I've been following the adorable Alica's blog since as long as I can remember! And lately, I have been noticing that she's accumulated the sweetest smile in her photos! It made me bring out my emoter. And I quickly found out that my smile looks squinty, and just... all around derpy. Come to find out, Alicia previously did a tutorial on how she got her cute little smile! I totally had to try it.

It was a colossal pain the in the rear to do, as I have issues with my eyelashes. I do not wear normal alpha eyelashes - each eyelash I wear is an individual prim, and when I first got them, I spent hours to fit each one to where it was supposed to be. I never messed with them after that. However, this required me to get out my editing skills out and modify them once more. But anyway! Most people likely won't face this struggle like I had to!

I think my smile shape turned somewhat cute! I think this might be a normal thing for me to have in my photos now, as the idea for smiling for photos, seems so natural... yet, never really done in SL. All those emoter smiles seemed so ridiculous, and I'm glad someone finally found a way to make smiling not so creepy in SL! Yay!

I've finally finished decorating my sim! Wow, what a huge different mesh makes in prim counts! I mean, we have like 3,750 prims to play with on our homestead, and I finished putting all my furniture, horses and landscaping out with over 2,800 to spare! It's incredible! I don't even know how I lived with sculpted prims, let alone regular prims now.

So much space! Seriously, what do people put on homestead sims? I have a house and some landscaping, and a pavilion, not sure what else I need? I have a ton of prims, and a ton of empty space!


I wandered around from store to store, looking at prefabs. I wanted one bigger than the Vicious Decay house I currently had, and it had to be affordable. Unfortunately, I failed. I fell in love with one from Barnesworth, but it didn't have baked ambient occlusion textures. I was even looking at one from Scarlet Creative, but I wasn't sure about all the white. Particularly the white roof. I loved another one from Trompe Loeil, but it was small and I wasn't a fan of the layout. I know I'm really picky about my prefabs. I came across this one. I wasn't love at first sight for me, as many of my prefabs are. It was sized waaaay small for my camera settings, as I prefer my houses unproportional to the avatar. This one was realistic sized.

But it was able to be modified, so I bought it and scaled it larger. Once I had it all rezzed out. the result is much better, I think. Of course it required more land impact than the original, but I didn't mind that! One of the really cool selling points of this house is that all the walls are tintable. In my experience, tintable walls look terrible, but these - actually look beautiful while tinted. The house came with white walls, but I made mine a light grey, and it really looks like the house came that way!

So, I've been doing my hosting job, and I actually really like it! I feel like this is really what I needed to get back into SL. It was depressing logging on everyday, with nothing to do besides staring at my land. I've been blogging more - and actually, I have so many pictures that still need to be blogged, there's not enough time in the day to do them!

I really enjoy hosting. It forces me to come out of my shell, talk to strangers. Before I was kind of awkward with it, I didn't know anyone, and everyone seemed to be friendly and know everyone else. I didn't, so it was hard trying to be part of the conversations. However, I'm starting to know the regulars now, even becoming more familiar with the DJ's, and rest of the staff. It's getting easier, and much more fun.

Now, to be honest, I feel like the only thing missing for me is a good group of friends (as depressing as it sounds). I'm really hoping that this interesting group of people will become those much-needed friends to me.

I host here at Club Zero Fridays through Mondays (and again on Wednesday!) from 10-12PM SLT. If you're interested in coming to dance with me be sure to come on by!

Remember that post I did last week? About my new skydome, and house? Well, forget it, because... We rented ourselves a Homestead sim! One of my fondest memories of SL was when we owned Chey's Cove, our previous homestead. I adored it, and a lot of my best memories are on that sim.

I was kind of joking to Jeffry, saying I wanted my own sim, and he told me to start looking for one. So I did! I went to several, and decided on one that I wanted. The sim owner came, added me as an estate manager. I was excited, I started terraforming and changing the land textures. Things went downhill from there.

Once I got dressed for my hosting job, and TP'ed away, suddenly I get a message from someone, asking me if I had bought that particular sim, and I told him I did. Apparently, the night before, the sim owner had agreed to hold the sim I bought for him to buy that night. And just like that, I had become the bad guy in all of this. It wasn't long before the sim owner was asking me to give up the sim. Reluctantly, I agreed, and she offered me 3 days free on whatever other sim I chose. While I was working, she set the land up for sale for me. But no, it really doesn't end there.

Once my shift at the club was over, I quickly teleported to the sim that she set for sale for me. I bought it, and she soon came to change the terrain to the file that I requested. Well... I'm not kidding, it took forever for her to do.


