Kami-no-aisuru

Ah, it’s that time again, all the presents under the tree, cocoa and cookies in the kitchen, halls decked, etc. Holiday time! and also time for me to whore out my entry for the Dreams’ monthly contest. This month they chose a “Window dressing” theme and everyone had a store window to decorate (like Macy’s! or Barneys! oh it made my little fruit fly heart sing to get to play Simon Doonan for a week).

I decided to incorporate skating, which I’m kind of obsessed with, and came up with this idea of frost fairys who are creating the snow for the skaters. (Borrowing from Little Snow Fairy Sugar, tyvm) No way was I not going to “go big or go home” so it’s kind of an explosion. I hope you’ll go see it. The girl next to me, Wisteria, did “Holiday at Versailles” and it’s really nicely textured and she was good company during the building.

Please take time to view everyone’s builds, as always, a lot of time and thought went into these and there are some really nice builds. Mine is located one the East side of the square, and my snowman is in front of it. Theres an ice skating area in the center of the square with free skates and it’s a great place to have a little skate, with the trees around (some of them are mine!) and it’s a pretty area.

At the NorthWest corner of the square is the voting area, inside is a board with pictures of everyone’s builds, and a prim in front, just sit on the prim and choose 3 pictures, they will get a red border around them once you’ve selected them. When you’re done just press “vote” and confirm your choice and you’re done! Theres cocoa in there too for the cold skaters XD

I mentioned snowmen, and thats the other contest that’s going on. All around the town square are snowmen, and each of them has a red bucket that takes donations. Your votes come in the form of $L donations made to the red buckets, and all of the proceeds go to keep Dreams open and assisting people with their building skills. The entry with the most donations will be the winner.

I tied my “snowman” into my overall theme, the fairy blowing a kiss of frost onto the winter world.

Everyone’s work, the voting area, and the party (Saturday 13th 12-2pm SL & Wednesday 17th 5-7:30pm SL) area can all be found here. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dreams/152/86/26

VOTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL DECEMBER 20TH AT 1 PM SL TIME

I’ve been fairly busy in SL lately, expanded the store land yet again, and for no real reason I guess. I have a new Autumn tree collection out that seems to be selling like whatever the opposite of hotcakes are. I started selling some fence textures that are ok, at least the alphas aren’t screwed up like some are. how people can stomach looking at white halos around alphas is beyond me. I have some tentative plans for Christmas items. and the ever-loving fountains I keep meaning to work on. and furniture I keep meaning to work on. Basically, I need to think of things that will sell, and make some L, because that was the whole point and now I have bigger tier, and a smaller balance.

so with that point in mind, I’m going to have to cut back spending drastically. I can’t keep talking myself into new shoes and sculpty sets and such. I have to pay for land. I’ve been going through some of the Halloween-themed areas, just to have something to do. The haunted school thing by Sn@tch (on Pulse island) is really pretty good, and theres prizes at the end. I ran into Emperor Palpatine there, so you know the elite are going to it:

When Halloween stuff is over, I dunno. Theres a bunch of places to explore I haven’t been to yet, I was considering delving into Caledon more than I have, the whole steampunk thing appeals to me a bit and some parts of it have got to be pretty right? I need to find places to explore/hang out and not spend money.

Building stuff: I’ve been trying to attend Primtionary lately but I don’t really think my heart is in it anymore. It helped me a lot to learn about building (and fast) when I was new but I’m mostly just bored there now. I go to the speed builds at Dreams (won this week’s) and do the montly contests. I really don’t want to sound all arrogant or whatever, but I’ve only been going there a couple months, and I’ve won two weekly contests, and placed 3rd in another. People seem to like my builds and I think I have talent in that area. Sitting around at Primtionary waiting for grandstanding bores is just not really a good use of time for me. It’s something to sit through while I’m reading Plurk or blogs or SLU though. This month’s contest at Dreams is Trick or Treat. they want it to be kid-friendly, I guess because they’re the ones who go Trick or Treating, huh? I find their rules a bit stifling but I’m going to try to work with it and do something cool. My wins there have both been cutesy builds and I guess they match my cutesy avatar. Today I think I’ll start building on it.

