A while back my wonderful partner, Vanish suggested that I stop making my blogs SOOOO detailed and just blog about the one or two items of each outfit that really caught my attention. That is SOOOO hard to do when there are SOOOO many pretty things just staring back at you! The funny thing about it, is that this outfit was originally going to be a “Q&D”, just a post with pics and styling notes. Lots of bloggers do ’em. And they seem to be accepted by most of the blogging community…and it is something that I can do relatively quickly. But the more I worked with this outfit the more in love with it I became!
It started out as a modeling pic for Alli & Ali Designs. This is their latest hair, Evora and if you run to their shop, you can get a free copy as a group member and I think there is a free copy as a voting gift. In any case, A&A has FREE hair every WEEK for both MEN and women, group and non group members…and they have a TON of MM boards spread over the grid. So it would be well worth allotting one of those precious group slots to A&A!
Each week when we (we= those who have agreed to take pics for A&A) get a new hair to model, we also get a suggested style in the note card to guide us in our picture taking. Evora’s card had the suggestion of “casual, elegant”…and to me…that can cover a BROAD range. So…as I began to formulate a look in my mind, a cute little “casual, elegant” mesh dress from e! sprang to my mind’s eye! I had never tried on anything from e! before, but being a Plurk friend of one of e!’s co-creators allows me the privilege of an occasional sneek peek of their upcoming releases. And I had seen Arsene on Plurk and agreed that it was quite lovely, but when I pulled it out of the box to try it on…wow! It comes in several colors, so I picked my favorite color, green choosing a gold zipper rather than a silver one that runs down the back of the dress and I was NOT dissapointed. It was a lovely shade of green, not too dark and not at all bright, just a REALLY nice shade of green. And the texture….I LOVED it. It was a simple unorganized pattern. It reminded me of a finely woven thread that had been sewn on top of the material. I have seen that done in real life and it is always elegant. I hope you can see it in the pictures I took and I hope you get a real feel for the dress. It is simple, but in this case, simple=elegance.
Serena is the name of this lovely new skin from Essences. It comes in several shades, with several lip colors and I chose a red shade to go with my green dress. I have been a fan of Essences, almost from the very beginning of her store and I love her skins. I think she especially does a fine job with some of the darker skin tones but this particular skin had lips a little larger than what I am used to. I have found that in the “modeling/blogging world”, you have to be willing to change a few things here and there while still keeping the things that make YOU, you. And in that spirit, I now have 15 different lip styles. And believe it or not, I TRY to keep every one of them as true to “El” as I possibly can. So you can imagine my dismay when my husband looked at me while I was putting this look together and said “You don’t look like my El.” I looked at my avatar and went over all the things that I had recently tweaked and tried to RE-tweak a few of them to make them more “El-like”. But when I got to the lips, I just could not give in. I showed him the original “El” lip with the skin and how, in my opinion it just DID NOT work. He finally agreed to me making my eyes larger and leaving my lips as they were…for THIS picture. All I can say, is I think the pics turned out cute and….”Close your eyes, baby and feel my soft lips on yours. See….they are still the same.” <smiles and kisses her lover softly and sweetly>
OKOKOK….back to blogging. Dark Mouse Jewelry. I remember when I was just a newbie I stumbled upon a Dark Mouse shop and if my memory serves me right, it was in a rather dark goth-like place where you had to go down a lot of steps before reaching the shop, but I was impressed with the “darkness” of it all and I thought the name was impressive and it stuck with me. Quite sometime later I stumbled upon DM in a nice little shop and picked up some of her jewelry that was on sale (A nice set of leather belt type bracelets that I STILL have in my inventory and wear on occasion) and a really cute hair. I stopped by her store off and on for several months and then once again, lost touch with Dark Mouse. Imagine my delight when I found out that one of the people that had accepted my “friend request” on Plurk, was none other than the creator of Dark Mouse herself. I once again stumbled upon her creations at a sale. I quickly remembered the name and the “gems” that I had acquired so long ago and quickly gobbled up several new ones. What you see here is the fruit of that labor…:) I LOVE the length of this necklace. It seems like necklaces of this length can be hard to find causing this one to really catch my eye. Mouse Mim has taken pains to make this necklace look as realistic as possible. SO many times you see a necklace of this length just fall down in a straight line to the pendant. but this one falls realistically between the breast, with even a “crook” here and there in the chain, much as you would see in RL with a necklace of this length. The earrings match the pendant and seem to be nothing more than a random congregation of scroll work type metal with a pale blue green stone in it. It is REALLY quite lovely and matched this dress perfectly! The necklace and earrings come in gold, silver and copper, giving you a NICE selection. Dark Mouse has recently moved to a new store located in Sage and it’s nice and cozy. I am glad that after all these years, Dark Mouse is still around and serving the residents of SL. In today’s economy keeping a store in SL can be hard and I have seen more than one creator let go of the store that had served them well for several years; as creators are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. So, if you are new to SL, like I was all those years ago, Dark Mouse would be a nice place to start. If you are an established SL resident and have not been by DM in a while…come see the new store!
I love shoes. Given that fact, I have surprisingly far fewer than one would expect in my inventory. But I have cleared out a lot of the older things in my virtual closet…so that means I have PLENTY of room for new shoes!!! A couple of weeks ago I TP’d into Collabor88 and was enthralled by the shoes I found there by Ingenue. I was SO enthralled with them, that I bought EVERY color they had and anyone that knows me well, knows that I RARELY do something like that. But they were ONLY 88L each and the colors….wow…the colors were SO different from most of the colors you see on the grid and even tho they were simple, it was the texturing and structure of the shoe that just made me STARE at them! (kinda like my dress from e!) SO…I decided to take a pic of each color to share with you…and it is QUITE possible that they have MORE beautiful colors of the Gatsby heel in the Ingenue store, but I have stayed away from it for the time being for fear of spending every Linden I have!!! BUT that does not mean that YOU cannot go there and then IM me and let me know how many other colors there are…:)) And by the way…to the best of my knowledge, Collabora88 changes their sales on the 8th of every month. So you still have a few days to RUN to Collabora8 and scoop them up!
Last but not least, I am wearing lovely lashes from [GLOW] Studio, eyes by IKON (formerly Fashism) and nails by Moondance Nails. This is the May set of Moondance Boutique’s Classy Gems nails and you can find YOUR birthstone at their store.
Thanks to all the people who responded to the latest “videoblog” that Vanish and I made. Your kind words are greatly appreciated and I am looking forward to doing more of them with my sweet partner and showing off more wonderful creations from across the grid. We are currently “brainstorming” for our future adventures and would love to have you come along. If you are interested in being a “guest” on the “show” or if you would just like to tag along as we trek around the grids, be sure and get in touch with either myself or Vanish. We would love to have you!
Until then…..
STYLING NOTES
*Hair: A&A-Evora Hair Dark Honey/Strawberry
Jewelry: Dark Mouse – Aisling Earrings,Necklace – Gold
*Dress: e! – Arsene Dress Gold Zipper (Grass)
Shoes: Ingenue :: Gatsby Heels :: Chartreuse
Lashes: [GLOW] Studio – Innocent. eyelashes – gentle
*Nails: Moondance Boutique – Square Medium : Classy Gems Emerald
Poses: The Art Body Store (ABS)
*Skin:{.essences.} Serena skin – MEDIUM, Serena Lipstick [red.01]
*Eyes: IKON (previously FASHISM) ‘Sunrise’ Eyes – Pale Verdigris (L)
