Silentsparrow Month! Day 20 - Breeeeathe Iiiin

The astute reader may notice that today I am looking a little more svelte at the waist. The further astute among you may notice that I'm dressed more like a certain someone else, today. This is partly because I'm lame. In all sorts of excitement, a ran out today and bought the amazing new fully sculpted Petit a Petit corset from silentsparrow (it took priority over sorting out a hungry Ozimals bunny, who I should point out is just fine now), and proceeded to make a pig's ear of fitting it. I managed to get as far as altering my shape, as the included notecard advised me to, and went and bought a marvellous non-wiggling AO from Posture is Everything, as the included notecard advised me to (I'm all about following the instructions) and looked at myself proudly...and had NO ARMS. I'd been rather clumsy with the invisiprim. So, being a whiny sort, I went whining to hya for advice, who then donned my shape (it was surreal, she looked just like me, but blue) and fixed it up in a jiffy and I had arms and a gorgeous nipped-in waist and all was wonderful. [note: please do not do what I did and go bother hya to do this for you, she will explode and it'll be my fault and I'll be sad and that'll be YOUR fault, and the shame cycle continues]. Once that was done, I stood dumbly, thinking how I'm not on form today, and tried to think of something to wear that would show this off nicely. And that's how I came to be dressed by hya!

First things first, the corset. It's tricky to fit if you don't follow the instructions, so do that, and, wonderfully, once you have it done, that's it, no more fitting! Each colour of corset comes with a HUD, which has three variations on the colour, a largely unpatterned version, a gentle brocade, and a coloured-and-white striped version, and here's the clever part! If you buy another colour, you just have to use the HUD from that, on your old, already-fitted corset, and hey presto! another colour without all the hassle of fitting! Or you could just buy the Uberpack, which has all the colours in one, easy-to-manage HUD, and save time AND 20% monies. I'm wearing the mid-blue shade of the corset without prim laces, which I am told is the less tricky of the two to fit. It has a marvellous shape, fitted and shaping without making your eyes water and your ribs ache just by looking at it. The effect is accentuated rather on the striped version, which actually makes you slightly dizzy if you stare at it too long. Which is totally cool. Underneath it, hya advised I wear the top from Severina, with fluffy lace sleeves, and a fancy lace halterish-arrangement which I fell quite in love with from the first moment I saw it, and rich jewel-coloured trim at the neckline. My bloomers are unfortunately no longer available, but the blue matched so wonderfully, it would be wrong NOT to wear them. The are from the old Spiderbaby suite, which has recently been cleared from the (Not So) Secret Sale room, and sated my insistence on bloomers with RUFFLES. Added to the ruffly effect are some frilly white ankle socks from sn@tch, and the collar from Schadenfreude's lolita-tastic Jerry's Lament set, which also features colour-change HUD goodness. My shoes are Shiny Things' "hyasynths", and are every bit just as wonderful as their namesake, quirky and pretty and unusual all sorts of good things. So there. Now, go fit your corsets!!

Outfit Credits:

Skin: Frick - Pin Ups - Peach - Sophia (lt brows)
Hair: Magika - Ju - Red C
Sculpted Corset: silentsparrow - Petit a Petit Underbust Corset
Top: silentsparrow - Severina - Robin
Bloomers: silentsparrow - Spider Baby - Blueberry
Socks: Sn@tch - Hep Chick
Shoes: Shiny Things - hyasynths - Black
Collar: Schadenfreude - Jerry's Lament
Ears: Schadenfreude - Fey Ears - Plugs

