Silentsparrow Month! Day 18 - Prairie Princess

So, recently I've been on a bit of a Disney kick. Within the last less-than-a-week, I've watched Up, Snow White (Valentine's Day gift), Enchanted (which I realized we owned and never watched) and The Princess and the Frog. The Princess and the Frog was yesterday, and it was the most extraordinary thing, my husband and I had the entire cinema to ourselves, with it being towards the end of its run, and being 'late' on a school night. So I was free to enjoy the movie in the way I do at home, like a child, with various shrieks of horror, cheers of joy, and little, tiny sniffles. I'm cute. This concentration of Mouseness has made me rather aware of the concept of "princesses" (not the real ones, they tend to be horsey and dull). You'd think in a world of make-believe, where sovereign nations with beautiful adventurous daughters can easily be fabricated, there'd be more in the way of hard and fast rules as to what counts as a princess, but really, of all the movies I've watched lately, the only one that was formal about what counted as a princess was The Princess and the Frog. And that was only in an oblique, coincidental sort of way. So I figured, I can claim to be an impoverished princess too! I'm certainly cute enough, and in this outfit, my adventure can be that I'm a humble but impeccably dressed scullery maid who turns out to be secret royalty. Yes! I am a princess. Look at me princess around. Here I go!

My gorgeous top is from the silentsparrow Caged Bird Lolita suite, and has a nice layered look. The blouse part underneath has stunning shading, with the green and turquoise combining to an effect of silken sheen, and the pinafore-like upper part features a beautifully sparse line-drawing of a caged bird, which puts me in mind of elegant 50s and 60s lounge artwork. I'm a nerd like that. On an amusing side-note, my husband once accidentally got a pink (PINK!) version of the Caged Bird Lolita suite from the silentsparrow Lucky Bird, and even now still actually wears parts of it. He's a manly man, my husband. The skirt is from the Datura suite, in Mint, and while the colours don't match the top entirely, I think the darker green of the skirt highlights the details in the top nicely. This version of the skirt, the Prairie skirt, is the simplest of the three included with Datura, but still stunningly lovely, crushed velvet in texture, with a fine lace underlayer, and floor-sweeping in length, highly wearable on an everyday basis. On my arms, are the Kurai Tart armwarmers I neglected to show, some days ago! Sculpted and cozy, with thick velvet Kurai-patterned bows, and lace peeping out the cuffs, there is nothing tarty about these, unless they're all that you're wearing. Then, y'know. Have at it.

My skin is the adorable new Luan skin from Rockberry. With freckles. And what freckles! These are no mere sprinkling of fairy kisses (as my grandmother used to refer to my own childhood freckles as), these are full-on, redhead and proud freckles, accentuated by the healthy rosy cheeks, giving the whole thing a nice wholesome outdoorsy look, especially given that the lightest Rockberry skin tone is rather darker than I normally wear. Also of note, is that the beautiful soft lips are tintable in Appearance, which means that for the price of one skin with eyemakeup, you have an absolute TON of options for lip colour, from a deep nude, to a frosty pink. Each skin also comes with a boosted cleavage option, as is all the rage these days. Being a somewhat flat-chested avatar, I really appreciate this, that the shading on the boobs is not by default all inflated and pushed up. Rockberry's Luan skins come in four tones, with a huge amount of options, so go buy them, and be cute like me!

Outfit Credits:

Skin: Rockberry - Luan - Light - Makeup B
Hair: lamb - Milk (skull part only) - Sun Dried Tomato
Top: silentsparrow - Caged Bird Lolita - Verdant
Skirt: silentsparrow - Datura - Mint
Armwarmers: silentsparrow - Kurai Tart - Lime
Shoes: Katat0nik - Bubbly Mary Janes - Green
Locket: silentsparrow - Chapiteau Locket - Doveys
Ears: Schadenfreude - Fey Ears - Plugs

In The Spotlight: MIEL

Niv's turn for some spotlighty goodness! This week Emee has prodded me out of my blogger hibernation, and with good reason, to continue the brand new but surely will be proud and classic tradition of Monday's In The Spotlight spot....light. In The Spotlight will showcase stores that the Dressing In Pixels team consider outstandingly lovely in terms of design, texturing, and general loveliness, while trying to stay away from strongly established brand names. My own personal extra criteria is that when I walk into the store for the first time, I am overwhelmed with the urge to buy it all up and to hell with the financial consequences. With this, my shiny spotlight falls upon a store we found on the Cupcake sim, Miel. Also, a honey cupcake sounds really good right now.

