Before and After Mix-up

There’s been too much fun in Second Life. Our liberal group has had dances, talks, dances, openings, and did I mention dances? Well, it really messes with the psyche to go to a dance in a ballgown one night and the next requires something very different. It’s like the worst Before and After Mix-up on a fashion show.

Friday night was our Dancing Liberally event. The theme was a grand opening of the Senator Larry Craig for Republican Values memorial (yes, a bathroom stall). Like any grand opening we dressed in evening wear. Townes wore a tux and I wore a gown that I would never have bought. My 8-year old niece and I were shopping in SL (hey, babysitting requires all kinds of ways to entertain a kid!). When I said that she could choose my next ballgown she settled on something purple at Nicky Ree’s store. Gulp. It wasn’t cheap. I followed through and bought it and can I just say that my niece has impeccable taste. Check it out:

I’m also wearing ETD’s Sofia hair style, Celestial Studios’ Vogue skin in Pure – Mid Noir, and jewelry from Sirena (the earrings came with the Sabrina gown) and Kirkland. I loved dancing in an evening gown…especially the slow tunes with Townes. Still when pose balls for a line dance are offered it’s hard to resist. Here’s Jillan, Tanna, me, and Townes moving our evening-wearing booties to the music:

So how could Townes and I go from an elegant evening to something so wrong? Well, blame it on Jane2 McMahon and Rocky Turok. They put on a dance at Jane’s Lonely Yak Roadhouse with that elegant theme for a roadhouse: Redneck Mothers!

The challenge was on.

Townes knew the look he wanted. That plaid flannel shirt with no sleeves, a ball cap, jeans, work boots, and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He managed to put it all together:

Isn’t he studly? Just ignore that beer belly, he promises to work it off once his back stops hurting and he can get his sorry-assed self back to work… Ooops, I just fell back into redneck mode again — he kept expecting me to wait on him and I kept complaining about his worthless ass. I felt bad for the visitors from Italy who may not be fully versed in redneck culture and may think we treat each other that way all the time. Anyway, Towne’s shirt is from MIA, his hat from KK Outfitters, the cigarette is from Foxy’s, and I don’t know about the jeans or boots. They do look good though, don’t they?

I, always trying to be elegant, did dress up a bit more. No torn jeans for me…no, my jeans were decorated!

Don’t you hate it when your bra strap — actually, your bra — keeps peeking out from under your shirt? Dang Taggy Tank top from Sand Shack Surf Co didn’t offer enough coverage. The hair is from Gurl6, the skin is a freebie (I think it’s Shy in night time makeup), freebie jeans, boots from ETD, the Pop 80s necklace from Cake, the Snake bangles from Amaretto, and my very own homemade belt from a texture I created, which is also applied to the cuff on my left arm. A little playing with the sliders and I had that long-lusted for figure of a Redneck Mama.

Together, Townes and I made quite a pair:

Hey, do you notice the blotchy thing on our arms? I made my first tattoo. I found this great tattoo online at Tattoo Artists and used it to make a tattoo. I be an artiste!

Dancing at the Lonely Yak Roadhouse:

I don’t know. Do you think the redneck look or the elegant ballgown look works best for me? Man, it’s hard to decide, isn’t it?

I’ll Second That

In my reading of all things Second Life I have found several blogs to make my daily “must check” list.  I learn new things, discover items I want to check out in Second Life, and just have fun reading about other SLians.

In my readings this week I learned something from Kitty at Mean Girl’s Guide to Second Life: how to be famous. I don’t know…it sounds like too much work.

Today is Ana Lutetia’s rez day! Happy Rez Day, Ana! The day you join SL is your rez day and I’m lucky….I opened mine on my real life birthday. Easy to remember. Ana, who is on my must read list is having a party and if all goes well I shall attend.

Rolling Along

There’s nothing like trying to attend a class in Second Life and rolling restarts happen….as soon as you find a new place for the class it ends up kicking you out. Fun for hours!

Golden Brown Autumn

I love autumn. The crisp blue sky, the gold and red leaves, and cool weather. Weather that allows you to wear light jackets and sweaters. This feeling of colder weather even flows into Second Life.

I want to wear sweaters. I’ve picked up a few, but the other day I found something that pleased me no end — a golden brown leather “jacket” and dark brown suede boots. The jacket is from BP (Osaka 148/138/22) and the boots are from Zhao Shoes (Piccadilly Circus 34/159/25). Worn with a freebie brown turtleneck and my Hipster Cowgirl jeans from Sand ShackSurf Co. (Lions Shore 49/176/24) I felt quite the symphony in brown. I started out with one of my regular skins; RaC’s Drew and the Lisa II hair from ETD. As I found myself liking the golden brown look I ended up wearing one of my darker skins, the Charmed series in #80 Mauve Gloss from Celestial Studios with ETD’s Jasmine hair. There’s definitely an autumn feel here:

Still, I do like the black and white outfits too. Just for good measure here’s me in a freebie from Bossa Nova (offered to the Bossa Nova group). With TaP gloves, Sirena hair (the Chloe), and some freebie jewelry from Muse, I was ready to go out or not…I ended up working on a freebie package for my shop. It’s something to work while wearing an evening gown. In real life? I’d be wearing the clothes above.

