Celebrity Trollop

Launa Fauna has been working on a new skin line called Lapine (bunny ala francaise) for three months. I’ve always liked Launa’s skin work and she’s one of the first skinners in Second Life, so it’s been pretty cool to see her evolve and keep up with the proverbial Jones over time.

Lapine is a beautiful skin in both tone and body features. The face shading has been really revamped – there is a strongly noticeable improvement in both the nose shading and the lip definition. (The older Chai Nova skin line had really broad lips for my shape, for example.) The body itself has been re-worked too. The shading on the tummy and around the butt have been sculpted a bit more. And although Launa for many skin lines has sold a “cleavage enhancement” pack, this time, she’s gone with the recent trend-of-the-moment for skinners in SL and added amazingly shaded cleavage right on the skin layer itself. (No need to choose between your tats or your… breasts.)

The skin tones are really lovely too. Since I think that dark tones are technically very challenging to create, I was so excited to find that the Lapine line is really well executed. Many darker tones seem to be overly orange or yellow tinted, looking a bit too “fake bake” or “jaundiced” at times. (Hence the title of this post – an off the cuff comment from Launa.)

The first five makeups are solid classics that will coordinate with just about anything. But as Launa laughingly told me, “I don’t do just one makeup.” ‘Tis true; she is a teeny bit obsessed and thrives on getting some good suggestions from her customers. I look forward to seeing some of my old favorites from skin lines past be reborn in the Lapine series (Torrid, Midnight and Diabla come to mind immediately. Is it too self-serving to ask that Celebrity come back? Probably.)

The skin prices are still quite reasonable – L$850 per makeup, or a fatpack of 5 for L$3000, which is below standard market rate for such lovely skins. I don’t know if the card system from Chai will be making a comeback, but it’d be nice to mix and match makeups once Launa releases a few more of them.

I’m excited to announce my 2009 Secret Santa game. When I first tried this in 2007, most people loved it, but more than a few were rotten no-goodnik freeloaders – they signed up, received gifts, but had no intention of giving them. That pretty much ruined the experience for more than a few participants and I felt really bad about it. (I skipped last year’s holiday season because we just had a baby in December and I was too busy with that!)

So in 2009, I wanted to do something about the freeloaders, so I decided I’d collect a token sign up fee of (at least) L$50 and donate the sign ups to a charity (Feeding America.)

I was also surprised to discover that many of my non-North American friends had no idea what Secret Santa is. And I didn’t have a very good description of it either, but here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

Secret Santa is a Western holiday tradition in which members of a group are randomly assigned other members to whom they anonymously give a gift. Often practiced in workplaces, or amongst large families, participation in it is usually voluntary. It offers a way for many people to give and receive a gift at low cost to those involved.

So are you interested in playing? I hope so! You can find a list of active kiosk SLurls, along with the current donation status here. Sign ups close on (or around) December 6th, so please don’t wait too long!

If you’d like to host a kiosk at your store, mall, club or whatever, you can get one (at no cost) from XStreetXL here, or drop by Secret Santa 2009 HQ in Amicitia (pictured below; built by Galea Yates of Fancy Schmancy)

A huge special thank you goes to Jori Watler of alaMode boutique who designed the great kiosk texture pictured at the top of this post!

XAnGeL57X Babii is the avatar behind XAngel Designs or XD. She specializes in what we affectionately call “slutwear” in Second Life. And although SL is awash in oceans of slutwear – this is really good slutwear. I realize that this is going to sound like an oxymoron to some of you, but what can I say? The quality speaks for itself in the picture above. And yes, it’s photosourced, but it’s also really beautifully imported – no white jaggly halos or “suspiciously convenient” mesh backs, just showing the front of the photosourced garment.

In just 8 short months XAngel (and her partner who makes men’s items) have been able to open their own sim featuring dozens and dozens of designs in all kinds of colors and fabrics from sheer to slick and everything in between. This scorching number is called Hot Leather and comes with the components on every layer – handy if you’re wearing tattoos or cleavage booster textures on lower layers.

