More thoughts

Three posts in one day! eeek!

Anyway, it struck me today that since starting this blog, it's been my most productive month in SL since.. well since ever really. It's almost like I must produce things to have something to write about... I love posting pics of things I'm working on, I don't tend to get out much in SL so this is my way of showing off I guess ;)

All of today's items are boxed up, out in store, and listed on SLX and SLB. That's the Emiliana earrings, the mens insert rings, and a double insert ring that I had to add too. Why do I do this to myself? *laughs* I ended up adding 18 new items to SLX and SLB, which is sheer torture. SLB is a breeze, but using SLX feels like I'm forever waiting, scrolling down, waiting, scrolling down... bleugh. On the other hand, I prefer the search functions at SLX, so when I'm buying I head there first. *shrugs* I did see a post from Flipper on the main SL forums saying that the buying side of SLB is due an overhaul... lets hope it's soon!

It's now just over a week since I rented a mall spot (see here) and so far, it's a dismal failure. Not even a single sale. I think it was a poor location really.. my spot was well away from the teleport port. Undeterred, I'm trying again, this time in the JD Mills sim. Fingers crossed for this one!

Men's Rings!

And while I'm on the subject of being different from my usual style... I made some men's rings! Yikes! My first ever men's stuffs.
Hopefully the colours aren't too girly (I did consider making a pink one *grins*) They come with my usual subtle sparkle script, or a plain unsparkly version (box will contain both).

These will be available later today, once I've made all the box pics up.

I'd like to make more men's stuff, but I'm a little lost here. My other half in RL doesn't wear jewellery at all, nor do my male friends (apart from the odd tongue piercing). I'll be wandering through a few web sites looking for inspiration - but if there are any guys reading this, feel free to leave suggestions :)

New Earrings - Emiliana

Something a little bit different from my usual style! (do I have a usual style?) I love earrings like this in RL, but I usually can't wear them - anything but gold makes my ears puff up and itch like crazy :( But in SL, anything goes!

These are called Emiliana, and they come in six colours - white, red, orange, pink, blue (box pic) and green (shown left). Each colour has the black beads for contrast. Fun fashion earrings, perfect for dressing up jeans and a jumper.

Serenity Released

Quick note to say that the first in my new "Wedding Belles" range has just been released, called Serenity. View the forum post here. I brightened up the diamond texture since the preview pic, I think it looks a lot better now.

The beautiful gown & veil I'm wearing in the ad are from Rebel Hope Designs, called the Natalie FleXtasy Bridal Gown; hair is from Tami McCoy, and skin from /artilleri/.

Available from SLBoutique , SLExchange or inworld now at my Butsu store.

Hope y'all like it :) More where that came from soon! But for now, I'm off to bed. G'night!

New Toy

I have a love of bright, shiny things (I think I was a magpie in a previous life!), and also of abstract art. I stumbled across this great freeware application called Chaoscope that allows you to create your own 3D neon glowy fractal-ish pictures. I've been sitting here for over an hour now creating my own masterpieces!
It's all very mathmatical and I could never hope to understand how it all works, but there is a very simple tutorial that gets you started - after that, experimenting is easy :)

A work in progress

I mentioned before that I had plans for a wedding line. Well, the first item is 3/4 finished, here's a preview pic:

I've decided to call this one 'Serenity', because every bride should be serene on her wedding day! It's made up of moonstones, diamonds and silver wire, and I'm very pleased with it so far. There will be matching earrings for it too.

Lots of releases

Finally got around to formally releasing everything - that's the Fleur rings, Starburst rings, Cubed sets, Circles rings and the moonstone sets. You can view the forum posts here and here (the SL forums wouldn't let me fit everything in one post!). Everything is available in Butsu, on SLBoutique, and everything but the Starburst rings is on SLExchange. *wipes brow* Example box pics coming up!

(Edit: sorry about the huge line of pics, I can't for the life of me get them to arrange horizontally!)