Silentsparrow Month! Day 16 - Frowny Gowny

I've never been much of a ballgown person. Even within Second Life, when I first started, EVERYONE I saw wore gowns, "because they could" and most of them were that box of free gowns that permeated every freebie place, and I was like "This makes no sense! You're not a fairy princess! Stop it!". Don't get me wrong, a nice poofy frock, I like to look at, but there's a time and a place for such things, and for me, it never seems to be the right time or place. Oh, sure, I've been to "proms" at the club I used to work at, or I could subject myself to the numerous Jazz Clubs, but seriously, oh my, No. Even when I used to RP at a Victorian Steampunk sim, I'd go with dour, sensible, not-too-flashy, modest dresses...with the exception of the Ball that was held there once, THEN I hammed it up entirely. I was the belle of the thing, totally. But my only real concession to wearing any part of a gown in SL stems from my lame teenage years. I used to have a local newsagent import some American teen magazine for me, like, Seventeen, or Teen Beat, or Seven Feet, or something inane, I forget. One issue was devoted to THE PROM, something that always held fascination for me, as someone who not only lived in a land of no prom, but also left school at the age of 14, and besides, was sort of, y'know, weird. There were of course, thousands of ads for fancy gowns that made me roll my eyes at the extravagance, but then, there was one that I fell in love with. It wasn't so much a gown at all, rather, a suggestion, that you could wear a ballgown length tulle skirt was a casual, graphicy 3/4 length sleeve top. It was the mid 90s, that sort of thing was cool. And as I've never been much of a dedicated follower of fashion, more someone who holds onto ideas she finds aesthetically pleasing as she sees them and they drift out of style, it has become my way!

This outfit actually come together by accident. The top part of it came to be from a game of "match hya!" a few months ago, when she advised me that I the cropped jacket of Blood Tart made an excellent jacket with all sorts of things, including the Ratties T-shirt I had gained from the Bird of Randomness in the silentsparrow courtyard earlier that day. Ratties is one of my most-worn of the gatcha shirts, I enjoy the shade of red, and rats are adorable, so long as they're not carrying plague, and these cuties are clearly not doing that. But indeed, the Blood Tart jacket looks fantastic with all manner of things, I'm always in the market for lace toppy thingies, and this one can be dressed up or down easily with its sculpted shoulder puffs and draping open bell cuffs coming from the elbow. My skirt, in all its gowny glory, is from the Moonchild Suite, and took me a while to decide to wear, originally I was going to wear pants from the Voltaire Suit, but then the reds didn't go together well and I was all like "Wah". Then Perse said something oblique about raggedy skirts and looking all Cinderella, and while I didn't have such a thing in my silentsparrow folder, I had something even more awesome! The Moonchild Suite combines a rich, bright brocade pattern under-skirt, with an open, contemporary flame pattern on an open overskirt, and has a cute little ruffle at the top, plus, capris in a matching style which I almost second-guessed myself and wore instead, but then, I didn't. My skin is from a store I love, but always seem to forget about. It's by Frick, and combines elements of both the Eloh and Sezmra skin templates to create something both cute and sexy, with original makeups simply to die for, in fact, one of the reasons I tend to forget I have these skins is that often the makeup is a little /too/ original for my tastes. But that's okay, they're gorgeous, and the new-ish Pinup line has more in the way of everyday makeups with a twist, such as this cateye look, with the extra feathering underneath the eye, which is just perfection. And the prices at Frick are amazing too, I got all the makeups in the Pinup line, in the peach skintone, with freckled options and two brow choices, for slightly over half the price of many of my other skins. So, be betterer than me, remember to go to Frick!

Outfit Credits:

Skin: Frick - Peach frex light brows - Marie
Hair: Magika - Mika - Red C
T-shirt: silentsparrow - T-Shirt of Random #05 (Ratties)
Jacket: silentsparrow - Blood Tart
Skirt: silentsparrow - Moonchild Suite - Scarlet
Ears: Balderdash&Schadenfreude - Etherial Fey Ears

An Appreciation for the Classics

Today, I fell quite in love with Sand Shack Surf Co's new skins. While I hadn't been too sure if I liked how they looked on some others I'd seen wearing them, the moment the demo rezzed on me, I was sold. In my middle-years of Second Life, I almost exclusively wore Antonia Marat's handdrawn Lily skins from Artilleri. No other skin would tempt me, those were MY skins, I adored them. Until of course, some other skin did tempt me, and I fell into the deep pit of being a skin whore, and when I finally went back to my Lily skins, they seemed so blank and cartoonish to me, and they were guiltily forgotten. When I tried on Emma Gilmour's new skinline, it felt like coming home, and I instantly snapped up every makeup. I just looked so pretty, and innocent, and so *Niv*, the Niv I remembered from a time when buying skins and hair and clothes and shoes and everything was a major event, and I'd scrimp and save and laugh and play and all those other happy cliches from my salad days. After all, I can't do sexy. I'm cute. Cute cute cute! Completely reawakened my love for handdrawn skins. And handily happened to tie in with my thoughts of yesterday.

