Subtle changes

During my absence from blogging, I haven't been entirely away from SL. There have been some more or less subtle changes to my avatar. Since most of the changes happened around my face, the previous post and picture didn't do them justice, which is why I didn't feature the creators of my new accessoires.

First of all, I adjusted the lips a bit for a more balanced look and to fit my new piercings from the :Hebenon Vial: more easily.
Like me, the store has been gone for a while, but I am glad to hear it returned only recently. I had been looking for ages for piercings that compliment my look, rather than dominate it. Hebenon Vial offers a wide selection of very well-made piercings in various styles and some color variations, next to tattoos, eyes and some accessoires.
My new lip piercings are accompanied by an ear piercing from LouLou&Co which I picked up as a hunt gift a while ago. Another version of the Utopia piercings is available for L$ 175 at the mainstore. The full version includes four variations that are slightly different from the hunt gift version. While I'm wearing just the piercings for the left ear, versions for both ears are included.

The most important change however are my new glasses from .:*December*:.. A thin metal frame has replaced the big plastic one I have been wearing for the last couple of years. It took me less time to get used to them than I thought it would. They show more of my face and eyes which I like a lot. And speaking of eyes, my eyes changed, too. I am now wearing a pair of mesh eyes from ~*By Snow*~. I bought them during the one voice event for L$ 50 and it looks like they are no longer available. At least I couldn't find them in the mainstore or on the marketplace. But ~*By Snow*~ offers a lot of eyes for very fair prices.

Today, I'm also wearing a short haircut called Early from [elikatira] and another cute mesh jumper from NS Cutie Shapes.

To fit better into mesh clothes, I had to reduce my curves a little bit, mostly my breast size and saddle sliders went down a few points for now, leaving me even skinnier and more tomboyish than before. But the changes have been very subtle, I have to admit.

Breakdown:

Lip Piercing: the :Hebenon Vial: - Pitch Piercings [V.1] - L$ 130
Ear Piercing: Loulou&Co - Utopia Cube - previous hunt gift
Glasses: .:*December*:. - Glasses No.69 - L$ 250
Eyes: ~*By Snow*~ - Deep Eyes MESH (Wheat) - L$ 50 (no longer available)
Hair: [elikatira] - Early - Black 04 (Essentials Collection) - L$ 250
Sweater: NS Cutie Shapes - Sweet Life Mesh Sweater - L$ 30 (*)

(*) review copy

OotW 10/2012 - Remember me?

Ohai! Remember me? I've been away for quite some time due to RL obligations. I guess, it is a little too late to wish you a happy new year, so I will get back on topic straight away - not least thanks to flexagons Villota from +mocha+, who kindly remembered me and sent me a generous review copy of the lovely new Sunny Color Skirts.

A lot has changed in SL since then, mesh has been introduced. And of course I have udpated my viewer accordingly. Like all new things, it took some time to get used to it. And I quickly discovered, my personal shape isn't very compatible to many mesh clothes out there. I will have to see what to do about it.
Luckily, the cute skirt fits like a glove, even when I move around. The Sunny Color Skirts are available in 5 bright, summery colours, black and white. The colour I am using for my outfit is [Mint], which goes very well with the kawaii mesh top from NS Cutie Shapes. I picked it up for free on the marketplace, but it costs L$30 now.
To round off today's mesh sweetness, I am wearing Magika's subscriber gift hair, which is also rigged mesh.

The Happy Flats from HOC aren't mesh, but still great and I like them a lot. They come with a HUD that offers lots of texture options.