Randoms

Housework sucks. Whether it's in RL or SL. I spent most of my time yesterday rearranging the Butsu store so that I have more wall space. It looks a lot more organised now, so I'm glad I did it, but boy, was it tedious! And on top of that I updated the notecards in over 100 boxes... *yawns*

I had a strange IM overnight. Someone wants to open a jewellery store, and wants to purchase some of his inventory from me. I'm not sure what to make of that. I do all the hard work, then you make the profits? um... no thanks! I kind of understand he's thinking like the RL model - you open a store, trot down to the wholesalers and pick up boxes of whatever... but in SL, once you have something, you can sell as many as you like forever. I really don't like the idea of someone else having full permission copies of my stuff (bar one or two trusted friends, of course :)

I've also had a couple of folders of photos from models looking for work. One looked very slick and professional, the other, well, didn't :P Either way, I don't tend to use models for my ads or box pics, partly because I work odd hours (I'm most active around 2-6am SL time), partly because I tend to do things like that on a whim, and partly so I can control everything about the picture. So I'm a control freak, bite me :P

My BLOTTD (Big List Of Things To Do, thank you Lindens!) is growing bigger by the day. I've ideas for a wedding range (opals, moonstones and diamonds!), more necklaces, rings & earrings, plus several items that have been sitting half-finished in my black hole of an inventory for months. I've also got some unreleased furniture that I want to make better anims for (I haven't touched Poser for ages!). I did try making hair a little while ago, I don't think it's good enough for public release though! *grins* I want to redo the textures to add more shine; it's also got some serious alpha issues. Shame, coz I love the feathery look alpha textures give. It will get redesigned at some point in the future!

So, today is update day again. We won't be getting web profiles this release (see here) which is a shame, it's the first 'shiny' in a long time that I've been looking forward to. Still, it's good that LL are finally realising that releasing features before they are ready is not a clever thing to do.

Enough rambling, I'm off to go build!

New Store Open

I've got a new store location, at Ocean City Mall in the Trouble sim. This is me dipping my toes into mall rentals and seeing how things sell :)

All of the new rings & earrings are available here. And I spent fecking ages putting them all on SLBoutique earlier today. I lost the will to live before updating SLX though. Maybe tomorrow. Or Wednesday...

My main store at Butsu continues on as always!

Yet more previews...

*grins*

This one is called 'Circles', it should be obvious why :) (yeah, i suck at naming things.) It looks a deceptively simple design, but believe me, it was a pain in the ass getting them all lined up correctly!

I'm starting to plan a big release for all these rings and bits now. An idea for the ads is forming, I just need to see if I can build it in SL.


I've also got a half-finished set that uses coloured moonstones, so far I have a ring, bangle and bracelet done. I'd abandoned these a couple of months ago when I couldn't think of any ideas for a necklace to go with them, but now, (thanks to watching 'Wife Swap' of all things!) I've got an idea to work with. Unusually for me, I've set the stones to shiny. I think it works well on this particular style. (It still looks good without though!)


Lastly, I've done the matching earrings for 'Cubed'. I'm definately only doing these in silver, the gold versions just looked weird. I've got seven different colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (ooh, a rainbow!) and white.

Purrrrr-fect New Look!

Neko Cai! =^o^=

I fancied something a bit different, and a trip to Temenos Island provided the perfect solution :)

Home to an amazingly talented bunch of kitties, I fell in love with just about everything in the (large!) store. I guess there's a closet fur in me, as I couldn't resist the leopard skin, matching ears and wonderful swishy tail.

Skin, ears, tail from Jungle Voodoo; hoodie, t-shirt, skirt and socks from Boneflower Designs; all by Zoe Llewelyn (view her blog here). Zoe hand-paints everything, and it's all fantastic.
Hair from Playful Kitten; by QuietlyCharmes Vega (who I met at the island, she is the most adorable kitty ^_^)
Boots, necklace, bangle from Shiny Things

=^ mew! ^=

Well, that didn't take long!

Yesterday's apathy becomes today's creativity. Another new ring to preview here! This one I've called 'Cubed', simply because of the square stone in the middle. Amazingly for one of my creations, it's low-prim too! (7, I think, compared to 49 or so for Starburst)

I'm probably only going to make this one in silver, somehow gold just doesn't feel right. I think these simple, chunky designs just suit silver better.

