Oh so proper in pink

So as I was doing 50L fridays last night, mentally toying with the idea of shamelessly copying the brilliant marketing coup and wondering whose legs I’d have to break to get in on it….when the artilleri notice came by. Teleporting in immediately, and having a few glasses of wine under my belt, I determined that I NEEDED to have the pink cardigan. I NEVER wear pink. EVER. I truly hate pink. Looks awesome on me no? I’ve been focusing lately on refurbing my RL business clothes wardrobe and when i saw the Editor Pants at Pink Outfitters, they appealed to me immediately. In fact minus the pink cardigan (in RL I’d prolly go with black) this is totally an RL me look. I think maybe I SHOULD get a pink cardigan, just to jazz my look up a bit. Oh and I’d probably not wear a shirt that showed my tummy! With a little luck and some shopping I hope I can find a cardigan like this ‘Elspeth’ one in RL! It’s gorgeous, and typical of the quality you can always expect from Artilleri. I paired it with uber useful Kala Ruffle shirt from BareRose after doing a bit of editing of appearance and making the sleeves tight and the ruffled sleeve prims smaller. For a bit of fun, I added my own mussed up set in Pink/Silver. My new hair release, the Trish topknot seemed to top off the oh so proper look completely. For added business flair, I pulled my NEW SLink two tone stillettos outta inventory and discovered I LOVE THESE SHOES as much as when I first snagged them. And last but not least. ******We interupt this post to send out a special appeal to Iki Ikarus of Dutch Touch. PLEASE do a WHOLE makeup line based on your group gift skin of recent memory******** Okay so really I IM’d Iki to ask about this skin, and she told me it’s closest to the Mauve skin line…..but…..I want this face!!! It’s ever so slightly different and only a skin crazy person would probably notice (Mouse=skin crazy person). I’m crazy about this skin, and I only have 2 makeups!!! Of course I’m not really asking Iki to make a whole makeup line just for me. No, I’d never do that….

Outfit Credits

Hair – Trish (Pale Brown) – Dark Mouse

Skin – Special #2 Caramel (Group Gift) – Dutch Touch

Eyes – Summer Storm – Poetic Color Eyes

Lashes – Photoshoot Lashes – LeLutka

Jewelry – Mussed Up Set (Pink/Silver) – Dark Mouse

Shirt – Kala Ruffles (White) – BareRose

Cardigan – Elspeth (Pale Pink) – Artilleri

Pants – the Editor Pants (No.2 Pencil) – Pink Outfitters

Shoes – Felicia Heel Capped White – SLink

Poses – A variety from – Olive Juice

Missing Buffy & Zombiefest

Today I realized I was missing Buffy. It all came about when I stopped into Olive Juice poses and picked up a bunch of lovely stuffage. One was the most awesome pose, a roundhouse kick. LOVE IT. But it made me sad, and I realized it was because I missed Buffy. I watched it religously – funny story – Our tv broke way back when on a Tuesday night and I MADE my hubby go buy us a new one so I wouldn’t miss Buffy that night. I stuck by it through season 6. I screamed, “OMG SHE KILLED HIM,” when Buffy killed her beloved Angel. Scared the crap outta everyone in the house on that one. I really need to get HBO. I could be watching True Blood, I suppose. What was the point of this post, oh yeah. Buffy. Missing it. Anyways. I’m a little late to the table on the whole Zombiefest thing! Zombiefest is an event in SL that is being held in conjunction with World Zombie Day, an event to benefit the Red Cross. I was TRAPPED in the wilderness for 3 days, and everytime I tried to run SL on my computer, the front desk would call my room and say, yo, sucking bandwidth much? My answer was, sucky internet much? GAH! It was torture. The people in the room next to me seemed to be having a long and protracted battle with a mouse. No pun intended. Anywho I really wanted to participate, and because I HAD so many requests, I decided to rework my Scorpion necklace for men. I’m last minute here but what the heck! Since all along it was intended to be an exclusive group gifty, I decided that male version would be for a good cause, the Red Cross. So go get your zombie gear on, hit the Zombiefest and give up your lindens for a good cause! You can purchase this necklace there! Here’s the slurl to get to the Zombiefest and purchase this necklace – 100% of proceeds will go to the Red Cross! The outfit is entirely me trying to get in the spirit of Zombiefest – the skin is from the ever fabulous, Mia Snow, most of the gadgets I dug outta my inventory.

