Countrified Sam

Or I'm a classy hayseed ;)



I ended up in this outfit because my favorite furry dance club, Club Cutlass, was having Hillbilly Night. This was the best I could do on short notice :) I'm wearing ETD Jessica II hair in Blonde Frosted [a dollabie--hat included], /artilleri/ Jed men's shirt, minus the pockets, ETD Vintage Denim Capris and Fleur Skins Allure Kit 2 in Cinnamon. No shoes obviously! And yes, the background is one of Claude Monet's haystacks ;)


I want to apologize for my absence recently -- fortunately Elaine & Fury are taking up the slack nicely :) It's been RFL inworld and RL outworld, including the demise of my desktop graphics card :(

Windows of the soul

In my previous blog post, I commented very briefly -in fact, I only posted the link- on the announcement that Miriel is closing down for good. I felt, however, that such news required further acknowledgement. So here's a full blog post... kind of my elegy. The jewellery is great, granted, because it's all scripted and you can choose the gems you want to wear and always match your outfit. However, Miriel has been the staple store for me in terms of eyes.

Eyes are an item that gets ignored every now and then; in fact, I have more than once thought to myself "I wonder where those eyes are from" when reading a blog post. I always do make a point in saying that the eyes I show in my pictures are from Miriel, but I'm just as guilty of not saying which exact ones they are. If you go back to my first blog post in February (I'm not expecting anyone to really go, it's just a trope), they were already there, and so were the lashes; in fact, a quick look at my Flickr informs me that my addiction dates back to August 2008, and since I turned to Miriel, I've never looked back.

The reasons are many. But if I had to make it short - I guess I'd say they're soulful eyes. They're so well made that they have a life of their own. I must admit I'm fussy about eyes: many times I've heard people say that X creator's are the best, but when I try them on it takes me 0.5 seconds to find fault and get back to good old Miriels. Also, I don't want to settle for just any shade of green, there's always a specific one on my mind, and Miriel has it. In fact, such versatility allows me to change my eye colour depending on my mood - and my clothes, why not. Sam took me there the first time, and I've kept going back for more. When I was there to get assorted one last time yesterday, it was sad to think it will soon be gone.

Ok, let the violin music stop and the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a selection of my favourite eyes from Miriel (I labelled the images themselves to avoid messing up, if you want to see each row separately, they're available here):

Wild about Azul

I have been a fan of Azul since the small shop on a Japanese sim, I wore an Azul dress I purchased from there on my engagement.

So, its no suprise that after 3 visits in a week and a little help from an alien (she's blue and beautiful...lol) I finally succumbed and bought the Azul-Maggie dress in onyx.

Its has great design and great texturing. From the moment I put it on I felt like I was a Bond girl. The tulip strapless top is asymmetrical in design, with half the bodice sheer with a touch of lace to save ones modesty. The skirt too is asymmetrical, although from the back it has a full, classical, floor length skirt. The front, however, is split to the thigh open skirt with layers of lace filling the gap. An altogether beautiful, sexy yet elegant evening dress.

I have to admit, when i was looking for hair to wear with it..it was merely an excuse to pull out Clawtooths: Kitten with a Whip (Black beauty)...what a great name...lol. This recent purchase is built high and with curls and a severe fringe. It did mean my look went somewhat from James Bond girl to Mars Attack girl...lol....oh well.

To set the dress off I used Alienbear Design..Frideswide Set (white) with its wonderfully detailed vines and flowers sitting nicely in the cleavage.

My usual favourites add to the whole look...SKG Black Stiletto Slingback Pumps and Fleur Allure Truffle Kitten 1.

The whole shoot was taken at AM Radio's The Wild and The Wet.

Styling:

Shape: Custom, FuriousDesigns

Skin: Fleur Allure Truffle Kitten 1

Hair: Clawtooth: Kitten with a Whip (Black beauty)

Eyes: (Miriel) Eyes - Platinum (Big)

Eyelashes: Cake - Separated Lashes - Tintable*

Dress: azul -Maggie- Onyx

Shoes: SKG Black Stiletto Slingback Pumps

Jewelry: Alienbear Design..Frideswide Set (white)

Birthday gift

A few days ago I was wandering around -ok, doing the WebQuest hunt- totally oblivious that I still wore my "Happy rezday to me!" tag, when something funny happened. I landed at a store called Spork, which was totally new to me. The store owner, GM Nikolaidis, was there and welcomed me singing "Happy rezday" off-key... we had a short conversation and I was pleasantly surprised by his sense of humour. To boot, he ended up sending me a gift voucher (despite me telling him it had been weeks ago), so I decided to take a look around anyway and pick a piece, just to see whether their clothing was any good.

My choice was the Flight dress, and I let GM pick a colour for me, so that it would be a surprise gift... and yay! he picked blue, which turns out to be my favourite colour. Textures, layers, originality... Spork is definitely on my list of places to get back to. In fact, after trying on the dress I decided to return in order to get one of the "expansion packs" of the dress, the Midi skirt - since I knew I'd feel more comfortable with a longer skirt length.