I was looking at this for about an hour and a half. During that time, she had told me she was "still looking" for the terrain I requested, and had asked if there was another one I wanted instead. I gave her a couple other options, but let her know that I really wanted my first choice. Eventually, she found it, and TP'ed away. But, here I go to change the land textures to my beach/grass favorite combination. And hey...... no estate manager rights. My this time, my mood shifted from "YAY! We have a sim!!!" to "..... Really?"

She came back eventually and added me as estate manager By this time, it was past 4am for me, and all I wanted was to go to bed.


By the end of the night, I had finally gotten my terrain the way I wanted, and the textures set up. This was how it looked when I logged off last night!

I feel like this fiasco has scarred me from being willing to rent a sim from this land baron again. Apparently, she doesn't keep promises to other customers, and can't keep track of what she has already done and/or still needs to do. Maybe I'm just an obsessive double checker, I don't know. However, I do know that I'll be working on beautify-ing up my new homestead the next week!

Let's talk about creating for a little bit. I run a little tiny store on my alt, and sometimes I consider giving it up because I seem to always run into one problem or another. Learning mesh is a difficult process! It's a complete nightmare, and there isn't very many tutorials, or information about how creators create. I've said it before... creating in SL is a VERY closely guarded secret. And that makes me sad. I've picked up the bits of programs that I know from various random tutorials and guides out there. I would really love to start doing informational posts on how to create things, but I really feel like I don't know enough to do it. One day, right?

Anyway, for my alt's little store, I have been working on a gacha item - a pouf. I struggled for days with this thing, got so upset with it at times that I found myself unable to sleep. I've decided to write this post, to kind of give insight into the creative process that is mesh. If you guys like these "creating" posts, please let me know in the comments! I will try to do more of them!

First, I start off designing in Marvelous Designer. It gives me the basic shapes I need to work with, a very solid foundation for the mesh. This step is usually one of the easiest, but this time it gave me so many fits, I don't know why! Every single change I made to this design, it took up to 45 minutes to sync the pattern, it was so frustrating! Anyway, the above photo is what my final design looked like in Marvelous Designer. It wasn't really how I envisioned it in my head, but it was okay.


Next step, I take it into ZBrush. This is how it looks before anything else happens to it. I originally started the ZBrush stage because I like the ZRemesher tool in it. Marvelous Designer exports as triangle mesh, and I want quadrangles. ZRemesher turns the tris into quads. Now I have Marvelous Designer 4, which has quads now, I still find that I like how ZRemesher lowers the amount of faces on the mesh. So I still use it.


After running ZRemesher, this is where I lose a lot of the Marvelous Designer folds and such. It's disappointing sometimes because they are very beautiful - but the geometry numbers on them is HUGE. Anyway! We lost a bit of detail here - but I'll still take it!


Next - Blender. My husband went to RL schooling to learn 3ds Max. He tried to teach me what he knew, but I was intimidated, and couldn't find many other tutorials on it. I got frustrated and gave up. Blender, however is a free resource, and I found has MUCH more information on it. Getting off track now... Blender is where the majority of the rest of the work is done. In here, I added the button in the middle, I clean the meshes up in here. Also, if I'm doing clothing, I'll size them and rig them, fit them to the Slink mesh body, and try to do my best at weighting. I'll also delete some faces that you won't see, like the bottom of the pouf, or the inside of clothing. To save on geometry.

After I took the above screenshot, I uploaded it to SL, the land impact of that was 26! No thanks! I used the "decimate" modifier to bring the geometry down a bit, uploaded it again to SL, it was down to 2.


Next, I upload to SL, see how it looks, check land impact. If I'm making clothing, I'll wear it, see what weights or modifications I need to do. Then take it back into Blender, fix things, and re-upload. The Beta grid is wonderful for this - you get to see exactly how it looks on the avatar, but not get broke by the cost of upload fees. Also, I check the ambient occlusion map, see if it looks okay!

After everything looks great, I go to Photoshop to texture the ambient  occlusion map,and smooth out any part of it that needs smoothing. In the pouf's case, there was some jagged looking edges on the map that needed a little blur. Finish texturing and upload to SL.


And here we have our finished pouf. It looks quite a bit different than when I started, but it still looks great!

Last post, I showed the blog the outside of my home, today, we'll explore the inside! Yay! Keep in mind that I have a small-ish prim budget, so I don't have as many decorations as I'd like, but really, who does? Anyway, on to the inside!

My living room. I'm slowly replacing things and adding new things constantly, my inventory is pretty outdated, from being out of SL for so long. But as I hit more sales, and events, the bigger it grows, and more possibilities I have. I LOVE the french doors leading into this room, they really do open like real french doors!

