Well, the holiday season is upon us, and I am headed home for the first time in SIX YEARS! I am so excited, I can barely contain myself. My little country girl heart is fluttering.
But before I go (and don’t worry! I’ll be back on Sunday!), I just wanted to take a second to say how grateful I am for this little Flickr family I’ve been a part of for the last four months now. You all have become such a huge part of my happiness and energy, and each and every one of you have touched my heart in ways I can’t even begin to describe. My love and kisses go out to you, and I wish you all the best for the holidays.
Now, eat plenty of pumpkin pie, gorge on the turkey (or tofurkey if that’s your preference) and don’t neglect the CRANBERRY SAUCE!
Much love and ever-growing gratitude to my Flickr (and of course BLOGGER!) family.
- Beck
The lovely Jonathan Hugo, owner and designer of Fuse (whose store I wrote a review on just yesterday!), sent me a wonderful surprise this morning as I logged in to check my IMs. Five FANTASTIC dresses — a sneak peak to his future female clothing releases and undoubtedly the beginning of a massive flood of, “More! We need MORE!” outcries from the female population. Mr. Hugo, I hope you’re prepared!
And girls,… you’re in for a treat.
The dresses, Audrey, were sent to me in the following colors: Aqua, Caffe (shown), Nero, Rouge (shown), and Verde, and are all simply WONDERFUL. The colors, especially the Rouge, are all exquisite and deep, and the detail on the skirt and boobs (why do I always look at the boobs? LOL) are fantastic. I simply cannot wait for a big release from this store.
I’m telling you girls, don’t lose track of this one! Pop over for a visit, landmark the place, and check back often!
I heard through the blogosphere (grapevine, locker room, whatever) that there’s a new designer in town by the name of Jonathan Hugo. His new shop, Fuse (SLURL), I felt was definitely worth a mention here, as it shows some SERIOUS promise in the fashion world.
While his shop (housed in one of Barnesworth Anubis’s newer builds, the BelAir) is small and very sparse at the moment, the few items he DOES have are VERY noteworthy. SO noteworthy, in fact, that I’ve commissioned my very good friend, Mr. Stephen Venkman, to model a few of his outfits for me.
Yes, ladies, this shop mostly has male clothing at the moment… there are a couple of female choices, though not many. However, I have high hopes for his future female fashion endeavors! If they are anything like his male clothing, I am sure the future is bright indeed.
Now, let’s get down to bidness!
A couple of things to note right off the bat about the jeans that Stephen is wearing… they ARE MODIFIABLE. When you initially put them on, they are, as Steph would say… “nut hugging”. However, you can modify them to be as baggy as you like, so DO NOT FRET if you put these pants on and realize that the tops of your rock star boots are no longer tucked away neatly below the fold. That can be changed. These jeans can be taught!
Each piece of clothing shown here is sold individually. I am especially fond of the polo shirts… they are beautifully made, fantastically textured, and I’m just such a sucker for realistic wrinkles.
The seams on these shirts match perfectly, right down to the triangular side seam traditional of polos. The texture has a good bit of depth to it, and as I mentioned, the wrinkles are fantastically done. The pectoral muscle shading is beautiful, giving off just enough “hint” of muscle tone beneath the fabric (I know how you boys just LOVE your muscle tone!). The only real problem I have with the polo shirts is I kind of feel that the shoulder cloth is a tiny bit… “over-wrinkled”? Is that even a word? But other than that, brava. These are beautifully done. The polos come in six different colors (Clay, Salmon, Olive, Lilac, Stone, and Earth), and are available for $110L per shirt.
The next item of business, Mr. Hugo’s wool jersey for men, is also incredibly well done. Like the polo, it is very well textured and superbly shaded right down to the subtle highlights on the long sleeves; not to mention that the perfection of the seams is almost scary. I have to admit, I am a huge pain in the ass when it comes to seams on clothing… and these definitely pass my test. Not even a MILLIMETER off center. Incredible. These fantastic jerseys are available in four colors (Earth, Mist, Sunset, and Thunder) and, like the polo shirts, are available for purchase at $110L per shirt.