More stuff. Want to hear some good news? I had been drooling over Keris' shoes from Kalnins every time he bought a new pair, so when he told me they've started making women's shoes and forwarded me the notice, I nearly threw a party. It's not just that the sandals (Coquette) are awesomely well done, but that, instead of releasing a gazillion different colours and making you choose one, or charging a fortune for a fatpack, they only do one pair, with a colour change script, and sell it at a very reasonable price (500L if you're not a gold card member, half that if you are). Besides a ton of options (resizing, sounds, a footlight [!], etc.), the script lets you recolour 4 shoe parts separately, so all in all, for 500L you get... 4... 8... 12... umm... many! different shoe combinations. (Edit: Keris did the calculations, and fyi, there are 14641 variations) *faints*

*Gets up again* All right, time to finish. Other items shown above are: Alexis skin by Laqroki; Truth's new freebie hair, Jess; Miriel eyes and lashes (by the way: this is terribly sad), and the Shiny Things Glass Chunk necklace and double bracelet. Poses are from Reel Expression, if I recall correctly.

As usual, here's the full outfit credits.

Oh, Mama!

In my country (Spain) we celebrated Mother's Day one week earlier that almost everyone else - it's always on the first Sunday of May for us. So, while everyone else was celebrating with their mums, I got away from my family for the weekend. Of course, as is customary whenever there's any special day on SL, I came back to a ton of notices that were doomed to getting lost. I could, however, rescue an important one saying that Nicky Ree had a special Mother's Day gift, available only until 12th May. Lookit!

It is, of course, not me but the dress, Satin Shine Floral Gown in blue. As is usual with Nicky Ree's designs, it comes with two different skirt options, but I'm only showing the ballgown one in the picture because I suffer from that common SL disease, called bigbummitis.

I guess I could have worn prim feet with this one, because surely no one would have noticed a skin colour mismatch. However, I opted for rescuing a pair sandals from last season, which I think picked up nicely on the purples and blues on the gown - they're Sasy Chic in Tulipe, from Aphrodite Creations. Also the delicate jewellery, from Dark Mouse, echoed the blue on the dress. They're the Spring Flowers earrings and necklace in silver, plus the Aquamarine Chunk Bracelet, also in silver.

The skin is an old favourite, a Vogue from Celestial Studios - although I had my doubts, because the new group gift from Rockberry (Uma) matched very nicely, too, also with purple smoky eyes. But I guess I've been changing skins so much lately that I liked the idea of getting back to a classic. The hair is ETD's Tiana, eyes and lashes are from Miriel and poses are from the Reel Expression "Party dress" set.

Full outfit credits, here.

No Mimickery Here!

I'd say it's the real McCoy...lol

I wandered over to Mimikri to buy the sim crasher dress and ended up getting one of their new releases...Sina in nude. Shall we say pretty??? A detailed, spaghetti strapped, brocadded top sits on top of a lace and satin(?) flexi skirt. In fact its 2 flexi skirts...one lace and one material placed such that they fall beautifully together. A very pretty bowed, lace belt finishes the dress to perfection. Ideal for any event.

I teamed it up with ::SC -ketty- Felicidade Peacock Pie hair to give quite a 60's look to it.

Also wearing Fleur Allure Truffle Lounge 1 skin for that classic, elegant look and (Miriel) Eyes - Arctic Ocean (Big) for that 60's sex kitten look.

It seems i cant take this ensemble off my pixels running around sl...thank goodness my friends accept me for who I am....lol

Fun picture here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/furystapleton/3525287122/

Styling:

Shape: Custom, FuriousDesigns

Skin: Fleur Allure Truffle Lounge 1

Hair: ::SC -ketty- Felicidade Peacock Pie Hair

Eyes: (Miriel) Eyes - Arctic Ocean (Big)

Eyelashes: Cake - Separated Lashes - Tintable*

Dress: Mimikri - Sina nude

Shoes: Maitreya Verve Pumps- Black

All about Grace: Finding my "Hart"

To be honest, although I had tried PXL Creation's earlier skin demos, it wasn't until my SL sis, Grazia Horwitz, told me to look at the new Grace, that I found my "Hart."




My first purchase was Grace Natural CatEyes RoseLips. I choose to wear it with Brown brows and freckles. And let me say here that I absolutely adore the freckles--they go all over the body and they are perfect :) It's on the left, above. On the right is Grace Fair Cat Eyes Flamenco lips, also with brown brows.




After purchasing my first "Grace" I offered on plurk to look at an upcoming beta and then asked for a makeup with copper lips and green eyeshadow in the future [I know, pushy pack 'o' pixels] and before I knew it Hart dropped the Grace Fair Blogger's Pack --oh well he calls it Skin-Whores-In-A-Box . How did he know? Anyway I got a look at both the released skins and the new spring makeups.

And YES--my green eyeshadow is there :) It's on the left above. The Makeup is Grace Fair Spring Flamenco lips. On the right is Grace Fair Spring Nude lips.



Above are Grace Fair Dark Eyes with Coffee Lips and Grace Fair Nude with Nude lips. Eyebrows remain brown.


Last, but far from least, are two more Grace Fair Spring makeups. On the left is Red lips, on the right Wine lips. What I like about the Grace Spring makeups is that they move a bit into color in the eye makeup, something I had missed in PXL skins previously.

Hair is ETD Loraine in Crimson. Earrings, the Gypsy Soul from Love Chic