My favorite designer...Toast Bard. (blog challenge from Strawberry Singh)

top Bird skin Rainbow 5 Black brows

bottom Ghost organs Tiny Words

I was never a skin lover, I had a couple that I'd found that were just ordinary, not shiny or tanned. Then on a trawl through an SL fashion magazine, I think it was 'Second Style' I found an interview with Toast Bard. I was in love instantly. Her avatar was beautiful, she had this amazing skin, like nothing I'd seen before and in the interview she was charming and if I remember rightly didn't mention designing for South American cross-dressers. I wooshed straight over to Tableau and couldn't believe what I saw; a sim I'd visited before. I huffed a bit then stumbled upon Fashionably Dead, literally fell over it, so devilishly tucked away it was. And lo it came to pass that I became a massive skin-whore. The first skin I bought was Tiny Words in a very pale tone, other tones followed and that is still my favorite skin ever all my alts get bought that skin. I have bought many, many skins by miss Bard now, the latest is the beautifully coloured, luminous, moody skin from the Rainbow range.

Toast Bard has a very light touch with her colouring, like watercolours. The skins have a wonderul ability to bring sophistication and sheer class to just about any outfit. I never tire of them and hardly ever wear anything else. In fact most of my avatars are shaped to fit FD skins, because I know whatever else they are wearing their skin will always look fantastic.

(I would like to add, that the photos are only very lightly photoshopped to remove nasty angles and hair poke through, and in the black haired photo I just had to cover up the ear because avatars have weird ears hands and feet. I haven't blurred, recoloured or altered the skins in anyway, all lighting was done in Second Life.)

Hair

top:Lamb Witch in powder

bottom: Lamb I'm a Romantic in obsidian

eyes

UH Poetic (no slurl I'm sorry I couldn't find the shop again)

Fashionably Dead

lamb

CFC festival some more favorites...

So here are more of my CFC favorites. Heartsick's studded siver bikini is fab, lovely shape to the bra. SLink have got some cute as hell ankle boots, Siddean is one talented missy. The dress from Malt is lovely, I had never seen any of their things before but I'll be checking them out a bit. Osakki have a beautiful gown up for auction and their pret-a-porter item is beautiful, again a new store to me and I can't wait to check out the store!

Call for Couture fair some of my favorites so far...

So I have been looking at the auction items at the CFC festival, of course there's our item there, but I'll show u my favorites from other stores. So unusually for me is some jewellery, I'm not a great SL jewellery lover but I love these necklaces, by LaGyo. The Zaara dress is just beautiful and was attracting lots of bids, the pret-a-porter outfit is lovely too, I think I will be buying that.

The Donna Flora dress is totally not my style, but I love it, I love the hat! I don't think I can afford it though! The auction gown from Fishy Strawberry is maybe my favorite out of the entire lot, it's looks so pretty and is a really lovely colour. So Many Styles have made a fab dress, I was quickly outbid on it though, grrr.

Sausage and Mesh

spent awhile this week figuring out Blender.I work predominantly in Zbrush which i love.But as u may or may not be aware Meshes are coming to Secondlife. Whilst in essence meshes are sculpties by another name they have a few differences and tricks up their sleeves which have forced me to get to grips with Blender.Its a free prog that iv avoided like the plague.However i need some of its tricks and it must be worth a second look for 2 reasons. Firstly its free and secondly it can do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ.
Getting back to the point i need it because it can export the format meshes that secondlife will import and it can created "rigged meshes" the secondlife avatar u already have is a rigged mesh.
Simply put an avatar is like a rag doll rigging it attaches it to a skeleton which lets it move.

What i have done in the pik on the left really crudely as i wanna check my work flow is correct b4 i spend an ages making something that wont load is make pants that fit over the sl avatar that once loaded into sl should move as u walk.
The problem i had was the avatar i use in zbrush as a mannequin was different to the one I have rigged for blender. so i had to make them conform to each other, so i can continue to work in zb but export correctly to Blender then to SL deep breath
The open beta for the mesh viewer opens on the 13th Im excited to have ago, tons to learn.The people iv chatted to who were in the closed beta are all bursting with enthusiasm.
The people who don't understand it are naturally scathing.Me i'm getting my hands dirty and having a go, the only way to learn any thing is do it wrong till u get it right.There was a lotta swearing to get me to the point i'm now at as dirty will testify 2 but i'm gaining on it.Ill keep u posted with what I come up with
Filthy Adored

The Rogla Ghost

heya Yeah new releases have been quiet were hoping to release a bunch of new things at a fair were attending. We could trickle things into the shop bit at a time, but at the moment our lil shop is out in the sticks in Rogla. Roglas a interesting sim , was the first place i ever went if u were around in 06 u prob went there 2.Was the home of Missfits. Missfits was the busiest club in the metaverse in 06. My main ava has a landmark from there created her first day .When we saw the land for sale it seemed a simple twist of fate..These days its a fairly quiet sim theres us Gatsby and the ghost.Gatsby owns the large house across from the shop , a fine American gentleman indeed.Owns most of the sim and we can thank him for the elegant look of the place. These days Rogla feels like home. The ghost hardly bothers us.If you come to the sim dont expect to see a prim ghost flapping in the wind.This is the genuine ghost in the machine.From discussions iv had with some of the old secondlife residents She was a ava called Chewwy Torres and like me a brit. She use to come sit on the hill outside Missfits and chat with her friends.From what im able to gather was sat there one night late December sat at her pc and in Rogla she died some diabetic thing.But from a bit of googling, she was logged in for 3 days and nights before anyone found her.People had sat with her chatting watching the river flow joking and laughing, unaware of her fate. Anyway that was that other than once in a while i chat to people in the shop and around who have spoken to her had a laugh gone there own ways. The sim attracts a large number of retuning avas i think people who logged off there years ago and rediscover sl that and some traffic from the hub.Shes helped get some of them started. I feel proud shes with us one way or another

All in the game

I was just chatting today, set me thinking. I spend a huge amount of time working on shoes. Doesn't leave me with so much time to just chat and hang out like i use to, when i talk to people i talk about the programs and the designs and techniques. I chat to other makers, creative people, um we don't talk about the world at large. In sl there are lotsa shoe designers tons of the fekers, some way better than me some way worse. It started me thinking in flikr if i see a good shoe, do i favorite it, or am I giving my valuable trade over to my peers? if Someone asks for help in the 3d groups, asks something I know the answer 2 to do I keep my hard earned knowledge to myself? Knowing my secret knowledge could propel me to fame and wealth?
No I feking don't..
The Beatles will always be better than me no matter what they used to record their songs. They loved the stones loooved em. Didn't make the stones better didnt hurt the stones sales neither.
So ill rave about who impresses me in sl help people if i can. My stuff will never look like theirs. partly cos i couldn't do things there way and the rest cos I have my own handwriting..

The rightness of Chav

This blog post came to my attention today:
http://chavpaderborn.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/old-drama-is-old-omg-no-pictures/
Apart from being written by the uuuh-may-zin' Chav Paderborn it's just, well, right. I wish I'd written it and since I didn't I'll just say I agree with her.
There are so many stores in SL fighting for teh spacebux that it's hard to get your stores name out there, it's a battle and sending freebies and taking part in hunts seems like a good way to get known, get your landmark in inventories, get your prims on people. I don't know, anyway, read Chav's blog post.