Outfit Credits

Hair – Bilirubin (Blonde) – Gritty Kitty

Skin – Zombie Hunter – Mia Snow Skins

Tattoo – Rage – Etchd

Eyes – Summer Storm – Poetic Color Eyes

Lashes – Photo Shoot Lashes – Lelutka

Jewelry – Dark Mouse Scorpion Necklace – Dark Mouse Exclusive Group Gifty

Glasses – John Lennon Style Glasses (Silver) – Dark Mouse

Armband – Maker has left SL

Gun – Apparently no longer available GAH!

Tanktop – Lil’ Miss Tantrum (Black) – Sysy’s

Pants – Lowrise Heavy Cargo Pants (Black) – BareRose

Boots – Neko Knife Grunge Boots – Maker has left SL

Poses – Alice in Wonderland & Various – Olive Juice

New Release at Dark Mouse & Mini Hunt still going on!

As promised, I give you, Moon & Stars. In the lovely colors of White, Black and Pink. Forget the temptations of silver and gold – put on your pink beads and go clubbing! I hope you like! Here’s a slurl to the store – come on over and don’t forget i’m having a mini hunt this weekend – be there or be square! Check out the new shop build!Here’s a slurl to the shop.

DARK MOUSE LIVES & Mini Hunt!

Well we have a saying in my RL business…it’s called the seven “p’s.” Previous prior planning prevents piss poor performance. So by spending some time building and doing a lot of pre-planning, I managed to rebuild my store in 1 day! (Insert plurk banana dance here). I’m really, really pleased. The goal of the build was to provide me with a better area for the hair experiment, a better setting for my jewelry, and a build that reflects the things that I like. A big rustic looking building with a dreamy fountain was where I was going. A warehouse style interior that would allow me some space but not look like a giant box…etc. Enough prims leftover to build with – haha I actually found 350 unaccounted for prims (yes, I’m that messy)! So good things all around. I hope you stop by to check it out, but to encourage you, I’m having a MINI-HUNT! Yes, yes I normally hate hunts, especially doing them. But this hunt is fairly easy – I’ve marked 7 items down to $0L. Stop by! the hunt officially ends on Sunday, June 14! Here’s a slurl to the shop

Rant.

You know, I’m sitting here in my wee cafe to be (yes, yes, I’m putting in a little ‘hanging out area’ in the store as I move forward in the rebuilding of the darn thing). I spend a lot of time in SL obviously. I build, I hang out with friends, I change clothes, I blog. I am addicted to SL, I love it. But today is one of those days that just frustrates the hell outta me. First off. I’m changing my clothes (HA! first time in three days) and I settle on an all black ensemble (yes, I am and always will be a San Franciscan at heart), because it’s easy, and I’m not going to be blogging anything, I’m just building. I pull out my skirt folder, and try my old cake mini skirt. Yes, I love it. However the prim part is still tinted grey cause of an old SL bug, and when I UNTINT it, it goes wierd in my viewer – the back prim goes light, the front stays dark. Okay, can’t wear it. As I’m sitting here, I think, hmmm maybe I’ll add those springy flowers to the back yard that I got a ways back. Go to look for my landscape folder. It’s gone. Damn – did I delete it? Ack maybe I think. Damn was there anything I truly loved in it? Probably. But it’s so easy to accidentally grab and drag a folder in our inventories without realizing it. Okay back to the skirt folder, I can buy more landscaping. hmmm maybe my Pixel Dolls long velvet skirt. Then I realize, some of my skirts are missing. Oh the folders are there. Like my long blue Skin Flicks skirt. (yes, I love long swingy skirts). Folder is there, skirt gone. Then I start looking around. I logged out with 14K inventory items and now I have 13,400. This is just wrong. I guess I need to get second inventory, because I CANNOT rely on LL to run SL properly and protect my stuff. I KNOW THIS. But it doesn’t make it any better, being realistic and pragmatic. I just want my stuff. I could file a ticket, but why bother we all KNOW what they will tell me to do. There are other things. I build. I have a business. I am encouraged by LL to do these things (Your world. Your imagination) but I cannot select prims near the chest area using the regular client. This bug has been around FOREVER now. If you build jewelry OR hair for that matter, choosing a prim near the neck is a pain in the ass. These small annoyances are just that. Small annoyances…I mean it’s not like my hair is in my ass. Oh wait. It could be. Rant over. I feel better now.

MidSummer Amusements at the Fashion Designer’s Challenge!