Today's breakdown:

Hair: Magika - Subscribo Hair Gift - L$ 0 [rigged mesh]
Top: NS Cutie Shapes - NS:: Kawaii Mesh_Top - L$ 30 [rigged mesh]
 Skirt: +mocha+ - Sunny Color Skirt [Mint] - L$ 120 [rigged mesh] (*)
Shoes: HOC Industries - Flats Happy - 150L (*)

(*) review copy

Current budget: L$ 109

OotW 09 / 2011 - Rock n Roll Mouse

Outfit of the Week 09 / 2011

This Outfit of the Week is just for fun, but very cute at the same time, I think.
Today, I'd like to start with the bottom. I just looove the new country wedges from HOC Industries. The texture detail is amazing and you can select from several colours for both the shoes and the metal buckles with a nifty HUD. They also come with a resizer script, but are modify as well. This also means you can remove all the scripts, once you are done customising them to match your current outfit (make sure you make a copy of the shoes first!). It greatly helps reduce lag and you can wear these fantastic shoes even to crowded placed without them being a burden to sim performance or your conscience.
The cute polka dot dress I am wearing was a gift from salire for the Black Butler Hunt. It has a nicely sculpted skirt and the top also has sculpted parts. Everything is resize scripted, but the scripts are removable.
Now, without the hood from soupizm, this would be a just neat little 50s retro outfit, but I think, the mouse ears really add some flavour to it. I like the brown hair with red streaks a lot, too. The mouse hood with hair is a collaboration item between soup and izm and was a free lucky board gift. Sadly, it is no longer available, but they have other cute animal hoodies at their collaboration store, located between both mainstores.

Breakdown:

Hair: soupizm - Mouse hood hair -- Lucky Board gift (no longer available)
Dress: salire - BBH dress -- Black Butler Hunt gift
Shoes: HOC Industries - Country Wedges -- L$ 175 (*)

The photo was taken at the artilleri sim.

(*) review copy

This fun outfit didn't cost me anything and I still have L$ 109 left.

OotW 08 / 2011 - A day off...

Today I took a day off and decided to visit the island of Roche.
It is sparesly populated and the few buildings scattered across the island have a worn and weatherbeaten look to them. The local bakery (seen in the background) also runs a free bike rental service for tourists. I took a stroll down to the lake instead and had a charming picnic, accompanied only by a few sheep who did not take any interest in me at all.

Time flew by as I lay idle, reading a cheesy novel instead of medical textbooks for a change, and way too soon it was time to return home. Not willing to accept this beautiful day was over already, I kicked off my shoes, sat down at the pier and watched as the sun slowly disappeared behind the horizon.

For this week's outfit, I chose a light, feminine look. Both the light pink shirt and the pumps are from Berries Inc. The lovely, elegant Belinda pumps are the current Lazy Sunday item, each pair is only L$ 60!
I combined both with a pair of white capris, that were part of a former group gift from Cilian'gel. I don't think, it is still available, but Cilia Shepherd always has a little something for her group members up her sleeve and a large selection of outfits for just L$ 10.
The white hoodie jacket from Grixdale was free for the SLB8 celebrations for a very limited time. They are available in different colours for L$150 each. I'm also wearing my old favourite necklace from Bare@Rose, which I blogged here. I think this is a very versatile look, somewhere between classy and casual.

As usual, here is an overview of my outfit:

Hoodie: Grixdale - My Sunshiney Hoodie - Pure -- free for SL8B
Shirt: Berries Inc. - Basic Shirt - Rose -- L$ 110 (*)
Capris: Cilian'gel -  Got my heart? -- group gift, L$ 10 joining fee
Pumps: Berries Inc. - Belinda - choco -- L$ 60 (*)

(*) review copies

The pictures were taken at Roche and my home, poses used belonged to the picnic table and fishing pier.

I actually joined the Cilian'gel group ages ago, but the fee is L$10 and I shall count them against my shopping limit. I have L$ 109 for now.

Introducing my other selves... Part 1: Theodore

May I introduce you to Theodoré? He is a distant cousin of mine, from the Canadian part of the family. The Constantines are a large family and I've only met a couple of my distant relatives so far. It was a pleasant surprise when I learned, Theodoré moved into town. He's a couple years older than me, but still studying, more or less. It seems, he keeps himself busy with other things than his books most of the time. He nevertheless accepted to help me and my little blog out whenever I need a male model. I hope, we will see more of him and learn a bit more about his life in future posts.

While Theory is quite able to pull off a tomboyish look, I figured it would be nice to have a male model for the blog as well. Good free or cheap items for men are quite rare, so I think it is worth to feature them.

