I've created a group for updates (and early releases, and special sales, and all that jazz); join Miriel's Latest if you're interested. I just put up a hidden prerelease store for the group, an idea I stole borrowed from Elikapeka Tiramisu and her Hair Whore store. My store's just for early releases, though, not discounts on new things.

And I've got something to put in the store! I'm still officially on hiatus, but I did finish up a geisha style hairpin. (It'll be in the regular store once I come off hiatus and the regular store is done.) Here it is, in something I dubbed "bright gold":

(Skin by sachi Vixen, hair by ETD.)

I wanted to call it "cheap gold," but I figured that might put some people off.

It'll be available for general sale as soon as I'm off hiatus. Which will happen as soon as I'm done with my new store. So I suppose I better stop making sconces and hairpins and get back to drawing bas reliefs of roses...

I just had a naked guy run into my store, run around in a circle, then run out.

o_O

Though I'm on hiatus still, I'm working on SL things now and then. I've actually made some progress on things. I've made a sconce (it turns on and off with a touch!), finished a hairpin, started another hairpin (it hasn't been going well), worked a little bit on one gown, started another gown, slapped a couple of prims together in preperation for a big outfit, started a necklace (also not going well), made a Celtic cross type thingie out of tori (I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it), did some work on my skin (sigh), finished one of my floor textures, and did some actual texturing of my store. And that's in addition to the bracelet I've got basically done, except for product photos and metal variations.

I'm beginning to think my easily distracted nature is a problem.

At any rate, you can expect a slow but hopefully steady flow of stuff once I come out of hiatus.

Oh, and photos at some point, too. I've been taking a few, but I'm too lazy to upload them right now. Most of them are silly. (This is me as an itty bitty Pyramid Head. This is me in a flying teacup. This is me as an itty bitty Pyramid Head in a flying teacup.)

Hiatus sale #2, for the week of 4/24: 75% off my prim swirl wings.

These are full prim wings -- not just textured plates -- with swirls and mirrored/glass discs (the mirrors look nice, but require Shiny Objects). They're normally quite pricey, but now they're on sale for L$100-131. Choose between gold, silver, and gunmetal, and between scripted and nonscripted versions. The scripted versions let you change the disc color and material easily, and even come with nonscripted versions in case you're worried about lag. Everything is copy/mod/no transfer; IM me if you want a no copy/mod/transfer version.

Get them at Nusambaruku (139, 206, 22) -- pay attention to the price in the floating text, not the price on the product image!

Elegance earrings are out! And that's all you're getting from me for a month or two.

If you checked the new products forum, you'll know that I'm taking a hiatus from designing. (Not that I was anything close to prolific anyway, of course!) I'm getting buried in RL work, and it's not working when I tell myself I can and should do some work on my SL projects. I use it as an excuse to procrastinate, and I wind up feeling guilty because I don't actually manage to get much done. So, in the interest of keeping excuses and unrealistic expectations to a minimum, I'm just taking a break. I'll get my RL work done, and then I'll get my store textures done, and then I will finish and release the gown I'm working on, and that bracelet I've got in the wings.

In the meantime, I'll be doing weeklong sales/specials. Maybe one week will be half off all jewelry, another could be really cheap gloves... This week I've got a completely ridiculous package of every single Elegance piece. At L$700, it's still pretty pricey, but it's a huge discount compared to the regular prices. I can't say I expect it to sell very well -- or at all, really -- but I like having sales.



In other news, I bought this lovely set from Tuli Asturias. Okay, that set, and a dress, and I eyed several other things for a good long time. Even some of the things that weren't really my style were tempting.


I wind up wearing a lot of fuschia in this game, for some reason.


In one last fit of frivolity, I took a series of silly pictures. The theme: Sure, I'm on haitus, but what's my avatar going to be doing during this time?

Well, she'll be admiring the work of Fallingwater Cellardoor:



And drinking Captain Morgan...



...with predictable results.



But mostly, she'll be lying on the badly terraformed beach, enjoying the ripply water while it lasts (*sob*):

Oh, no! Ripple Water is grayed out for me in Preview!

The initial release notes don't even mention anything about Ripple Water changing. The updated notes do mention something, but it has to do with a bug when Ripple Water and that Vertex dealie are both checked. (I can't check the Vertex thing, either. It's also grayed out, but something in the release notes mentioned it would be if your system couldn't handle it.)