I’d also like to mention here that all shirts are modify/copy/no transfer.
Finally, the jeans (playfully known as the “nut huggers” from this point on) lack very little in the way of denim texturing. Honestly, this particular denim texture has to be one of the better ones that I’ve seen on the grid. Thanks to the fact that these jeans ARE intially tight on your legs (but they ARE MODIFIABLE!), they DO actually look great on female avatars. I know. I tried them on myself, and I’m rather pleased with the results. If I could change one, tiny thing about them though, I would have to say that I’m not crazy about the fact that the zipper button is kind of a rusty orange color. I, personally, would lean more towards a silver or tin colored button. That might be me just being nit picky, but you never know. But, zipper buttons aside, these jeans are fantastic. I do declare, Mr. Beauregard… I believe I’m in love with the manly jeans! There are six pairs of jeans available at the price of $110L per pair, and they come in colors City (a grey-ish color), Factory (a black color) and Subway (a dark blue color) with your choice of regular texturing or gritty texturing. Everyone (ladies included) should definitely run out and snatch these up. I am sure they would make a welcome addition to any wardrobe, ESPECIALLY considering that they’re modifiable.
Yes, I do believe I am rather impressed by this little gem of a shop. Mr. Hugo, I cannot wait to see your future releases! And please don’t forget us ladies… we have plenty enough clothes, I know, but, but, bububu… we will love you for it. I promise!
The name is Fuse. Drop it a visit! You won’t regret it. Also, feel free to bookmark his blog. While pretty underdeveloped right now, I imagine it will soon be teaming with life like a koi pond in a Japanese garden.
PS: Ladies, there ARE female items available in the store (approximately 9 items). It is well worth the visit! Kimberly, if you’re reading this, I think you would look *STUNNING* in the Secretary outfit in red!
Oh. My. God.
I almost had a fucking skingasm over what I’m about to write, so if you are of the light-hearted persuasion, I encourage you to prepare yourself. Because wow… this is intense. For those of you that aren’t easily weak-kneed, go pour yourself a nice glass of ice tea, sit back, relax, and let the tinglies come to you.
For the sake of those of you who do not want to read the entire review, I will get the technical details on each skin type out of the way first:
Hart Larsson, a man I can only describe as so-talented-I-could-faint, asked me to review his FRIGGIN FANTASTIC skin shop, PXL Creation Boutiques (SLURL), earlier today. So I walked in, I picked up a few demos to try on, right? I was NOT prepared for what I saw, and I’ll tell you why.
These have to be… seriously… some of the best skins I’ve ever seen in SL. Ever. EVER. And I’ll tell, no screw that, I’ll SHOW you why. Because this has to be the least smearing in the girlie-bits area I’ve EVER…SEEN:
Yeah. It’s THAT good. And I’ve looked at a LOT of skins. I have NEVER seen a skin that wasn’t completely smeared in the girlie-bits area on the inner thighs. Which makes this skin just incredible to me. So now that I’ve shown you the reason you should go out and buy this skin (becauseomgwtfnosmearingonthegirliebitsftw!), let me tell you more about why this skin will make an incredible, incredible addition to your inventory evolution.
We’ll start out with my personal favorites; the two things I look at first when deciding on a skin purchase: ass and titties (dude, I swear I’m a girl… no seriously). For technical purposes, the skin I will be reviewing is called “Chandra”, Tan, with Coffee eye shadow.
The nipples are incredibly realistic on all of the demos that I tried on. All match their skin tones beautifully. The breasts themselves give off a subtle white glow, highlighting the shadow beneath them. They look smooth and silky to the touch… as I’m sure they would be! *wink* I have to say, I’m actually most impressed by the nipples on the Chandra Tan skin, and the breasts in general. The shading and skin detail is top notch, and only makes you want to explore more of this perfect skin.