The new group gift from Belleza came in quite handy. Joining the group isn't free, but enables you to pick up several male and female skins of great quality, so it is worth every L$! I guess, the new Ashton skin will be all over the blogs right now, but I just love this mature, masculine look and created a custom shape that hopefully does it justice. Theodoré was born.
He is different from the average male in SecondLife. First of all, he has a realistic body size, he is 1.92 m (6'3"), which makes him look tiny compared to most avatars, male or female. Secondly, I tried to make sure he is handsome, but not "perfect". His face is a tad bit asymmetric. He also has a slight stomach and a hint of body fat, instead of being either thin as a needle or consisting of nothing but muscles. This may might it harder to fit attachments to his shape, but at least in my book, he looks more realistic and likeable this way. I'm going for a well-kept look with rough edges on purpose. And of course, I'm going to stick to the general nerdy theme as well. I hope you like Theodoré, all I know is, I do.


For his basic look, I ignored my shopping limit, and I am not going to count it against my budget either.

To get a "feeling" for this character, I put together two different outfits, mostly from current hunt gifts and freebies. The second MENstuff hunt is only going on for about another week, but the new MENstuff lounge features permanent gifts from a lot of designers that are in the hunt as well. In order to be able to pick up both hunt and lounge gifts, you have to be a member of the MENstuff group, but joining the group is free.
I also just love the I <3 My Jeans from Acid & Mala. They look great, both on girls and guys and the sculpted bottom parts match the texture layers very well.
[ hoorenbeek] just released new gifts for their subscribo-group members. You have to be on the subscribo for at least 14 days to be able to receive the gifts.

I should add, I tinted the hair and modded it slightly to match the skin's hairbase, instead of using the tattoo layer one.


Theodoré's basic style card:

Shape: custom
Skin: -Belleza- - Ashton Medium GG Hair (chest hair) -- group gift, L$250 to join
Eyes: MADesigns - EYES_PROMISE ~ brown 7 -- former hunt gift
Hair: Jaryth's - Clipper Cuts - Sebastian - Grey -- MENstuff 2 hunt, free
Glasses: Kumaki - K_gs Ceres 1.0 -- L$ 400
Ear stud: [1st Act] - Squall Leonhart - earring -- free, featured in my last post

Casual outfit:

Open shirt: *FIR & MNA* - Beckett Shirt -- MENstuff Lounge, free
Checkered shirt: sf design - check shirt -- MENstuff 2 hunt, free
Jeans: Acid & Mala - I <3 my jeans - Grime -- group gift, L$ 10 joining fee
Boots: [ hoorenbeek ] - Pro Boots - Bordeaux -- SOM gift, free

Preppy outfit:

Jumper: Alphamale - Preppy V-Neck -- MENstuff 2 hunt gift, free
Jeans: Acid & Mala - I <3 my jeans - Dark Blue -- Depraved Summer Nights Hunt, free
Shoes: HOC Industries -  Skoochers 2 -- L$ 30

I used my friend's photo studio, poses used are from *EverGlow*, :snooky's: and BeScene. (all of them former hunt gifts, as far as I could tell. I couldn't track down Tristan Shuffle's store :snoOky's:, the Picks in the creator's profile lead to different shops or empty places).

Since I decided to "cheat" a bit in order to get Theodoré just right, I still have L$ 119 left for shopping.

Squall vs. Lightning, Theory wins

Theory vs. Ion

It has probably been through all the blogs that 1st Act are having a simwide hunt, but being the geek I am, I couldn't resist to write my own post about it.
The prizes are four full avatars of popular video game characters: Big Boss and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid (not shown) and Squall and Lightning from Final Fantasy. Lightning is the only female character, but all of them are very well-made, with lots of detail and come as full avatars, including outfits, shape, skin, hair, eyes and even some gestures. Each box also includes an updater card that allows you to get future updates of the avatars.
To get the avatars, you have to pick up a HUD at the 1st Act mainstore and wear it (there is one HUD for each of the avatars). Each HUD needs to be filled with seven shards. When you click an empty shard on the HUD, you will receive a hint where to find it and in which area of the sim (the store, the city or the wasteland). Use the teleporters in the mainstore to get down to the city and wasteland. When you have found the item the hint leads to, you have to click it and it will spawn a shard you have to click to collect. Once you have found all the shards, you will receive a teleport back to the store where you can pick up your prize. The hunt was really fun and not too hard. Despite the sim being packed with people, the scripts worked very well and I didn't have any trouble at all. Just make sure you wear only one HUD at a time when collecting the avatars.