Sexy in Black and White

I’m not going to get much posting done today either. So I thought I’d just post an image of my avatar showing off a bracelet and earrings that I made. See how well you notice them:

I bet you didn’t look at the jewelry first.

I snapped this pic some time ago, waiting for when I finally put some freebies out at my shop. My hard drive holds tons of images that I never get around to using (cleaning up will offer quite the challenge). There was something about this photo that makes me want to keep it. It’s a Moran Singh as bathing beauty shot that I don’t normally do. And face it, when I see real life pictures like this I scoff. Yeah, bathing suit AND high heels — a fashion statement I find unsettling…

But damn, I look good.

Salsa and Stripping

Remember my experience with stripping down to a bathing suit at Saturday night salsa? It happened again. But this time I didn’t stop at my bathing suit. Oh no. I stripped down to my skin. The shame of it all.

It started innocently enough. It was a Halloween themed dance tonight. Brace Coral wanted us to dress up. Now I don’t really get into the whole Halloween costume thing, but I had picked up a freebie t-shirt from SYD: Style Your Destiny that had a pumpkin with the pi symbol. Get it? Yeah! Pumpkin pi! I’d also picked up some freebie shoes from ZHAO that had pumpkins, spiders, bats, and other fun stuff on them (the Fabulously Free in Second Life blog is amazing — I found out about these freebies from reading the blog). With my orange bangles I had my bracelets and earrings. I was ready to go and I do have to say I looked mighty sexy:

It does look nice with that black background, doesn’t it? Here’s a better look, along with a closer look at the shoes:

The hair is from Analog Dog and is called Madison. Very nice and curly.

So, I get to Brace’s salsa party (Brace Coral throws the best salsa dances) and everyone is in costume. I took a picture, but you know, if it weren’t for the pumpkin theme it really looks like any other salsa night. Face it, people wear pretty flashy costumes all the time in Second Life.

Well, it got all hot and heated and I did it. I took off my skirt and shirt! I was running around in my nudie-bears! It certainly looked fun when dancing the steps to “Thriller” — except we were dancing to hot salsa music. Hey, those Thriller dance steps can work with all kinds of music:

Hey, my chest looks pretty nice, heh? I can’t help but flaunt it. And you do have to admire my avatar — she’s got a great bone structure. Oh, the skin and eyes I’m wearing are from Boing Fromage. It really offers a nice look. I don’t even feel the need to wear prim eyelashes.

Posed for Greatness

It’s 1:00 in the morning. I meant to go to bed hours ago. But what do I do? I re-read Natalia’s post on creating poses. So, here I am creating poses like crazy and having way too much fun.

Natalia Zelmanov’s Diary offers a slew of tutorials. When she showed us how to create a pose with us holding something in front of us like a candle I thought I could do that. So tonight I did!

Natalia gives us all kinds of guidance and pictures to help us see what we’re trying to do. The software she uses and I tried is a freebie called QAvimator. My first attempt using QAvimator didn’t come out right. Sure my pose looks like I’m holding something but it ain’t a candle:

Of course it’s perfect as a pose to hold up something bigger like I am demonstrating something. So I kept it. I tweaked the candle pose and played with the settings some more and this is what I got:

Isn’t that great? Well, that wasn’t all. Once I did that I was hooked. So my late night work found me creating my first standing pose of my own design:

Aha! My avatar is clay in my hands! Well, sort of…it takes lots of tweaking and it’s not so much clay as movable body parts. Still, I feel quite godlike tonight…er…this morning.

I wasn’t done. I created a sitting pose:

It needs some tweaking. The right arm doesn’t meet the leg and the right hand should be under the left. Once again though, I’m pleased as punch at what I can do with free software and some late night obsessing.

I s’pose I should go to bed now. I can do more tomorrow and I’ll keep you “pose”ted. Yeah, go ahead and groan. I do need to get some sleep!

Purple Mood

It must be fall or it must be all that time hanging out with my niece. Whatever it is I seem to be in a purple mood.

I went shopping in Second Life today and picked up a few items that certainly qualify as purple. First I went to Amaretto and picked up the Delia outfit. It’s a fuscia dress with low, puffy sleeves and I couldn’t resist. So, when I ended up at Tesla looking for her Diva shoes, what should I do but buy a pair in violet? Needless to say, when I was at Cotton Candy looking at some shops my eye found this lovely knit sweater with a cowl neck at MG.

