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

O.O Whoa, where I have I been lately?! Well, lets see here. I've been struggling to get RL and SL Christmas shopping done, and frankly, I haven't even felt like building anything in SL. I've been going around from various shops daily to grab their free items each day (Ivalde, Second Mirage, Wrong, Reaction, among several others), and believe it or not, its very exhausting on the brain. Afterwards, I'm constantly thinking: "Did I grab the freebie from [insert shop name here]?". However, the most time consuming thing I am doing right now involves this thine here:

What is it, you ask? Its the Fashionista Filing Cabinet. Also known as the Fashionista Closet, but the closet was 10 prims, while this little thing was only 2. So, what does it do? Simple answer, but very complicated and time consuming process: It holds inventory items. You take pictures of your copyable items, put them in boxes, put a image of the outfit on the box, and store the box in the cabinet. My process is:

1. Put clothing items on.
2. Take pictures of it in the photosphere (repeat these two steps several times for several different outfits).
3. Open Photoshop.
4. Resize each image to 256x256.
   
5. Put 16 of them on a 1024x1024 image.
6. Upload to SL.
7. Put clothing items in box.
8. Retexture box and fiddle with texture settings until I see the image of the item in the box.
9. Take box into inventory.
10. Put in cabinet.
11. Repeat.

I tell you, its a nightmare. Especially when I have over 20,000 items... this kills me. However - I have come across some interesting transferable items that I don't want anymore. I am thinking of either visiting a newbie sim and handing them out to new residents - or just attending a inventory swap. I am not social at all for any of these type of things. Both would be a terrible challenge for me, and I'll probably end up just keeping all my items. T_T

Wow, its been a while since I posted here. I've been so busy with running the shop, shopping and my Fashion Labyrinth blog. So, anyways, someone was talking about a Christmas sim on the Fashion Emergency group, so I knew I had to go check it out. I love Christmas, snow, and Rezzable. Rezzable has done many of my favorite sims, including Toxic Garden and the Greenies Home. I had to go check out their Christmas sim.

Bats and I teleport in - and it doesn't seem to be Christmas-y at all. It was a race track. However, It had snow, and adorable little penguins, the fact of it being a race track didn't stop me from wanting to explore! I set my windlight settings to the "Blizzard" preset, and started snapping pictures.


Under the ground, there was an actual race track. It was indeed pretty cool, with falling ice and all. But, you also see some really cool things, like this mammoth that had fallen through some thin ice.


Also - don't forget to go under the racetrack to see the underwater city. This place was oddly beautiful, in a grungy, ghostlike way. Getting pictures underwater is a pain with all the fog and all. Luckily, I found out how to turn off the Fog rendering in the Client menu. Made exploring and picture taking a lot more enjoyable.

SLURL: Stratos, Stratos Home Rezzable (157, 33, 71)

I have been waiting MONTHS for the return of Windlight - and its finally back! .... However, it isn't all I was hoping it would be. I downloaded it yesterday, but finally played with some presets and settings today. And, I was standing at home while I did this, so my pictures of the awesome Windlight is taken at Bats' and my SL residence. Hehe~


Yes, Windlight is amazingly pretty. I love it. However - my PC is over a year old, and apparently can not handle many of the features. When I turn on the pretty clouds, my SL performance goes downhill. It becomes very choppy, which is very annoying for me. The clouds are great for picture taking, because my computer can't handle them all the time.


Another thing - it messes up my facelight. For those who know me well, you know that is catastrophic for me. Anything that interferes with my facelight is trashed. Because of this reason alone, I don't think I will be using this viewer too often. Also - I also noticed that after moving the camera around, and reseting it - things refuse to rez. This morning, I was out shopping, zoomed in on something, and my avatar refused to rez when I reset my camera. I had to relog to be able to see myself again. O_o

Wow, its been a while! What have I been up to? Well, for starters, I've visited the awesome sim, TheAbyss! If you haven't been there, you are really missing out. This place is incredible, and kind of reminded me a little of "The World That Never Was" in the PS2 game, Kingdom Hearts II. Its very beautiful, in its surreal way. No picture can show the true beauty of this place, you should really check it out in world. SLURL: TheAbyss, The Abyss (96, 136, 237)

I've also learned a lot about animation overrides last night. I had purchased a Vista AO, and decided I didn't like the walks. So, I set out to find a new walk. I purchased a walk, put it in successfully, then decided I wasn't fond of the fly animations. I waited until Bats came on, and we spent a few hours looking for fly and landing animations. (Well, I was looking for fly ones, he was looking for ground sits).