Heres a bonus picture of me kinda punky. Like a neko without ears & tail.

OK so I take a big *fail* on the mini blogger challenge. I managed 1 of 3 and that’s not a passing score to address some of the questions briefly though, I did dress unusually for me (as a box) and went around the Glam Expo with the crazy girls from Ch’know. I was laughing hysterically the whole time! But as for perceptions, I don’t know that it was sooo different. When I’m in a group of avatars I don’t know-at events or standing around lucky chairs-it seems to me that I get the stink eye from a lot of the amazon tall fashionista types. I also frequently get run over like I’m a tiny and they didn’t see me. but generally ignored when it comes to chat. seems like mostly people are chat avoidant. So being even shorter and boxy (lol) didn’t change it that much. I’ve been having a lot of people visit my shop, thanks to a new dollarbie and a huge traffic boost (thanks Laleeta!), and I try to welcome them if I’m around, but I’d say only about 5% even say hello back at me. But I had a great conversation there with a new girl (to me) whose avi was a clockwork mouse, and she even gave me her gears that she’d made herself. I made a new friend

As to places to shop, I really love shopping and I don’t know that I could narrow it down to just one store. If I had a shortlist, I’d say Katat0nik, Silent Sparrow, BareRose, DIscord, Maitreya, the entire Lloyd/Floyd complex.

The voting/awards is over for the Dreams contest I posted about last time. I did not win or place. I did show up at the awards ceremony, and was so happy that my friend Grey Kurka (of the dripping steampunk aquarium of… creatures) won 1st place in the popularity vote and 3rd place in the judged vote. He really deserves it, I’m so jealous of his texturing ability. He turns out stunning work, but I also know he takes time to consider every single detail and every subtle nuance. I mentioned it on Plurk but I don’t think anyone cared, that a “castle” of his was blogged about on SLWTF (it’s about halfway down, beneath the Cory Edo hobbithole one) I’ve never understood why he calls these wonderful homes (part Kremlin, part Grimm’s) castles, but that’s his word for them. his newer ones are even more stunning. OH and he has a store and people who love the whimsical Victorian/steampunk aesthetic would do themselves a favor by visiting.

meme time! This is the one going around, I stole it from Ali who stole it from Dyami. Listed favorites:

Breakfast Food: toast. I seriously like toast a lot! with butter and peach or apricot preserves is my fave, but I like strawberry too.
Pizza: two kinds, both on the thinnest crust possible, either ham/pineapple or mushroom/black olive.
Ice Cream: Mint choco chip if I have anything fancy, but my real honest love is plain vanilla.
Caffeinated Beverage: I Diet. Dr. Pepper. It runs in my veins instead of blood.
Vegetable: Green beans when they’re all garlicky like at Chinese places. or carrots.
Fruit: I like all kinds, but I probably like oranges best.
Dessert: I like anything custard, so creme brulee, bread pudding, etc.
Fast Food Chain: probably Taco Bueno
Store-bought Beer (or soda if you don’t drink beer): I don’t drink beer, don’t really like the taste. so I guess I’d go with Diet Dr. Pepper! I’d love a Jones Cola too if you can find one, but I don’t drink sugary pop very often.
Type of Cuisine: Italian, Mexican or fakey Ameri-Chinese.

now I must go unpack this group gift from Kat, I bet it’s soooo cute!