On the left:

• Sweater: MG – Gwyn knitted sweater in purple
• Skirt: Nyte ‘n’ Day – mini-skirt in black
• Shoes: Tesla – Diva in violet
• Hair: ETD- Lisa II in black
• Skin: Celestial Studios – Vogue Champagne tone with Smoky Plum makeup

On the right:

• Dress: Amaretto – Delia
• Shoes: Tesla – Diva in violet
• Tights: Tete a Pied – black tights
• Hair: Analog Dog – Ayla in black
• Skin: RaC – Drew
• Bracelets: my own making

Sure I bought stuff that wasn’t purple, in fact I went crazy with the snake look and ended up as a bad character in a B movie. Just call me Tondalea – Wild Woman of the Jungle.

• Dress: Amaretto – Hear Me Rawr
• Shoes: Boing Fromage – Ankle Wrap sandals in brown
• Hair: Analog Dog – Madison in black
• Skin: RaC – Drew

Okay, I’ll stick with purple. It’s a good color for fall and I don’t look so silly. A purple mood is much better for my fashion taste than a snake mood. Still, if I find purple snake skin clothes I may just have to buy them!

Business is Booming

Well, booming may be a bit of an overstatement. What is happening with my new shop is that I’ve managed to sell three of my shapes. So though I still have lots to do, a few people who stumble upon the place are finding something they like.

Today I sold my first male shape. Adam was fun to create. There are lots of shapes that have bulging muscles and tiny pinheads on guys. I tried to do something a little more believable…and attractive. Here’s Adam (I’ll do a thumbnail — click on it to see it full size):

I try to show the avatars I create with different skins. At Mosi (Bristow/3/240/121), you can read about the skin and hair used — there are even landmarks. What I do for my business. It kills me to buy skin for male shapes. It’s more expensive AND I can’t wear it except for these photos!

Here are two other shapes; Alex and Ariadne:

I even managed to make a few mannequins. I put them down on the ground below my shop and included a teleport up to Mosi.

Aren’t they cute? I was so pleased with myself at creating them. You can get a better sense of their size with me added to the picture:

Fun, huh? It’s certainly been an adventure putting this together. I can’t wait until I can do more than avatar shapes. I really need to learn more. I’ve played with hair, clothes, and shoes, but haven’t really spent tons of time doing it. That’s my next goal. Besides figuring out the advertising/marketing part of owning a business in Second Life.

Hey, I’ve sold three shapes without any marketing. Maybe I can sell three more if I do come up with some form of marketing! It’s worth a try.

Shop Girl

Well, I managed to come up with an image to fit into Search window. As this is basically my persona for the shop I really need to come up with something nice. Of course, that means I know what I’m doing. I came up with this. There’s some other things I want to do with this, but right now it’s not too bad as an ad for Mosi:

The green and salmon logo-ish thingie is based on what is on my shop:

I went for a strong peach/salmon color wall with a deep green marble floor. It’s opened to the sky, so it can get washed out in certain lights and at other times look incredibly bright. Here’s a straight on shot of the shop:

Here’s another shot looking down the length of it and the proud shop girl…er…woman…er…person who owns the shop:

I have some room to add items on the walls. In fact, I still have some empty wall space! May that be rectified by the end of the weekend.

I’m happy. I still have LOTS to do, but I feel good at what I’ve done so far. May I continue to feel that way!

I’m in Business! Mosi is Open

Yes, I, Dilettanteville in real life and Moran Singh in Second Life, am now also a businessperson in Second Life. My store, Mosi, is now open.

Whew. Setting up shop takes a lot of work. I still need to do a few more things, but it’s open now. I’m starting with shapes and will eventually expand. There are six shapes available and more will be added over the weekend.

I have some other things I want to add as information at my place but imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had purchased one of my shapes! With no advertising and no picture yet in the Search tool (though I can now be found in Search) I still had someone stumble upon my place and buy my Carly shape. I’m so psyched!

I’ll do a fuller post and show images of the shapes I’m selling later, but I was so excited I just had to let everyone know. Oh, and if you like the Carly shape or want to see how Alex, Ariadne, Berrie, Bonita, and Cassandra might look, check me out at Mosi ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bristow/3/240/121)

An Old Dog Goes Shopping

I mentioned in my last post that I bought some stuff at Last Call and found myself disappointed. The Starley II Sweater Dress had some good points, but it left me feeling down and out. The Frida outfit didn’t disappoint me. I love the look and feel of the coat and shirt. Still, I didn’t think I’d be bringing them out to wear much. Then I saw the hair of my dreams. TFH posted about the new hair at Analog Dog called Tamara. Kinky-curly goodness, oh my! I had to have it. I also had picked up some more skin to use in photos for my shapes and picked up a nice skin at Lovey’s Boutique. The Cafe makeup in the Caramel skin tone just made me happy. I put the two together and then mixed it with the Last Call outfits. With a little fun learning GIMP I put together this:

The Starley II Sweater Dress is in brick and I’m wearing the tights. One image has the prims on the sleeves. The boots are from ETD. The Frida outfit is shown with both the short and trench jacket versions. But that hair! Isn’t it awesome? I’ve been wearing it all the time. So one last pic of me wearing the hair with some of the Last Call outfits:

All I want to know is do people who live on a tropic island wear sweaters in fall?