The picture shows me dressed up as Lightning (using my own shape, skin, eyes and tattoos) and Corvus Szpiegel's character Ion dressed up as Squall (using his own shape, skin, eyes and hair). We fooled around a bit with poses and came up with this. It reminded me a bit of classical fighting games like Street Fighter 2, and I tried *coughs* to add a bit of a game interface to the picture. And no worries, I didn't hurt him.

The breakdown is very short this time:

On Theory: 1st Act - Lightning -- free hunt gift
On Ion: 1st Act - Squall -- free hunt gift

Pose: [Lyndz-Matic] - Wipeout -- L$ 120 (we used Corv's poseballs)


Everything was free (for me) and I still have L$ 119 left.

OotW 07 / 2011 - DOLLarbie

Outfit of the Week 07 / 2011

Please excuse the pun. I'm quite excited today, though, both because this really cute doll avatar cost me just a dollar (as in L$ 1), and because I finally managed to do something different than my more or less nerdy casual style.
As you can see in the picture, I'm a bit exhausted by now. Hunting for the outfit was easy enough, but finding a good spot for the photo wasn't, especially since I am currently experimenting with Firestorm. The beta is a lot more stable than the preview version, but I crashed several times before I was able to take this pic. I won't complain, though, since it is still beta.

Now to the outfit. The hair is from Crimson + Clover. As far as I know, the store sadly closed inworld a while ago, but some of her stuff is still available on the marketplace and this hairdo is can be found in two shades of red for a mere L$ 1 at Savoir Hair. For those of you who are not familiar with the place: a lot of hair designers offer a sample of their products there, either for free or L$1. It's perfect for new residents to get legit, quality hair and there are a lot of styles to chose from. One hint about the hair: it has a ton of scripts in it you don't need. Let Tools->Remove Scripts in Selection run over it a couple times to get rid of them. The rest of the outfit is actually from the Marketplace. If you scroll down on the marketplace main page, then click on "Best Selling Products", enter 0 and 0 (zero, null) into the text fields for price range and click on "Refine Search", you will get a selection of the most popular items that are entirely free! Some of it might be land listings and you will sure see a lot of demos, but there are some real gems there, too!

Ahem... rant ahead:
The lowest predefined price range is L$0-10, and I've seen a lot of people call these "freebies", but personally, I refuse to call anything free that isn't. Maybe I'm just weird that way. It's not that I mind to pay for a nice item, cheapie or not, but if it's not free, don't call it freebie, please. I've seen so called freebies for up to L$100, and that kinda makes me feel as if someone is trying to rip me off, no matter if I actually want the item or not. They promote it as free, yet I am supposed to pay for it, even if L$100 isn't that much in RL currency.

Ok, rant over. Sorry, but I just had to say this before finishing this post with the breakdown of my doll avatar:

hair: Crimson + Clover - Vian - Crimson -- L$ 1 (still available at Savoir Hair)
skin: [XYR] - Veronica Doll Skin - Joints -- free (comes with a shape, but I used my own)
eyes: [ROLY-POLY] - Glass Eyes - charcoal -- free
makeup: REPULSE - Bloody Tears III -- free
choker: INCA TEMPLE - *Captured Heart* barbed wire choker -- free
dress: ~Black Arts~ - Lilith -- free
socks: edge grafica - knee-high socks - white -- free
shoes: Curious Kitties - Simple Black Dolly Shoe -- free

pose: La Malvada Mujer - free
The picture was taken at Pandemonium @ Legion

The whole avatar cost me L$ 1 which leaves me with L$119 for now.