Those thoughts were: "Quality never goes out of style". I was going throgh one of my larger inventory folders earlier, in the naive hope of organizing it some, and I kept coming across all these designers who you never hear anything of anymore. Like, for years. And a quick check confirmed that most of them were still around, or at least still had stores open in SL, even if not active anymore, and their stuff is still SO GOOD, however old it might be. So my looks today are composed of (with maybe one? exception, aside from my lovely new skins) things that have been lying around in my inventory for years, and still rock. And I'm pretty sure are still available (I've tried to steer clear of some of my obvious favourites that are very much no longer around, such as Last Call and Savvy?).

My first look (above) is comprised of capris from Celestial Studios, which is one of my biggest cases of "Appreciation for the Classics", I still wear their skins alllllthetime, even though they were the skin of choice when I started SL, and seldom heard of now. My top is from a dress from Versteck, a store which I own pretty much all of, but didn't even realize was still around until I saw a post on Ana Lutetia's blog about some of their new releases. The cardigan is from Icing's Robot Love dress, which isn't that old and I believe was a hunt item, but gosh I adore it so, and the sandals are Fashionably Dead, long a beautiful handdrawn mainstay of my inventory, which I don't feel gets quite as much press as it should. And the hair is by Maitreya, from back in the days when they weren't so ubiquitous as hairmakers.

Secondly, a dress from a store long long inactive, but I was delighted to discover still has a location open. Argyle is a store I discovered in late 2007, about a week before the designer seemingly vanished from the face of the grid. Initially I loved Argyle for it's myriad vintagey gloves, scarves, and a neat-o suitcase with versions you could carry or sit on, what reminded me of them though was finding this dress, simple, unexpectedly elegant and a bit quirky, with exquisite texturing, like the whole store. The shoes are Jeepers Creepers' Lace Up Betties, a version of the first *good* shoes I ever bought in SL, and despite predating scupties, they continue to be a testement to how much things that were great back when they first came out can still be wonderful and current and stand up to all of today's shiny new awesomeness. And the hair, oh, the hair. I remember a time when this was one of perhaps three hairstyles I owned in Second Life, and Gurl 6 was the only hair store for me. Although today her textures may seem a little dated, my Gurl 6 folder still contains some of the most original, vibrant and versatile styles I own.

Finally, an outfit from a store that's very much still around, still active, but doesn't recieve nearly as much press as it used to. Nyte N Day used to be one of those stores all my friends used to obsess over, and now is all-but forgotten. And that's a pity, because their textures are beautiful, their prices good, and especially for basics, and components for mixing up your own outfits, they really are flawless. My shoes are Aphrodite Creations' Vintish, AC having been a massive staple of my shoe folder in times past, and are yummy. Gurl 6 for the hair again, another old favourite of mine, pleasantly informal and hippy-ish, with delighful curlybits at the ends.

A dive into your inventory can produce some great forgotten treasures, for those days when you're feeling a bit nostalgic, or just for awesomeness with the classics. Like the kind I have.

Credits:

Pic 1-

Skin: Surf Couture - Sun Care - Zinc Oxide - Gone Surfin'
Hair: Maitreya - Rae - Red
Shirt: Versteck - from Pipette dress
Cardigan: Icing - from Robot Love
Pants: Celestial Studios - Lulu Faded Cuffed Capris
Sandals: Fashionably Dead - Strappy Sandals - Black
Manicure: Celestial Studios - Deviant Nation - Black and Red Duo
Pedicure: Frick - Dark Red
Eyes: Miriel - Marine (standard) [in all pics]
Lashes: Sin Skins - Tipped Fluff Lashes [in all pics]

Pic 2-

Skin: Surf Couture - Sun Care - Zinc Oxide - Italian Ice
Hair: Gurl 6 - Softly - Strawberry
Dress and gloves: Argyle - Pete Plaid Party Dress - Grey
Shoes: Jeepers Creepers - Laced-Up Betty
Choker: Caroline's Jewelry - Kitten Cameo

Pic 3-

Skin: Surf Couture - Sun Care - Zinc Oxide - Flip Flops
Hair: Gurl 6 - Hard Candy - Strawberry
Outfit: Nyte n Day - Seraph Black
Shoes: Aphrodite Creations - Vintish - Black

Pose Credits:
Pic 1 - [LAP] (from the Simmer Down set but I forgot to make a note :(]
Pic 2 - [LAP] Cat's Meow - Starlet; Got the Time
Pic 3 - [LAP] Chubby set - C-Barbie1a; C-Barbie10