So, did ya think that I had given up on jewelry what with all the hair flyin about? NO WAY! I still love making jewelry. I was invited not too long ago by Samsara Nishi to participate in her Fashion Designer’s Challenge! I decided to go for it! Challenged by something outside my comfort zone, you betcha! Invited to work with Clio Cardiff, the owner of Clio-Pret-a-Porter, in a quick minute, thank you very much! Scared outta my mind that I was not up to the challenge? Oh yeah. Anywho, I started working with Clio, and we hit it off right away. We were both seriously challenged. Clio was asked to make, and I quote, “an elegant clown outfit.” I was asked to make a jewelry set inspired by, “A midsummer’s night dream.” And then we had to find a way to make these two challenges work together. Oh did I mention we were both on vacation at the same time? It turns out that Clio and I worked well together. The end result is a fun and unique dress and some dreamy jewelry to go with it! Here are the pics of the jewelry, and then me, done up in our joint creation. A big shout out to Eolande Elvehjem and Samsara Nishi for being the inspiration behind it all! Teleport directly to the Fashion Designer’s Challenge at either the Road to Oz Sim Store or the Snatch City Store to not only purchase these lovely challenges from Clio and I, but to look at those of 35 other designers too! Oh and if you missed the fashion show, there’s another one on May 16, read about it here.

before & after

HAH! Laleeta Xue posted a before and after challenge on her blog, so I’m taking up the challenge. Usually I suck at challenges but this one, I can do! As you can see from the original pic, I’ve um learned how to use the sliders lol. Sporting some psychedelic freebies on my first land and wearing the now ubiquitous ginny hair from ETD. I think the skin is an original hot lala.

A day of shopping and frustration

I was drawn to Tableau the other day by a new release on the feeds by Church of Luxe. I did get the coolest outfit there and will no doubt show it off shortly, but while there, I also picked up the most adorable top at Nylon Outfitters. This is the type of outfit I would wear in RL for a day of shopping. I ALSO picked up the cutest hair eveh from Curio. You know I never noticed it before at the Curio main store, I think because I’m always so distracted by the skins. So here’s my Saturday outfit. Maybe a bit on the cuteness overload. Goes great with my new ‘Trinity’ make-up from Chai. OMG – I bought three new skins at Chai, and while standing there drooling over my newness won another one because there’s a random giftcard generator at Chai. YAY!

OH! I have this thing I need to bitch about. And well – I’s got a blog, so what the hell. The SL viewer right now – if you’re a designer, trying to do stuff, is a pain in the ass. I’m using the regular viewer to build – you can’t TAKE pictures because hair disapears on zooming in OR the jewelry disapears. I switch to the release candidate viewer to take pictures – FROM A distance – you can’t build jewelry in the release candidate because you CAN’T select prims that are situated near or around the chest attachment point. It also bitmaps the hair textures in my photos. I’m using the Nicholaz client Eye Candy EC-h to take close up photos so the hair doesna look all jagged..sometimes. And even though I think the Nicholaz viewer is the best, most stable viewer I’ve ever used, it really needs an update (please nicholaz, please update it…), because objects take forever to rez. This is completely ridiculous – LL needs to get on this. I’m losing track of what client/viewer I’m supposed to use for what. If the tools for content creators are completely borked (and believe me, there are other little quibbles that I just won’t bother to mention) then how can we CREATE CONTENT! Okay – I’m done beating the dead horse. I know that anything I’ve said has been said before. Rant over.

Outfit creds below the pic

Outfit Credits

Hair – Hipster – Blond (headband retextured) – Curio

Skin – Chai Double Shot Trinity – Tone 4 (Freckled)- LF Chai Skins

Eyes – Sour Apple (Normal White) – Chroma

Lashes – Natural Prim Lashes – La Sylphide

Nails – Rosetta Makeup – Adam & Eve

Jewelry – DM Falling Flowers (Silver)- Dark Mouse Jewelry at Whimsical Creations

Top – Layered Beaded Sweater Set (Tan) – Nylon Outfitters

Jeans – Singular Jeans – Gypsy Soul

Boots – Heather Boots Cream – ETD

Poses – Almost Always – LAP

Dark Mouse Jewelry Store Card Sale – Extended!

Hi all the 50% off storecards sale is still on – I decided to extend it. Get a $500L card for ONLY $250L and so on! It will end on January 2, 2009! Use this link to teleport directly to the store!

Guard Rail Grind

And now for something completely different, as they say. Is your second life® boring? Do you need something TO DO? Ack don’t we all - all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and all that. I frequently find myself working on something for my store and completely forgetting that there are other things to do in SL. Then suddenly – I’m DREADING doing work for my store, and it no longer feels fun…Typically when this occurs, I go shopping. Or, I go watch skateboarding…the truth is I suck at it. I’m just not that great at maneuvering my avatar. This has caused no end of hilarity amongst my SL friends, who love to watch me fall off the sides of railings and such. If you’ve ever been to Bricolage, you will notice that there’s a skateboard park out in front of Electric Janes. Oh and cool skateboards and other fun stuff to play with inside made by none other than Natalie Defiant. Check it out.