I’ve been talking for a couple weeks I guess about my build for the September “If I Ran the Zoo” contest at Dreams classroom. The voting has started now and is on until the 27th at noon SL time. Gives you a couple days to go over there and look at the entries, I’d love it if y’all would. These kind of building competitions could use all of the exposure they can get.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dreams/136/162/2

Thats the location of the entryway to all of Dreams, the big sandbox, classrooms where they hold multiple classes per week, and the contest space. There at the entry is a giant calendar that outlines each event, clicking on the appropriate symbols will get you a notecard with event details. Great for people who want to learn more about building. Theres also a really big nice and well regulated sandbox.

That is where the Voting area is as well. I’ll get to that in a minute. Each direction you exit from the entry will put you on a raised wooden path which will lead you through all of the contest entries. Please take your time to look at all of them, everyone worked very hard on their builds and put in lots of details, little animations and things. Some people have audio, some have sit poseballs. People really put a lot of thought into it.

Some are pretty awe-inspiring, like the giant orca, some are cute & funny like the googly-eyed giraffes or this “ant farm”

And of course the SICK, SICK entry by my former neighbor which is completely awesome, as is everything he does. Srsly jelus. Srsly.

SO when you’ve perused them and decided on worthy winners and your own favorites, go back to the entry to the voting area. Theres a “how to vote” option on the board with simple instructions, but it’s so easy.

Just sit on the prim (with the dots) and look up at the board and click 3 of the photos. The first one you click will get 3 points, the 2nd 2 points and the 3rd will get 1 point. Then click the final “vote” button and you’re done!

Please stop by and look at all of the entries and choose some worthy winners, appreciate all of the work & thought that people put into their builds and support one group of SL builders with your attention for a little while.

happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey and you smell like one too

that juvenile verse has been in my head a bit these past few days. it was my birthday yesterday, Friday the 19th, and it’s nice because its my day or whatever, but I’m not really happy about having birthdays anymore, you know? I pretty much refuse to tell the year, and I’m old enough…. to give a crap about the number. BUT thank you all for the good wishes, it was really nice and my day was really fun. Much better than last year >_<.  This pirate noise…I still don’t know what to think. A startup holiday has commandeered my day, y’all. for many years it was just my day (in my head, and sorry to sound like such a narcissist) and now everyones all like, yar. I try it a bit because it’s a fun way to talk but I’m still solidly on the Ninja’s side.

As you Hump Day partiers know, my store (or high above it) was the location for the Pirate theme
dance, and I made a party box for it. I had so much fun! Building the dance floor, decorating it, and the actual dance, seriously, I was grinning so much. I really think I got a bit of the feeling that Ali & Cen get, watching people actually show up and have a good time. I’ve never made a real party space before and I was nervous but people gave me compliments and that made me so happy. :D  I love you guys. Next week is Asian theme so you know I’m all about that. I just have to decide which kimono to wear. I really need to start wearing kimono more often, I have a ton. I also have a chim full of geisha dances to share.

oh yeah, the monthly building competition I’m in is about to start the voting round. some weirdness happened there yesterday too. I’d finished my build but went to check it, theres still a couple days left to build and I thought I might tweak something, I’m like a mother hen about stuff like that. (Virgo, now you know the full horror). ANYWAY, I get there and theres boxes all over it. a camp ball (?), pair of shoes, just crap everywhere. all belonging to an avatar who rezzed on the 18th. a noob unpacked on my build. but only mine… so that was very strange. I had to call over one of the people who runs the space there, to have all of his stuff returned to him.  She did it but last thing she said to me was “well I can’t say but you might want to give the rules a second glance”.  wtf.  I’ve read the rule card at least a dozen times… mother hen remember? So I guess theres a chance that my build will be disqualified for some arbitrary reason I don’t even know. If that does not happen, I’ll let you know where the voting is. :(   I think that a place that touts itself as an open sandbox/learning area/classrooms/creative competition  should maybe remember that whole creative bit.

oh well it’s been a weird few days, but overall, great ones.