Now, I’ll start this next paragraph by saying… I have a pretty nice ass. It’s true. You’ve all seen it. It’s nice, right? Well get a load of THIS craziness.
I didn’t think it was possible to make my ass look any better… but Mr. Larsson has certainly proved me wrong. This has to be the most realistic looking ass I’ve ever seen grace the face of SL. The cheeks are just RIDICULOUSLY well done… and granted, there is only ONE tiny area that I see room for improvement on, and that is the shading beneath the “crack”… the lower cheek shading that seperates the lower bun from the upper thigh. Other then that though, the ass is just unbelievable. And coming from me, someone that is strangely proud of her ass (as again, you all know…), that’s saying something!
Now that we’ve covered my two favorite parts, we’ll move on to the more complicated, though less noticed areas. Knees, shoulder blades, hands, feet… The places you never think to look until you’ve purchased a skin and realize, “Oh, my God, I paid $1,000L for THAT? I can’t show my naked ass in public like this.” I am proud to say that this will not be the case with this skin.
The hands are beautifully done and very well detailed, right down to the pseudo french manicure on the nails. The hands and knuckles are shaded rather subtlely, but you can damn near make out the bone structure underneath the fragile skin. The feet are also very well done for being… well… Second Life feet. I’m sure you all know what I mean. Feet in Second Life just weren’t meant to exist… however, I am happy to say that I can clearly distinguish five toes, and even five toe NAILS on this skin,… something that is not always entirely easy to do!
The knees are also superbly shaded and detailed. They’re neither too small nor too knobby, something that always, ALWAYs irks me about most Second Life skins (I swear, you’d think some people have no sense of proportion). The shoulder blades, I have to say are a TINY bit under-detailed, but still nicely done. With a little more shadow to make them pop out from the spinal cord a tiny bit more, I think they’d be practically perfect.
A few more details about this particular skin: the makeup is fantastic. The lipstick is very nice and has just enough gloss for my liking. Not to mention that the lip texture itself is fantastic, almost lifelike, especially on the Cloe versions of these excellent skins. The eye shadows are very well done, blended and highlight the upper eyelids perfectly. The eyebrows are something you might want to keep an eye on when purchasing these skins and trying on demos, because they DO change from skin style to skin style.
Even the EARS are well done.
One more thing for all you oily skin lovers… the Cloe skin line comes in both regular AND oiled skin!!! That’s right… now you can grease up with that Crisco sheen WITHOUT using a clothing layer! That fact ALONE should be enough to cause some serious “Gaga, Googoo’s”.
*stands back and sighs at the marvelousness that is the PXL skin line*
I cannot stress enough how much you honestly need to run out and buy these skins. Right now. Hurry hurry. They’re excellent, and you will not regret it! :) And at $1500 a skin, they’re a steal right now. I’m sure at their quality, the prices will be skyrocketing before you know it! Get ‘em while they’re hot! However, as with ALL purchases, buy responsibly! Try on demos and make sure you’re getting what you want!
And if it’s true that artists only get better with practice, then this man’s going to be blowing us all out of the water soon. Bravisimo, Hart!
PS: There are also MALE SKINS at PXL!!! So all you guys out there, don’t hesitate to stop by. He’s got something for you too!
Have you always wanted to work for a magazine in Second Life? Well, do you hear that? That’s opportunity knockin’!
Culled from the ASpiRE! Magazine Blog:
Do you love SecondLife fashion? Do you want to be on the cutting edge of new releases, meet well-known designers, interesting people AND be creative at the same time? If you are a photographer or writer that meets this criteria and are responsible and conscientious, ASpiRE! Magazine is interested in speaking with YOU!
We are currently hiring new writers and photographers to add to our well-known magazine. ASpiRE! Magazine is currently in about 270 locations, reaches over 20,000 people per issue and is posted online in pdf format at http://www.aspiresl.com/.