Hmm. I know I said these were going to be individual pieces... but I feel a pair of matching earrings coming on. *grins*

Apathy Rules

Today, I just can't be bothered with SL. The past couple of weeks have been a creative roll for me, now I'm feeling burnt out again. Fleur and Starburst are packaged up and available in my store, I'll get round to putting them up on SLB & SLX sometime. I still have a huge list of things I want to make, but... not right now :) I tried being social and hanging at the Welcome Area, but every time I'm there lately I get hit on. Bleugh. I want a place I can go and chat, without being asked 'were R U?' 'how old?' 'wanna go somewere?' every five minutes. Does such a place exist?

Oh well. Back to RL for a few hours, at least.

Meet Fleur

She's the latest design I'm working on. (Yes, I talk to my builds. I'm safe most of the time, honestly). For some reason, despite having exactly the same ring base as the Starburst ring, it won't fit on my finger properly. And I'm sure I haven't twiddled my av shape since then. Bah.. etc.

Anyway, Fleur will be available in gold and silver again, and probably less gemstones than Starburst. Firstly, I'm not sure that some of them looked all that good, and secondly, churning out another 20 box pics is gonna kill me. Plus I'm rapidly running out of wall space in the store, and it's only a couple of months since I extended it last time. I'll let you into a secret, I detest building buildings! Anything vaguely store or house related I try to build just turns into an extended box shape :( I guess I'll have to throw a few sets in vendors, but I'll resist that as long as I possibly can.

Halloween Special

I said I'd do something special for Halloween, and here it is! Arachnophobics, look away now!

I've got to thank Matina for the idea, we were chatting in Yahoo having a brainstorm, and she said 'spider web'... instantly I could see this, so I had to make it!

I'm really happy with this one, it's one of those rare pieces that felt good right from the very first prim. Some things you just know will turn out well. I made a new black metal texture for the chains, which I think looks really good. You probably can't see from the pics here, but it almost glistens, it's lovely and creepy and perfect for Halloween :) Click the thumbnail to the left for an in-your-face close-up.

I'd have liked to have chains all the way around, but unfortunately that took me way over the prim limits. *sobs* So I had to content myself with just the front being chained.

Available until 1st November 2006, from SLBoutique, SLExchange and in-world at my store in Butsu.

Happiness is...

... a stable network connection. Bliss :)

My other half finally got sick of the unreliable wireless network we've had for the past few months, and came home with some goodies which he set up yesterday.

No more packet loss. No more dropped connections. No more lag spikes (well, a reduced amount!). I love him to bits <3 <3 <3

Jaw-dropping awesome-ness...

Wow. Just wow. Mat called on Yahoo and said I had to see Port Seraphine, so I loaded SL and teleported over... wow. After a painful few minutes stuck in the sewer while everything loaded (my network sucks, I think I've mentioned that!) I've just spent a happy hour exploring and taking pics. Click the thumbnails for full-screen goodness. And teleport over to Port Seraphine NOW, if not sooner!

Back to basics!

I've decided that I don't have enough 'one-off' pieces in my store. By this I mean things that aren't part of a set (y'know, matching necklace, earrings, bracelet, ring, ankle chain, belly ring and god knows what else). So I'm going to make some basic individual bits 'n' pieces, whatever takes my fancy. I'd really like to say I'm doing a Twiddler with his 31 Do's in 31 Days, but there is no way I'd manage an item a day!

So here's the first. I started with a ring, because I loooove rings in RL, a girl can never have enough rings! I've called this one 'Starburst', it will be available in gold & silver, and in er.. (*switches back to SL to count*).. 10 different stones. Pics on the left show Silver/Ruby and Gold/Aquamarine.


I always wonder about adding bling scripts. I hate the uber-in-your-face bling with a passion (oh, my eyeballs!), but a nice little twinkle every now and again is pretty. Even that though, after a while, bugs the hell out of me (what can I say, my novelty threshold is way low!). I'm also adverse to adding 'bling on/off' commands, because they inevitably use llListen calls, which never are never good for lag. So I compromise, and stick two versions in the boxes, one bling, one without. Is that the best option? I dunno. Any thoughts out there?