I’ve been doing a lot of building lately, just not much of it for the shop. I’ve been doing these speed building contests and such. I’m currently building on my project for the monthly contest there. its… something I guess. they give you a topic and you build on it, only it seems to me their topics are mostly quite lame. BUT it’s a way to get my name more well known as a builder. Last Monday I won the weekly speed build there, which meant that my build got to be on display for a week. This was only the 3rd week I’d attended, so I guess thats going ok. The theme was “hooked on ____” OR “hook_____”. see…. lame. So I made things with hooks. kind of stupid. When the voting is going on for the monthly contest, you best believe I’ll be calling down the powers of Ch’knows and Plurkdom to vote for me

Tonight is the weelkly build, at 6pm SL time. they allow observers so if you are bored thats an option. my winning build is still up for now but it’ll come down sometime today, and right next to it is my in-progress monthly build, all of that wonderfullness is located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dreams/84/147/26

After I get done building this thing I’ve got to get going on stuff for the store.

I’ve been doing stuff, just not so interesting. Been working on the store, expanded the space, built new building (a vast improvement), need to be making more content to sell. kind of facing going SL broke now, thats kind of sobering because I really like shopping . so I need to sell things. theres a tipjar at the store now if any kind souls take pity on me. I got some sound files for fountains, and I think I may make a couple. I think I can do water pretty well, pretty realistically. Fountains annoy me because they are too blue or too green or just *wrong*. but they’re popular so maybe people would like some nice ones that aren’t full of toilet-blue water.

Done a massive amount of hunts and lucky chair stalking. They released the updated fishing pole so I’ve been doing a fair amount of fishing too, and always Tiny Empires. That’s a fun little distraction but some people take it waaaaay seriously. I feel like I’m repeating myself on that score.

Also had inspiration regarding accessories. I dress EGL quite a bit in SL and some people do a Doll thing, and admittedly the two overlap quite a bit. I have some clockwork keys myself to add even more to doll-style outfits. some people even take it into a more D/s type place with restriction keys and such. most of the EGL people only wear keys for show, so all they need is a rotate script. I think I can make some that would be good, maybe start an accessories sideline. I made my first thing the other day, a set of marionette strings, and I think that will be a dollarbie at the store soon.

I seriously overestimated how many people wanted my custom sculpty pagoda roof. srsly. but I’m still going to be learning more and more about sculpties. I’ve gotten some positive boosts from participating in the weekly speed builds and I’ll be doing the monthly contest there too. I’ll post SLurls when the voting takes place if all my lovely friends wouldn’t mind checking out the builds.

so theres a super rambly, stream of conciousness post for you.

Ye gods it’s late, but I’ve been meaning to post pictures of my house for a couple days and damnit I won’t sleep until I do. The typing may be jacked up because my typing skills go to crap when I’m this tired.

So this is my industrial pagoda. It’s really not all that industrial, just some rusty metal & rivets here and there. even the wood is rivety. I was seriously inspired by this place, and decided to borrow bits of it. After several false starts building a house, I think this is “the one” as it were.

The outside, courtyard area. That smallish thing on the bridge? That’s me.

Overview of the whole property, gazebo with dock, house, bridge over the stream, mountaintop deck, and lantern room off to the right.

The mountaintop deck. Theres a nice area to lounge in, with a fire by Mr Euler. Japanese flag & torii gate, tree by Organica

Into the Lantern Room.  It’s kind of a conservatory I guess. I started playing with transparancies on these pagoda sculpty roofs I made and this is what I ended up making, It’s supposed to be light.

The house is mostly two sets of two rooms stacked, and it has this to divide the two halves. This is my kind of bent interpretation of a zen garden

The grand entrance. The sculpty characters are Japanese Hiragana, it says Aisuru.

(btw, while I’m at it I’ve been meaning to put a little pronunciation guide in here. Aisuru=eye soo roo.  Kamino= kah mee noh)

The main living room, the furniture is too cool and by Aminom Marvin of Sculptomancy. if you need the best armchair ever I suggest you haul ass and get one. only $100L and scripted out the wazoo. 2 prims. I SAID TWO.