I'm not sure what to do. I posted about it on the Preview forum, but it didn't get any replies yet, and I seem to be the only person with this problem. Should I bug report this, too? I rented land on the corner of a sim -- land I have to pay out of pocket for, as I don't make enough from my business to cover the rent -- because I adore the ripply water. I'm very unhappy that this feature is suddenly unusable for me, particularly given that there's nothing in the release notes about it being changed.

Indian clothing! Mughal rugs! I think I'm in love.

And then there's this strange, metallic looking hair. I like the idea of metal hair, even if I'm not so sure I want to drop the money on this particular instance of it.

I try to remain positive in SL, but the skin market is very frustrating for me. (Particularly since I just bought a skin that I really don't like. My own fault, of course.) The Linden skin is just awful, particularly the eyebrows, but every single skin I've found has been -- at best -- the lesser of two evils. This is just for me, of course; plenty of other people enjoy the skins that are for sale, and certainly their creators put a lot of work into them, and many skins look excellent when lit head on.

It's just when they're not lit head on that I start to take issue. In my experience, shading that looks realistic when the avatar has a bright light pointed directly at it looks much less realistic when that light is removed. Stand in the light, and the avatar's skin looks properly reflective; turn from it, and I find the avatar just looks puffy and painted. Other people, obviously, disagree with this or think the tradeoff is worth it, but if I'm going to have a skin for general wear, I'd prefer it to also look decent in situations where I'm not facing the sun.

And then there's the issue of undertones. I've tried for a while to find a pale skin that I like, and -- with one exception, that I didn't like for shading reasons, and because it was a straight photosource -- I've just come up against skins with yellow undertones. (And, in a few cases, tan lines.) I'm a very pale winter RL, and I'd prefer to have one skin that lets me be one here, too. I've gotten frustrated enough on this front to start attempting to make my own skin, in fact. By the time I'm done, I'll probably wish I had just settled for something yellowy. ;)

For now, though, I've had enough of the Linden eyebrows, and will be sticking with my Asian skin from Adam and Eve, and this dark skin I recently bought from PixelSpa. (And finding a dark skin posed its own challenges!)

It's preview time!



Here's a bracelet to go with my latest hairpin, Geometry. You know, the square one. And yes, I am underwater, and that is my butt, covered in fuschia.



And here are the earrings that go with my earlier hairpin, Elegance. You know, the pretty one. ;)


ETD on these is, oh, sometime in the next few weeks. The bracelet textures need to be tweaked, the scripted versions need to have the script inserted, and I might make some prim alterations to make the bracelet a bit easier to see; the earrings themselves are actually all done, but the 25 different boxes and 25 different product photos (sigh) aren't.

Geometry Hairpin is out! L$50-L$140.

Got some work on the store textures done today -- by which I mean I got one of them about 30% done. In fairness, it's the build's most detailed texture, with a lot of marble tiles arranged in various designs. (Or "marble tiles," if you prefer, given that it's all pixels.)

I'm working on a gown right now; it's turning into a learning experience and an experiment. I had to figure out how to draw designs in seed beads: simply filling an area with noise made it look like it was covered in glitter, not an orderly line of tiny beads. I'm having to figure out how to draw iridescence in fabric -- I think I've got a handle on that, at least -- and I'm doing my first elaborate prim skirt. It's got some drapery on it that's done with prims. On one hand, this doesn't look like real draped fabric. On the other hand, I don't think it's any less realistic than the cylinders that are used in your standard prim skirt. So I'll see how it goes.

Here's a preview of the new hairpin. It'll be available -- and posted about in the Classified forums -- on Monday. It's a modern styled hairpin called Geometry, with "mirrors" -- small flat prims that have been set to high shininess. It will be fairly inexpensive, given how simple it is.

Hello!

This template needs some fiddling with -- okay, a lot of fiddling with -- but it'll do for the moment. I'm swamped RL anyway, and I've got more important things to spend my SL time on than redesigning this blog.

Like, oh, making the textures for my store.

The store was supposed to be done by this Sunday, but that's not going to happen; like I said, I've been buried in RL things, and actually fallen behind. So now the store redesign's going to be done when it's done. I'm tempted to post a picture of the build as it is, but I'm going to resist that temptation for now.

In design news, I'm working on a new hairpin, a set of earrings to go with my Elegance hairpin (featured in Second Style, yay!), about 1.5 gowns, and a bizarre outfit that's still in the planning stages. And I've got a hankering to run a particular kind of fashion show, but I need to get my store finished, first.