I finally found some that looked halfway decent, but then decided I might as well update to the newest version of the Zhao II. Bad idea. I picked up a copy, and Bats did as well. So - we spent the rest of our night in utter confusion of how to program these things. We finally succeeded, just in time for us to test our animations and Bats to go to bed. *Sigh* Someone needs to make a "Zhao II for idiots" guide. Actually - I learned so much about what NOT to do last night, I could probably write that guide on the Zhao II.

Anyway. So, I woke up this morning, logged in at class, and decided I didn't like the fly or jumping animations this time. Yep. I went animation hunting again. I think I finally got my AO working how I want it this time... but - I can't seem to stop the face plant animation. You know... the one where you fall from a high distance and fall flat on your face? Yes, I hate that, but can't figure out how to make that go away. Ah well.

I am a major fan of horror movies - I love them to pieces. So, I immediately caught some of the movie references that was in this house. Pieces from Saw, The Shining, and more were used in this house. Creepy. As if watching horror movies all night tonight isn't going to be enough for me tonight...


If you make it to the attic, you even get a prize for braving the scary house! That is ... if you want to fight the giant spider for it. O_o


And yeah - I had to.

SLURL: Rave Nation Haunted House, Candyland (83, 198, 421)

If you are into Halloween things, there are a few places you can visit to get into the Halloween spirit. Two of the most popular places are Octoberville and October Country. Because Bats loves Halloween, I decided to take him to these two sims. So, we both dressed up - him as Jack Skellington, and me in a Last Call costume called "Enchantress".

Octoberville is only seasonal, so you should visit now, before it turns normal again. They have some weird hunt going on in this sim, and you have to find tons of items through the island. You do get a HUD to keep track of the items you have found, and it lets you know how many you have left. Lots of weird things are hidden in this sim. SLURL: Octoberville, PixelTrix (159, 105, 22)


Another popular one is October Country. Here, they have ghost stories being played for a good portion of the day, and many places to explore. This place made my computer spaz with all the particles and stuff, but it was an interesting place. I am told that this sim stays open all year round, so that is good for those of you who can't make it here by Halloween. SLURL: October Country, October Country (81, 184, 65)


And, here we are in our Halloween gear. We were trying to be as silly as we could be in this picture - because we just looked so goofy. 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.

I love anime. So, when I visited Yaoi Kingdom, I really had no idea what to expect. After doing a search on shrines, that came up as a search result. So, me, being the curious oddball I am, decided to sneak in there and see what its about. Many nekos seem to hang out here, which is cool, because I sometimes put on a pair of neko ears myself. This place was surprisingly interesting.


I managed to find an interesting shrine hidden away in the corner of the sim. It was apparently on someones land, who decided to keep his house public. I went in, quickly snapped this shot, and ran away quickly. Shh~ don't tell anyone!


A second part of Yaoi Kingdom, an additional sim called Yaoi Providence, is apparently under construction. Its a beautiful lake and filled with hills, landscape and trees. It kinda of reminded me a little of StrayLight, with the light beams and textures, but it was plenty beautiful itself.


Throughout the two sims, there are plenty of poseballs all over as well. This is a cool place to explore, whether you are into the yaoi thing or not.

SLURL: Yaoi Kingdom, Yaoi Kingdom (166, 187, 24)

It finally happened. Our beautiful mainland beach has become overrun by a moron. Everything was fine until one person moved in and bought tons of land next to our house. Now - its a club. And its all we can see from the front of our house. Its totally nauseating and uncool. Bats wants to move away from the new club but I wasn't to sure... I mean, this was our first land together. But, we went land shopping around privately owned islands anyway, and I have to say - I was impressed. I was looking for a nice sandy beach on the edge of a sim that faced west (so we can have a good view of the sunset). I found quite a few, which was good.


But - Until we are able to move, we are stuck with the club in front of our home. Our temporary solution? A furnished skybox. Its depressing to log in and have a club glaring at you from the shoreline outside the window, so it seems the skybox will become our main home until either the club disappears, or we move.

I didn't think I would be excited to move away from our current land. But seeing how much people care about their land on private sims, and reading the covenants that protects the residents from morons, made me feel better. It will also be nice not having to worry about people terraforming our water away, and blocking our sunset. ^_^

[EDIT] So, its official: Bats and I are selling our mainland beach home to move to a private residential sim. Interested in it? Its 5,040 meters, 1153 prims, waterfront mainland for $44,080L. SLURL: Flounder (155, 108, 22)

I've been a little busy neko lately, even if it doesn't seem like it! I've been doing tons of work for my shop, I haven't had any time to do much of anything else in SL. But! I finally finished it all! Oh? What have I been doing? Well, I updated all my images for my vendors in my shop with new pictures, backgrounds, and more detailed layouts. (Gah~ that $400L in upload fees killed me!) But thats not all I did. I also updated every skirt in the shop with the new SmartSkirt script.