If you are interested in applying, please contact either Ally Geer or Anastase Rosewood, Editor-in-Chief for a scheduled interview. Please contact them through a foldered notecard, in order to ensure that we receive your submission, NOT through regular IM. We look forward to meeting you and welcoming you to the ASpiRE! family!
I do believe I will be applying. Yes ma’am. *YAY for potential job opportunities*
Anyone that knows me, knows one of two things: the first, I change my clothes. A LOT. My wardrobe is ridiculous, and if you catch me in game, I will often change 3 or 4 times before settling on an outfit to wear. You also know that even if I DO settle on an outfit, there’s no guarantee that I’ll remain satisfied with said outfit — which often results in my changing AGAIN… and the cycle goes on.
The second thing you will inevitably know about me, especially if you know the first, is I like hair. I have what seems like a bazillion different hairstyles, in black alone (my color of choice). Which brings me to my post for today. My very first review! On … dun dun dun … hair!!! CJ Hair to be more specific.
I’ve seen this particular little shop circulating the blogosphere once or twice, so I decided to stop in and check the place out, as I’ve never been there (omg) and we all know that I just NEED MORE HAIR! So, I made the conscious decision that I was going to stop in, buy the best two styles I saw, and that was IT, because dammit I gotta stop SOMEWHERE… *fat chance*.
I’ll start out by saying that it is a quaint little store, tucked away in a surprisingly lagless little shopping district. The store is sparsely furnished (thank god — prim heavy shopping districts REALLY suck) and nicely laid out. There are only about eleven styles total in the shop, which is unfortunate, because they’re all so lovely… however, a store’s gotta start somewhere, right? So, without further ado, lets get down to the nitty gritty.
I’ve been looking for up-dos a lot lately, so the first thing I noticed when I walked in were the few she has available. I immediately purchased the demo of “Belle” and tried it on. With a little tweaking, I must admit, it looks beautiful atop my rather oddly shaped head. Being rather satisfied with this style, I decided on the purchase… for $85L!!! A steal. *buy*
The texture, while a little dark, is pretty decent, along with the highlights it sports. The black shade that I purchased could do with a tiny, tiny bit more highlighting (the blond demo I tried on was lovely), but other than that, really nice work. And, as with all designers, we all get better with time — so I imagine the best is yet to come! I should also probably mention that all styles come in a “large” and “regular” size, I imagine to better fit the shapes of our heads. Hahahaha. Brilliant thinking like that.
Moving right along to the longer hairs — three caught my eye in particular: “Grace“, “Summer“, and “Kia” (see? I’m already breaking my two-styles-only rule). I immediately purchased the demos, naturally, and busted them out. Grace’s and Kia’s demos came in a lovely java chip brown color and looked very flattering on my skin tone. Grace is a lovely longer style, wispy and beautiful while Kia is a fantastic long ponytail with a color changing headband. Summer’s came in a ginger red (very natural looking, I might add). All three designs are beautiful and elegant. Because of my three style rule, I actually decided on purchasing “Summer” in my favorite shade of black, which I’m happy to say looks STUNNING… it must just be the up-dos that need a tiny bit more highlighting. Because the longer hairs are FANTASTIC in their flexibility and texture-y goodness.
After patrolling the hairstyles on the wall, I took another quick peek around the store to find a couple of jewelry sets, and yet ANOTHER hairstyle that I REALLY WANTED……… but I must remain true to my two styles rule this week… *waits anxiously for next weekend* I can’t help it. I just have to have it. It’s THAT good. It’s called “Xtina” and is, what I can only imagine to be, a hairstyle inspired by Christina Aguliera. But it’s wonderfully done (as you can see) and only comes in one color — blond/black. Fantastic. Love it. Beautiful. *j’adore* In a nut shell, I am really looking forward to more of what this designer, Claudine Jewell, will produce in the future. I fully encourage all of my fellow hair-fiends to run out and visit CJ’s store. At $85L a color, you just can’t go wrong!