The wall has a bunch of pictures, detailing various bits of our SL journey together.


Next, we move into my dining room. I had a smallish set from LAQ to match the bookshelves, but when I went to the Trompe Loeil sale earlier in the week, I fell absolutely in love with this dining room. Honestly, I probably would have been fine with my old set, but once I saw the paisley tablecloth.... it was mine. There is never enough paisley in the world for me. And naturally, I had to get the matching chairs, right? Currently looking for a beautiful set of mesh flowers to finish this room out.


Kitchen. Yes, yes. It's small, sad and uneventful. However, why waste prims when I don't cook in the first place? It's functional for heating up leftover prim takeout, that's all I need! Again, another sale purchase.


The staircase that leads upstairs. Every girl needs a washer and dryer, right!? These are very old cube versions, I'm holding out until I find some fabulous mesh ones to replace these!


Upstairs is a series of 3 rooms. When I first rezzed the house, I gave Jeffry an option to pick a room. He is scripting in world now, and doesn't like to pick up his prims. No one like random plywood cubes scattered around their land! So, as long as he's in his room, I won't complain. And that's what he does. Rezzes prims. Soon, there will be so many boxes on the floor, I wont be able to open the door.


Across the hall from his mancave, is the bedroom. Lots of seating, for lots of photo taking. I like this room!


And as for the last room upstairs, another work in progress! This is the bathroom, still adding to this room as well!

As the early history of my blog shows, I love to blog about the recent homes that I live in. When I go back and look into the archives of this blog, one of my favorite parts of it is looking at the different houses I had. It says a lot about what is popular on the grid at that time, and how I feel at that time. It's really a snapshot of that time for me! And I enjoy reading back on these type of posts.

I rent a sky dome from Bella Pointe. They offer spacious domes, with a reasonable prim allowance. When it was just me, I rented the smallest dome, which covers a 1/4 of a sim. You don't get the prims of a 1/4 sim, obviously, but the space is really nice. When Jeffry also decided to come back to SL, the prim allowance that they gave me wasn't really sufficient anymore. So we upgraded to the 1/2 sim size. And honestly, it is much more space than I know what to do with!

I mean, it's huge! Each dome has it's own lake/lagoon, which is nice, but I never use it. It makes the dome look better than just a platform of grass, however. Our current dome even comes with 2 waterfalls and a cave (the 1/4 sim had only 1 waterfall). Sometimes I really miss having the real linden water, but, I figure if I really need it for photos or something, there's tons of beach sims out there.


I have a little beach area as well, onto which I put out some beach chairs. I'm not missing out on anything other than the real water by being in a skybox.


I have a lot of open space, mainly because the whole reason I have this place is for my breedables. My horses need room to roam and graze, right? I put down a bunch of grass because I don't like the look of just a flat prim. 

My dome I had before this one was a beach themed, so I had palm trees, sand, the works. However, I really prefer the meadow-y type of  land, so this time I chose the mountain style. It works wonderfully, because I love the dimension that the grass gives, and it doesn't look too terribly out of place, like it would on a beach. I had some beach grass, but it looked a bit weird with the whole ground covered in it.


This house! Let me just stop and talk about how much I love this house. I wanted a mesh house that would not take up a ton of prims, because we have a huge space and a smallish prim limit. I was searching the marketplace, and was finding all kinds of beautiful (yet extremely expensive) homes, then this one came up in the listings.... Just when I was thinking it might be more cost effective to make my own, now that I'm comfortable in Blender. Anyway, I immediately went to the location to see it in world. Once it rezzed, I was blown away at how beautiful, detailed and cheap it was. I mean, only L$99, and 68 land impact? Sold. This picture is actually the front doorway.


And a quick photo of the back door, which joins to the kitchen, and comes off onto a little balcony. So cute!


On the other side of my dome, I have my gorgeous Country Pavilion that I picked up from the Trompe Loeil sale a couple days ago! The amount of love I have for this beauty... I can't even say. It's a little more land impact than I originally waned to spend, but, I love this so much that I really don't care anymore. I knew I wanted some kind of gazebo, or something in this space, so the sale came at such a wonderful time for me!


When I'm not hosting, I spend a lot of my in-world time in here, laying on the outdoor daybed. I have firefly particles throughout my open area as well. One of the most beautiful parts of my RL moving in with Jeffry is the fireflies where we live. I wanted a little piece of them in my SL, too!

Unfortunately, I had purchased a set of really gorgeous fireflies, which rezzed temporary prims to operate. My land policies notecard states I am prohibited from having any object that rezzes temp prims. I was very disappointed. Since the fireflies were no copy/transfer, I sent the creator a notecard, inquiring about a refund. No word from him yet, so I guess we'll see. :(

Part two will be coming next - the inside of the house!