Due to my severe laziness, I had only heard about Miel the other day, with their prize on the Skipping Stones hunt, which I went "Oh cute! I should go looking there!" and then being extraordinarily absent-minded, forgot all about. It was only when I went on an exploratory stroll of Cupcake with Persephone and Emee that I actually found it again and went "Oh cute! I should buy everything!". Which neatly filled my above criteria and indeed I spent like a trooper. The designs are oh-so-very cute, and attention to detail on the clothing is just wonderful.

I've chosen to showcase their SF outfit in Coal. It consists of a babydollish sculpted tunic, with pockets with optional flowers in. FLOWERS! Flowers in my pocket! You see how I was sold by this concept. It's eccentric, cute, and yet rather elegant all at once. Marvellous! Worn with it is the matching shorts, with beautifully made little ties at the thighs, hand-drawn alpha textures that actually make sense as a bow when you zoom in on them. I love it when things look like what they're supposed to look like. It seems like such a simple thing, but it's really a mark of epic win when hand-drawn. All the wrinkles on the clothing are just right, which is another biggie with me, they're not just put there for the sake of it, or not at all, I dig some good wrinkles. I did have to enlarge the prims quite a bit to accomodate my curvylady hips, and belly, but that's what I get for eating all those prim cookies. With the outfit, I'm wearing the WPGIII Scarf in Maroon, sold seperately but a perfect accent to the dress, sophisticated and contrasting and long enough to wrap around an elephant. Being able to wrap things around elephants is not one of my important criteria, but I appreciate it in a scarf. I have my reasons. Trust me. You don't want to know.

Also delicious are Miel's shoes. I'm a sucker for wedges and mary-jane style shoes, and Miel's JANE shoes are all these things and more! Yes, more than two things! They come in three styles, FLOR, which I am wearing in the picture, with sculpted flowers, MONO, a plain style, and a plaid striped style which I suck too much to remember the name of, but dude! They're COLOUR CHANGE. Each style has three different colour styles to buy, a bright, a pastelly light and a neutral-ish, and various parts of the shoe can be colour-changed to glorious mix n' match....glory. To go with these supershoes, cute knee socks, in the same styles and colour choices, with the sculpted top of the socks equally colour change and versitile and infinitely win! I bought the Brights in both cases, in the spirit of breaking out of my box of...mostly black.
On my head, I sport Miel's AM TULIP headband, which has a matching skirt and top, buyable separately and really, how could I resist? I love tulips! And that's another thing I love about the store. various little accessories really complete each outfit, while remaining tasteful and yummily affordable.

So'anyway, I heartily recommend Miel to anyone with a sense for quirky eccentric quality and awesomeness and lovely things and am very quite glad that my absentmindedness didn't stop me from discovering this store. It's love. Sweet, honeysome love. Visit Miel at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cupcake/242/212/37

Outfit Credits:

Skin: Curio - Moonbeam FREX [dark] June - Daylily 2
Hair: lamb. - Babys on Fire - Sun Dried Tomato
Dress + Shorts: MIEL - SF OUTFIT COAL
Scarf: MIEL - THIN SCARF MAROON
Shoes: MIEL - FLOR JANE - BRIGHT
Socks: MIEL - JANE FLOR SOCK - BRIGHT
Hairband: MIEL - AM TULIP headband - CHAMPAGNE
Ears: SLink - Sachara Elf Ears Pointy Frogs n Beads (I'm in LOVE with these, also!)
Eyes: Miriel - Marine (standard) (no longer available ;__;)
Lashes: Sin Skins - Tipped Fluff Lashes (possibly also no longer available)