But no, thats not all~ I also updated the boxes in my SLExchange vendor and my OnRez vendor. Now, all landmarks are correct, SmartSkirt is up, and vendor images look great. Now, all thats left to do is package the new skirts up and put them up in the shop on Wednesday, so I can send my FashCon notice out.

I am excited about the new SmartSkirt script as well as the new vendor ads. I think this will make my shop more attractive, which is really cool. Shameless Plug: Flounder (46, 120, 33)


Ah, and on a side note... check out what I hatched! In search of a dragon avatar, I came across Grendel's Children, where you can buy an egg for $30L, and walk around the sims for a place that your egg will hatch at. I spent the next hour looking for somewhere to hatch this egg. It was, without a doubt, one of the weirdest things I've done. But - It hatched, and I got a gnarly, scripted dragon out of it. I call him Chi. ^_^

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.

It seems I haven't wrote about a shrine in a while. I have been coming across a few here and there, but never really took any pictures. However, when I saw this amazing Inari shrine, I knew I HAD to get some pictures. This shrine is actually part of a shop. I purchased some sculpted tiny prims from someone on SLExchange, and this was listed as their shop in their in-world profile. Curious, I went to take a look.


And it was amazing. I've always seen these things in anime, TV shows, and pictures from Japan, so it was pretty cool to see them in Second Life. It seems that the majority of this stuff is sculpted... the pillars as well as the walkway. I love sculpted prims.


The textures on these prims are amazing as well. I mean, how could something be so bright and so pretty at the same time? This has become one of my favorite places... its calming and beautiful. It was a fun trip.

SLURL: Queqiao (180, 200, 21)

Wee~ I haven't been blogging because lots of things has been happening! First, and most awesomely, is - Bats purchased us a second 1120meter lot... right next to our existing one! Yay~ We also went and got a new house to replace the old one, and even new furniture! Though, we had problems with the house, the creator kindly came and fixed all the problems we had with it. Totally awesome.


I love our new place (or as Bats likes to call it: our Castle). Its huge, pretty, and filled with awesome sculpted furniture! It was fun shopping for furniture, and totally frustrating shopping for a perfect home for us. But, it turned out really well - I'm am very happy with our new home.

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.

I attended two store openings yesterday. One was the new main store of Sand Shack Surf Co. A lot of people attended, and everything was rezzing so slow. The new shop was an interesting place, but there were a lot of red barriers around, covering some of the smaller vendor stalls. I was like: O.o Of all days, I would think that the smaller vendors would want to open on THAT day, when everyone came to the Sand Shack Surf Co. party. Or perhaps there was another reason why it had a barrier? *Shrugs* I didn't buy anything while I was there, I just wanted to check out the new location. It looks great, and it will definitely give Emma Gilmour lots of room to expand. ^_^


I also attended the opening of the new Zhao Shoes main location. OMG, there were tons of people who attended this party. Here, they had dancing, a DJ and all kinds of stuff. Zhao has some awesome shoes, but I was looking for a pair of black tennis shoes at the time, and all I found here was heels. Still, it was fun to see all these people, and support the opening of Zhao shoes ^_^

When I heard about the HUD game, Tiny Empires, I was simply like: O.o . But, something possessed me to go and grab a copy of the free trial version. So, what is it? Its a simple game that you play in the background, in which your goal is to buy land with earned gold, and climb up the hierarchy. I really enjoy this game because its great for passing time while I wait for IMs. When I am out with Bats, he is usually the only person I talk to, so I play Tiny Empires while I wait for him to type back to me. Interested? You can grab a free trial (or the full version for $499L) in Kitster (144, 41, 53).


I wonder what mainland would be like, if people were not obstructing your view from the things you enjoy the most? I bought this land, for the purpose of making skirts and things, but I never expected to stare at a giant, depressing library tree all day. I think a brick wall would have been better to look at. Yes, I know, it is mainland - people will do what they want - but, couldn't he had of made it pink or something? Or even yellow? Oh, and then not to mention he completely screwed up the scale settings I had on my photosphere. I mean, seriously. I put a red barrier up for a reason - To keep morons away from the sphere. -_-

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. ^_^

Ok, in my last installment of Thursday nights exploration trip, I'm going to talk about Zero Point. This place was insane, crazy and totally bazzar. What made it that way? All the gnarly, eye burning colors, as well as the weird, out of place objects. However, it was pretty interesting and made my computer (as well as my eyes) go into spaz mode. There was only one reason I decided to come to this place for though... and that was:


The Vomit Comet. It is a roller coaster type of experience that takes you through all different textures, particles and it definitely was an experience to remember. ^_^

SLURL: Kelham (162, 106, 0)