Above the living area is a sort of gallery. These are all Glyph Graves works. I have a bunch more but I don’t have the prim count to display them. Maybe I’ll rotate some out.  Theres another in the pond.

The other half of the house is a sort of bleh room (don’t know what to do with it!) theres a nifty scripted kotatsu in there now, above that is the bedroom.

And if you want to stop by to have a look around, try out the furniture, do some fishing or just hang, please do! Theres some nice pillows with poses all around the dock, the barge in the pond is from pillow talk, and the settee in the lantern room has some cute poses too. theres even a little clover in the courtyard with a surprise. ( I know how much y’all like taking pictures XD ) and it’s all open so just teleport on over and see what’s up.  if I’m around but not on the ground I’m probably working in the sky. Just IM me and I’ll come on down. My house is on the Stephen sim, let me know what you think!

been awhile since I posted I think. well I’m still working in the middle of nowhere. I had the weekend and went back home to see my kitty. aw so cute. and now it’s Monday night and I’m back for work. it’s all quite silly, if I can’t find a house to rent in a month or so I’ll probably quit. Between room + board I’m basically breaking even, not so good and not worth this grief. This place is all kinda weird. I found out something, you americans might remember the place from a few years back, it was one of the loony towns who put a granite “10 Commandments” on government property right in front of the courthouse. it still stands, btw. (with adultery misspelled, even!)

The weekend was awesome getting to see my cat and my stuff and my folks. playing SL on a good computer, not this cranky laptop. *shakes fist at Vista* *reaches out to strangle Norton*

One exciting thing was that the sim next to where my house is got griefed. I saw it and was like whoa…

I’ve never seen an honest to God griefing before. My builder neighbor over there says it’s someone on the sim who likes to use alts to grief his neighbors. how lame. but you know what was awesome? Teagen Linden was there in like 30 seconds to fix it. I’m not even sure the estate knew about it. She was like…. “denied!”

I’ve talked before about my fangirling over the work of artist Glyph Graves, and I’m about to again. XD  He has another exhibition and sent me an invite *eeeee*. Even the invite is art.

I did attend the opening and I’ll do a formal write up of it another day. It’s some of his most stunning work to date I think.  If you’re interested in seeing a mini-gallery just visit my house XD  I keep having to shift prims around to make room for art.

I also attended the mega hayooge Silent Sparrow/Schadenfreude/Draconic Kiss/Calico Creations fashion show and it was a MADHOUSE in thar.

I seriously crashed like 4 or 5 times. upwards of 90 avatars throughout. BUT it was a great show! It had a dollhouse/broken dolly theme and lord knows I love that. I also happen to love all of the designers so I was pretty happy to attend. I’ll take pictures in some of the fashions later and post them to flickr probably. graphics not as good on the laptop but I’ll try.

and the other fun thing I did was try out OSgrid. Joshua from the SLU forums has some land and invited people to use it sandbox like, so I did. I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of the open source is…. I guess the idea is you house your own sims on your own servers? at home? but I know that a sim has 45000 prims!!!! So I wanted to build something with just tons of prims that I can’t build on the regular grid. So I built him a greenhouse with a dock attached.

was a very amusing couple hours.

the other fun thing I did was go to the shoe expo. oh I spent too much money  TT_TT

Shiny Things, Kata0nik (Stomp Lightly), First Flower, Maitreya, Unique Needs, Kata0nik again, Curious Kitties

… and I’m spent.

I created a sculpty tree for Joshua Nightshade of Unreal Avatars. My first creation sold. :)  I’m pretty happy about getting the opportunity to make something that will be seen by other people. Any little thing I can get my name out there as a creator (especially custom stuff).

I just wish I didn’t make noob mistakes like making things full perm and I still have no idea how to actually box something up for sale so that it will work. :(  and getting the shadow alpha dark enough from the beginning. *sigh* I still have a lot to learn.