I don’t know about everyone else, but while I was growing up, I was very, very religious. And while my beliefs have changed dramatically as I’ve gotten older, my love for the music I listened to then did not. And since I’m going home next week for Thanksgiving, and I’ll see all of my old youth group friends for the first time in six years… I’ve been getting very nostalgic. So I started listening to some of the old music again… waking up old memories. Feeling old feelings.
Here is an image inspired by one of my favorite songs, by a band called Jars of Clay.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
In open fields of wild flowers,
she breathes the air and flies away
She thanks her Jesus for the daises and the roses
in no simple language
Someday she’ll understand the meaning of it all
He’s more than the laughter or the stars in the heavens
As close a heartbeat or a song on her lips
Someday she’ll trust Him and learn how to see Him
Someday He’ll call her and she will come running
and fall in His arms and the tears will fall down and she’ll pray,
“I want to fall in love with You.”
I’ve caught wind of a couple of pre-holiday sales happening on the grid. At a couple of fantabulous stores!
Yes, that’s right. Two stores, two $100L sales!!! *pulls out the checkbook* Get to shoppin’! Although, please note that I actually have no idea how long these sales are lasting… so the sooner you get there, the better!
Again, this is TOTALLY NOT Second Life related, BUT… for all my designer babes out there Crestock.COM is having a Photoshop contest with prizes so crazy spectacular, that if I were a guy, I’d be blowing a photoshoppy-load right now.
Culled from the official blog post about the contest:
There are four rounds with different themes, and you can contribute one image for each round. Sign-up and submission is completely free and without commitment.
For each round we will supply a set of source photos from our image library. Your entry must be based on one or several of these photos, but you are free to do with them whatever you like. You may also use other elements in your design, as long as one or more of the source images can be recognised as a central part of your design.
The winner is determined 40% by public vote, 60% by our highly qualified judges’ votes. The public voting will open after the deadline for each round and run for one week.
The winning entry will have incredible visual impact and exhibit fantastic creativity and technical skill, perhaps also with a twist of humor. Amaze us or make us laugh – or both. It’s up to you and your skills, creativity and imagination, but whatever you do, don’t miss out on the action!
You will need to go to the block post (linked above) to download the stock photos needed for the Photoshop contest. Then, once you have finished your picture, click the “Submit an Image for Round XX” button!!! That’s it!
Remember, this is going on for four weeks, so PARTICIPATE!!! And omg… MacBook Pro. *drool*
I read this amazing, amazing, AMAZING blog post today, written by Marc McGuinness of the Business of Design Online blog. While 90% of the blog post is heavily geared towards writers of somesort (bloggers, novelists, poets, etc), I found a lot of the information he provided to actually be pretty fucking useful and insightful for the mind of an artist in general.I’ll begin this post by saying that this is in no way Second Life related. But for those of you who are bloggers, writers of some sort, or graphic/digital artists (like so many of us are!), then you might actually be interested in what I’m about to write about.
Now, back to the incredible Mr. McGuinness. Essentially, his post was about time management, and the necessity of organization in order to effectively enhance your creative work flow. He gives you some intriguing questions to ask yourself, a few pointers, explains the concept of “self-hypnosis” to get into the “creative zone”… Effectively, the entire little “seminar” is about 5 blog posts long and a LOT of reading… but REALLY worth the ride.
For those of you who don’t want to read all five posts, I’ll sum up some stuff for you. For those of you who do want to read every word this brilliant man has to say, I will provide the links in order:
Post #1 - Why You Need to be Organised to be Creative
This post was more an introduction to the proceeding four than anything else. Marc goes on to explain the importance of setting aside time to work towards obtaining your own personal goals, along with the goals everyone else expects you to accomplish. He also gives you the following questions to ask yourself, mostly to “assess” your personal creative needs:
What is your attitude to organising your creative work? Do you see organisation as soulless, uncreative routine or as a necessary, helpful part of your creative process?