My inventory has been a constant battle pretty much ever since I first rezzed in SL. It got worse and worse, until I started fashion blogging and creating poses. Then it completely exploded. There was a point when I tried to keep it under control, tried to organize. I realized that it was futile, and then completely gave up. There was one point where I remember it being over 60,000 items. That's a HUGE number!

Every time I tried to come back to SL, I'd sit and clear some stuff out, organize, try to get it manageable. It's sooo difficult, so time consuming. With the addition of mesh, I've put a really effort into my inventory lately. I've been looking at things differently, literally asking myself... "Will I ever wear this flexi skirt again?" If I think about it, it's moved to the trash. I did, however, have a REALLY hard time deleting my Last Call items (Last Call closed way back in 2008). I think because they were my first "real" clothes I purchased, they were so ahead of their time, and it was probably the first real sale that I experienced, and camped out on the edge of the sim for. But, I finally had the courage to delete them.

I can finally say that my inventory is 100% organized. I never thought I would say that. I have my items down to 17,380 items, most of which are full permissions textures that I have purchased over the years. I have no objects in my object folder, no stray categorized folders. Everything has a place now in my inventory, and there is nothing I don't want in there. I am so incredibly proud of myself for accomplishing this. It was a mountain of a feat, and so relieving to get done with it!

I've also been pretty good at keeping it managed as well. Rez something to unpack it? Delete the object from objects folder. Just buy something? Rename the folder and put it in it's category right away. Of course, this helps without fashion blogging anymore, I don't have to keep separate folders filled with the stuff that is waiting to be blogged. I can just put things right away now.

Now I find myself in my skybox, looking around and wondering what to do. LOL!

I mentioned in a couple of posts recently, that I was going to begin hosting in a club! I have been very nervous and anxious about it, as I have never hosted in a club before. And to be completely honest, I've never been very social in SL in general. So, I was terrified! However, my host training started last night, and all things considered, I did quite well! The person training me surprisingly felt comfortable enough to log off halfway through my shift, and told me that I didn't even need a second training day. I'm not sure if that's a good thing? Or bad? Whatever it is, I'll take it!

I actually had a good time, and I feel like I did a pretty good job there. It's a nice feeling to get out of my skybox land and have a purpose. It forces me to talk to people, hopefully make new friends. I'll be working there at nights, 5 days a week for now. (Hey, I have horses that need to be fed, and shopping that needs to be fueled!)

Trompe Loeil is having a huge 50% off sale on everything for the next few days, and I went yesterday as soon as I heard about it. When the news came to me, the only words that came out of my mouth was... "Oh, no." Being out of SL for so long, the one thing you notice is that your inventory is extremely outdated, including furniture. Decorating a house is terrible when all you have is sculpted prims. Now there's mesh, and everything is so low prim. I feel like all my furniture now is a waste of prims. This sale was awesome, and well timed for me!

I spent way too much linden. My husband kept telling me to leave that place, but I couldn't help it! It did not help the situation that we had just gotten a new mesh house, and I needed things to fill it.

One of the most awesome things I bought from the sale was this incredible hanging outdoor bed. I love it! However, one of the best buys that I got, was that the Country Pavillion was set to $150L, and with the sale, it was still half off of that! So incredible, I am so happy with what I bought, and I feel like my new prefab is a little more up to date then what it was! Even Jeffry took a break from scripting to try out the new outdoor bed with me.

A blog post on my new home is coming soon!

So, as I mentioned before, I have a little alt that I run a very small mesh clothing store with. Mesh has been a huge learning experience that I still battle with on a daily basis. My items are not perfect, but I'm learning more each day. I feel like creating in SL is some closely guarded secret, and everything I have learned is a little bit picked from here, more bits picked from there, and the majority of it being trial and error on my part. It is a struggle. Releases are few and far between, because I'm always trying to fix an issue or two that has popped up. But when I have some kind of progress, I feel like it's worth celebrating.

Last night, I got closer to releasing my new micro mini skirt. I finally got the Physique mesh to be somewhat how I liked it, and this afternoon, I took it out to take vendor photos! I "hired" my husband to do some scripting for me, so he created a texture change HUD, so customers will have many choices of colors to choose from. It will be a new feature, one that I'll see how it works out.

I am kind of bummed though, I applied to create for the Maitreya Lara body mesh, and did not hear back from them in time. I was hoping to have both the Slink body and Maitreya in this release. I'm going to try to hold off on it a few more days, to see if I hear back from Maitreya, but it's not looking good. If I was declined, they would tell me, right?