does not show head movement, and something that has a bit of class. Typing animation really doesn't matter anymore.

A while ago, when I was looking for an new AO to get away from my DNA one, I shopped around for a bit, and came across Vista Animations. The stands were perfect, not quite fit to my body, but I didn't mind that - I really liked them. Walks, flying animations, hovers - those were not the best. So, I used compiled animations from all different places... as I've blogged before.

I get bored easily with looking at certain things, so it was only natural for me to get bored with this AO. So, over the weekend, I headed back to Vista Animations, and shocked myself at how many more stands I purchased! I was even scared that I would run out of memory in my Zhao! I found some amazing ones in several of the different vendors. Vista Animations has become my favorite place to buy animations for my AO. I am really enjoying the one that I built for myself, and I tell you: the Zhao-II its much more easier to understand the second time! I breezed through the notecard this time.

However - I really liked the walk in my DNA AO. I had asked the creator if he would sell me just the walk from the DNA, but I never heard back from him. TT_TT Its the worst when a creator never gets back to me - a simple 'No' would have perfectly fine. -_-

Bats asked me to do a picture for his Picks portion of his profile, so I dressed up in my most favorite outfit and started snapping pictures in the Photosphere. I took several shots, with a few of my favorite skins, but this picture is definitely my favorite.

I took the image, then edited it a bit in Photoshop. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I smoothed my skin out, sharpened my lips and eyes, and made the whites of the eyes a little whiter. I really enjoy editing pictures like this - sometimes I wish he would ask me for more pictures. O.o

Gah~ its been a while since I updated. I've been totally obsessed with making poses, I haven't really felt like doing much of anything else. So, I suppose I will talk a little about pose making while I'm on the topic. While searching for, crazy, silly, having fun poses, I was disappointed in how few good ones there were out there. So! I decided to make my own! I shelled out quite a bit of lindens and purchased the in-world pose maker, The Mannequin.

This thing... is really nice. Its easy to use, you just click on one of the little silver guy's parts, and a menu will come up. You choose from the menu what you want the part to do, and the limb moves. Easy. However, at $5000L, its quite expensive. I love this thing, but there are quite a few limitations on the movements. Which really is not a good thing. I've struggled a lot to get the perfect pose, and failed because the limits are so great on this object. However, it was a good learning tool. I got the basics of moving limbs, uploading animations, and how the avatar moves. If you want to check this tool out, you can do so at Tink's Creations, Drakul (242, 188, 68).


After reading Natalia Zelmanov's recent blog post, I gathered my courage and jumped into Qavimator. I have only one word: WOW. This program is so easy (though, I have to admit: the cracky skin is kinda creepy). I'm not sure if my experience with the Mannequin helped me understand the movements or something, but Qavimator is extremely easy, free (well, besides the $10L animation upload fee), and allows me to move the limbs in the exact position I want them in.


Now - on to other things. Bats and I have sold our mainland Flounder house, and moved into a quiet, West facing residential lot that is on the edge of a sim. We have absolutely nothing on two sides of our little island. Its totally perfect for us.


I swear, we have the best sunset in SecondLife. I set up our favorite slow dance on the dock we made next to Bats' boat. So awesome to go out there after dressing up to dance and watch the sun set. ^_^


I've also moved my shop out of Flounder and into a commercial sim in the Azure sims. Its totally huge, with 1120 meters, and 384 prims. I have set up a separate blog for Imperial Elegance releases, if anyone is interested in reading about those type of stuffs.

Lets see here.... a few weeks ago, I purchased the personal version of the SmartSkirt script. I've played with it and noted the things I don't like about it, and the things I do like. So, last night, I went out and purchased the commercial version of it so I can use it in the skirts I sell in my shop. The skirts pictured above will be released at the Imperial Elegance shop on Wednesday, with the new SmartSkirt option. $4000L was quite a painful purchase, but I am hoping it will be worth it. I plan on releasing a regular version of the skirt, as well as one with the script.


I wrote a review of Nicky Ree's newest creation over at my fashion blog, but I thought I would mention it here because I love it so much. Its so totally adorable with feathers all over the place! There's three different skirt options as well as 3 different sets of prim arm attachments. O_o I love it to pieces.

Yesterday was September 11th, one of the most known days here in the United States. So, after watching a few hours of 9/11 documentaries on the History Channel, I decided I wanted to go take a look at the memorial for the September 11th victims. It was absolutely amazing to see this sim filled with black marble - with the names of all the people who died. There were flowers left here from other residents, and even some roses stuck into the marble next to a particular name. If you want to check it out, you can do so on the World Trade Center sim.


After the memorial, I dragged Bats with me to Bora Bora to have a photoshoot with my newest bathing suit. I got some really interesting pictures, but the one above was definitely my favorite. Bora Bora is probably one of them most beautiful public beaches I've ever seen. There were just so many great places to take pictures.

Yeah, I broke down and bought another Nicky Ree dress. I know I said that I wouldn't buy from her again, but after trying and looking many other dress designers, no one can compare to Nicky Ree. Her dresses have all the features I love plus more. This particular dress, the Constellations Grace in Gold, I have been drooling over for months. I just wasn't sure about the length of the train. I am totally not fond of dresses with a long train. But - I bought it anyway, thinking it wouldn't be so bad. I get it home, and try it on... to find I absolutely hated the train.


So, what is a girl to do? After shrinking it to fit my shape (Nicky Ree dresses are always so big on my avatar!), I came up with an idea to simply take a few of the back panels off. I copied the original and got to work. Luckily, it was totally easy, and my result was a dress I am now totally in love with.

On a side note, I started my own fashion blog, that will review the products I purchase (including this Nicky Ree gown) and inform people of new sales happening all over the grid. If you are interested in reading fashion blogs, feel free to come check out Fashion Labyrinth.

Yesterday was my RL birthday, and Bats kindly donated some of his Sunday to spending time in SecondLife with me. He bought me this amazing cherry blossom kimono, as well as a necklace and a collar (thank you so much Bats~~). I was totally excited about the kimono, so I went and bought the most elaborate hair I could find. After all, it was for my birthday with Bats, I had to go all out, right?


So, Bats got himself a kimono (as well as some poses from Reel Expression!), and we set out to do our kimono photoshoot~ It was fun to really see how my new photosphere backdrops looked, and I am totally impressed. I love them all. Our photoshoot was interesting, but I did get some good shots. Thanks for being so patient with me while I was trying to get the perfect shot, Bats~ O.o


After the photoshoot in the sphere, it was back to our beach for some hanabi launching. It kinda reminded me of the 4th of July - the night before we became partners. It was a fun, interesting birthday on SecondLife. ^_^

Yeah, so as seen in my last entry, I got a new skin. I'm totally in love with this one, and I think it will become my permanent skin. As well as this amazing hair from Refuge. I have searched forever for a skin with black eye makeup and minimal lip color, that I gave up. When I read that Last Call was bringing back their original Deviant Nation skin line, I couldn't teleport there fast enough. So, I got the skin I've always wanted. *Beams*

Anyways, I actually came on to talk about Fashion Consolidated. I think joining this group was the best thing... ever. I've gotten to so many sales because of this group, and gotten my pixel fingers on some awesome limited edition goodies and freebies. So, I decided to put a notice for Imperial Elegance up in FashCon. OMG, I have it say... it was the best decision I've made for my little clothing shop. So many people so showed up, I was totally shocked. I even met some really interesting people who stopped by. ^_^ Thanks to all who braved the unexpected lag, and shopped~~