Anyway... the first rings are done (minus boxes and packaging). I don't know whether to wait and have a massive blow-out of an update in, say a week's time, or just put them out as they get done. I'll think about it.

Looped Set Released

Finally got this set out! It takes a while to make copyable and transferrable versions of everything *grins* Plus I decided to add a bracelet after all.

I'm too tired to put it on SLX and SLB now... it's gone midnight and I should have been in bed an hour ago *yawns*

Did I mention how happy I am with this set? It seems like eons since I've made something I'm really pleased with! I hope everyone else likes it too :)

Planning some bits for Halloween now... stay tuned!

Sneak peak!

Here's a sneaky look at a new set of jewellery that will be out in a day or so! Inspired by Camie Cooper's Rainbow Tanks (which I just <3!), style="font-style: italic;">In the above pic, Hair - Ginny by ETD, Skin - Vanessa Pale by /artilleri/, Rainbow Tank by Camie Cooper

Here's a close up of the colours on the necklace.
I might add a bracelet too... we'll see how time goes!

Jewellery Making

Over on SL-forums.com, Natalie Oe asked for hints and tips for making jewellery. I replied, and she's put my comments on her blog, here.

I might expand a bit on this in the future. I love working with mini-prims (or "primcules" *grins*) even if they are the most bloody frustrating way to build!

Frustration Abounds

I'm trying really really hard not to swear right now. For the first time in weeks, inspiration has hit and I'm in a building mood again. The textures are done, I have the picture in my head... but technology conspires against me. First, last night, the batteries in my mouse died the instant I managed to log in, today, my wireless network (which I have come to hate with a passion) is playing up. Staying inworld is problematic (assuming I can log in to start with), and building is a joke, prims rubber-banding all over the place. And then when I finally get a few prims in the right places, I realise the connection dropped ten minutes ago and none of it is being saved to the server.

Bah.

Maybe I'll go and kick the cat instead. (i'm kidding, honest!)

About me....

sooo, I "borrowed" this from Elika's blog, who borrowed it from somewhere else ... oh what the hell, here's some stuff about me!

[A is for age] 33

[B is for booze of choice] how much space do I have?? um... cider, white wine, bacardi & coke, bailey's

[C is for career of choice] Software engineer (currently looking!)

[D is for your drug of choice] see booze?

[E is for one essential item you use everyday] Perfume, usually Hypnotic Poison by Dior or She by Armani

[F is for favorite song at the moment] Sexy Back - Justin Timberlake *cringes in embarassment*

[G is for favorite game] apart from SL? hmm... Diablo 2... oh, and The Sims 2

[H is for Hometown] Coventry, UK

[I is for instruments you play] used to play the flute, not for a long time though

[J is for favorite juice] Orange & Raspberry

[K is for kids] no thanks

[L is for last hug] my RL partner *grins*

[M is for marriage?] again, no thanks

[N is for nickname] Cai, Char, Angel (last two from TSO)

[O is for number of overnight hospital stays] none so far! *touch wood*

[P is for phobias] Heights

[Q is for quote] "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast" - Arnold "Ace" Rimmer

[R is for biggest regret] Too many to mention.

[S is for singing] Love to sing, but you really don't want to be around to hear me!

[T is for time you woke up] 7am ish

[U is for underwear] yup! *winks*

[V is for vegetable you love] Mushrooms

[W is for worst habit] Procrastinating

[X is for number of x-rays you've got] 1 or 2 lurking around somewhere

[Y is for yummy food you make] I make a kick-ass tiramisu

[Z is for zodiac sign] Pisces

Hello Grid!

Well I finally bit the bullet and got a blog... hopefully I'll be filling this with news of new releases (if I get off my butt and do some *grins*), great shopping finds (yes, I know I've got 258 pairs of shoes but I reallllly neeeeeed these ones, they'll go great with my black capris...) and any other random crap I feel like posting about! Probably no drama though *smiles*