Winging It

Saturday night I attended the weekly salsa-dancing event that Brace Coral puts on. It’s fun with a bunch of regulars who whoop it up nicely. Normally I try to find a good salsa outfit to wear, but as I felt rather contrarian I went in a new outfit that I picked up earlier that day. Now, let me tell you, this outfit purchased at Last Call called to me when I saw the ad at Last Call’s web site. Yet when I put it on I found myself disappointed. It just didn’t live up to expectations. I sighed and put it away to try on the other two outfits that I purchased: the Starley II Sweater Dress and the Frida trench coat and jeans. None of them thrilled me either. Sigh.

When dressing for salsa I pulled out the Magdalena outfit again. and it wasn’t until I paired it with the thigh high boots from Drawmachine and the ruby turtleneck from Casa del Shai that I decided I wasn’t unhappy after all:

I added the Celestial Skins Champagne skin in Smoky-Burgundy, the Jasmine hair from ETD and I was ready to salsa. Yeah, in real life this would be a real bad idea for dancing….the sweat factor would kill your cool factor.

So what happens when you go dancing at Sexy Salsa Night? Well, things get heated and dares are made and when the mood hits you do the dare. I stripped down. No, not totally — I’m too much of a prude to do that. But I did manage to hit the right inventory buttons to get down to a swim suit. Thigh high boots with a swim suit is a fashion statement that I don’t normally make. I still felt a little too exposed so found a use for the Frida jacket from Last Call. Dancing with the gang looked like this:

Then everyone started pulling out wings to wear and I didn’t have any. Luckily, one of the dancers, Sy, gave me a pair. Did you know that big wings are difficult to control on the dance floor? I kept slapping people in the face with my wings.

Even though they were awkward, I had a new mission: go get me some wings! Thus, my purchase at Material Squirrel:

Draconis wings that flutter, flap, and do all kinds of neat stuff. I’m also wearing the Rock t-shirt from Artilleri, black leggings, the ETD Calf Boots, and Tami McCoy’s Babycakes hair.

So stripping down and then wings. Well, that’s what happens when I do too much hard work and hard shopping in Second Life. Still, I liked the look. Here’s one last shot of that final outfit from the dance:

Fashion Bites

As I started working on some sales posters for my new shop, Mosi, I decided to put a favorite movie in the DVD player: The Devil Wears Prada. I can’t help it. I’ve been reading too many Second Life fashion blogs, and I, who stay far away from fashion magazines in real life am hooked on the SL kind.

Though sometimes you can find something priceless on the blogs. Sure, I read every blogger cooing over the new lingerie offered at Casa del Shai. You have to admit that the ads are very nicely done. Here are two shots used:

So, I could only love Swirly Cyclone’s take on these ads at Fashion Victim . She acknowledges that Case del Shai is known for quality stuff, but Swirly asks the heartfelt question:

But what of the poor working girl? The escort, the stripper? The hard working, depraved whore? Swirly knows that most of her beloved readers fall into this category, so is thrilled to see that Shai has released a range of slutwear just for YOU! With slutwear this good, your nightly takings could easily double, so this range is a very worthwhile investment darlings.

And then Swirly does it even better, re-imagining these lovely ads in Swirly style. Here’s one lovely example.

Swirly’s my idol. Go check out the other ads at Fashion Victim.

Men in My Second Life

Sure, I always mention my sweetie, Townes, as my main Second Life squeeze, but yesterday I had this shirtless hunk hanging out on my deck. Let’s just say that I was checking him out thoroughly:

Okay, I was checking him out because I’m attempting to create male avatar shapes for my biz. I even broke down and purchased a male skin, plus picked up some freebies. Here’s my first male shape (should I call him Adam?) with two different skins:

On the left is skin I found at Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise (get thee there if you have not checked it out — lots of decent stuff among the not so good). It’s called Cody. The skin used on the right is a male skin that I bought. Do you know how hard it was for me to shell out good lindens for skin that I’ll only use for photos and testing? The skin is from Cake. It’s the Antonio medium – Emo Monk with Soul. I’ve added the Maggie tattoo from Artilleri. The hair is a style that I wear often in my female shape — Rumor from Cake. While at Cake, I picked up some more hair for “the guys.”It’s interesting shopping for a whole new avatar.

Poor Townes. He popped in last night and I greeted him with my new look. Funny how he wasn’t so eager to offer me a kiss.