Post #2 - Prioritise Work That is ‘Important But Not Urgent’
This post goes on to explain the four levels of prioritisation and how you rate your tasks effects the work you are able to accomplish realistically. Noting Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, McGuinness states in his post that:
Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent (the blue square in the diagram). Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with.
He also follows the post up with four more questions:
Post #3 - Ring-fence Your Most Creative Time
There is one main focal point of this post. At least, the one that I want to get across: Pick your most creative time of day. Pretty simple, right? I know exactly when mine are (I have two of them… who’da thunk). They are between the hours of 6:30 and 8 AM, and 11:30 PM and 2:00 AM. If you’ve ever noticed my photo-posting trends on Flickr, you’ll notice that most of my work goes up around those times.
Another good point of this post is the idea of unintentionally self-hypnotizing your mind into the creative zone. His explination touches on the habits and “routines” that other well-known writers have (i.e. Maya Angelou and ProBlogger Darren Rowse) in order to get their minds started on their creative process. Everyone seems to have that little thing that they need to ignite that creative spark. I never actually thought about it, but I do have a particular routine that I go through in order to maximize my creative potential for a project and completely immerse myself in “the zone”. Do you?
And, as always, follow up questions:
Post #4 - Avoid the ‘Sisyphus Effect’ of Endless To-Do Lists
I have to admit, I am VERY guilty of making to-do lists, as I’m sure a good bit of us are. I always feel overwhelmed to the point of needing to write everything down in order to avoid forgetting it. Most of the time, it actually works out for me. Sometimes, it’s just intimidating.
Among other things, a couple of Marc’s really good points in this post are:
The bottom line is that interruptions destroy your concentration. And loss of concentration = loss of creative work. If you’re not careful, you can end up in permanent ‘reactive mode’ – spending your time responding to others’ demands and all the things you ‘have’ to do instead of the one thing you really wanted to do today.
Faced with the twin problems of unpredictable interruptions and the Sisyphus effect of never-ending tasks, you need to give yourself room to breathe, keep a clear head and stay focused on what you want to achieve. In short, you need to install a buffer between others’ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.
And of course… more questions to ask yourself.
Still with me?! Good! Last one…
Post #5 - Getting Things Done by Putting them Off Till Tomorrow
What difference would this make to your creativity?
I will simply cut and paste my favorite part of this entire post here:
Dealing with e-mails in one batch is more efficient. You can get into ‘e-mail mode’ and zip through them in one go.
It’s more motivating to deal with a finite number of e-mails than an ever-expanding inbox. In other words, it cuts out the Sisyphus effect and presents you with a manageable task instead of a never-ending one.
Today’s e-mails can’t interrupt you – because you’re not going to respond to them today. I experience a feeling of relief each time I look at an e-mail containing a request and then ‘let go’ of it and return to the task in hand – confident that I will deal with it tomorrow.
You answer e-mails in a better state of mind – so you’re much less likely to take on unnecessary commitments by agreeing to something in order to get rid of the e-mail. You are also likely to make a more thoughtful and helpful response.
It doesn’t really matter how often you check your e-mail. Personally I can see the benefit of only checking e-mail once a day, but I’m not disciplined enough to resist, especially if I’m waiting for something important. This way, I can check my e-mail as often as I like without getting caught up in responding to it.
You deal with the difficult e-mails. Most of us have a few ‘tricky’ e-mails that we put off answering for various reasons. But this system means you answer all the e-mails that came in yesterday – so you end up clearing out the difficult ones and getting them off your mind.
You know when you’re finished for the day! Once you’ve answered yesterday’s e-mail, you’re finished with e-mail today – how good will that feel?
Followed by the final two questions:
Wow! That was long. But honestly, guys… very well worth the read if you get the chance. And I’m sure he’d appreciate your feedback as well!!! *runs off to enter the “creativity zone”*