I am always looking for new ways to show off skins – and that’s something the outfits at XD do so very well. (See my previous post about the Eclat skins wearing an XD sheer bikini here.)

XD is located at Lovely Lagoon (121, 87, 22).

Minnu Palen’s newest skin release is named Eclat – and the dark skin tones came out a day or two later than the lighter ones. I was excited to get a copy of them to try out. As usual, Minnu has designed a lot of runway inspired makeup schemes – and if you’re like me and love smokey eyes and glossy lips – then this set is one you will want to try as soon as you can.

One interesting addition to Eclat is that LeLutka is following on the current trend to pump up the cleavage shading. There are cleavage enhancer add-on kits available for all of the skin tones. Eclat’s body is toned but not totally ripped, and she features some intense eyebrows, which I like, but I know won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Eclat in both “Dark” and “Umber” (which is actually the darkest tone LeLutka offers) are available for demos now.

I’m wearing the Cristina (in Halloween orange) bikini from XD (post on XD coming soon), and Truth hair.

Ryker Beck of Exodi has designed a fiendishly fun and challenging hunt. Normally I don’t do hunts but I had to make an exception for this one. The Quest for Flesh combines some amazing ambience/sets with a deceptively difficult challenge. There are 23 amazing prizes from fabulous eyes to halloween skins in all the Lily skin tones, to the same skins available in Ryker’s as yet unreleased male skin (called Nazereth). Doc Manhattan to vampires to zombies are out there to find but with a major twist.

The goal is find 23 different candies in the hunt set (shown above. See more on my flickr stream here.) When you find a candy, you touch it, and there’s a random chance that you’ll get the prize from that candy and a random chance you won’t, but what always happens is that the candy you just touched will move itself to a new spot in the hunt!! So it makes a simple job substantially more challenging. But no one ever said anything worthwhile was easy or quick. So it is with this hunt.

Here’s just one of the skins (Lily Vampire – Cold Blood) and eyes (Made of Glass) that’s available to be found. There are 21 more prizes too!

The hunt opens tomorrow, October 16, 2009. Good luck!

As I mentioned in a previous post, Elate! and [Decoy] just opened a new mainstore sim. Kellie has a free outfit too (it isn’t the one shown here) but I saw this dress while I was visiting her new store and I was so taken by the sculpted lace and the bright white piping contrasting with the bold red of the dress. Red is a major color theme in RL fashion this fall and I thought this little red dress would be a great way to give all those little black dresses some competition in my inventory. This same design is also available in a black dress with red piping, but it was the red/white combo shown that really captivated me.

Annette Voight is the talent behind the [Decoy] brand. She and her sim-partner, Kellie Iwish have opened a new mainstore sim called Sunny. Until October 12, Annette has tons and tons of amazing free clothing, hair and boots – that’s right fatpacks of top notch clothing for L$0 until 10/12, including the dress shown above. If you love cute clothes and want to save a ton of Lindens, you should proceed immediately to Annette’s new mainstore on Sunny sim before it’s too late.

Annyka Bekkers kills herself over the details. You see it again and again in her skins and now in her lingerie designs. The latest proof comes from her obsessive mastery of these fishnets – available in stockings (as shown) and as tights with a built in panty. They come whole or ripped, too, just for variety.

So what’s so amazing about these? They have almost no distortion, which, trust me, is pretty gosh darn amazing because of the way that textures wrap around the avatar mesh. Making fishnets this good and this distortion free is a major achievement. But they still don’t cost a fortune – you can find them for as little as L$95 and available in a rainbow of colors.

The Skin and Shape Expo is coming this Saturday, September 26! If you’re a skin whore like me, this is a can’t miss event, and I can hardly wait for things to kick off.

I was fortunate enough to be included in the expo blogger’s group and shape and skin creators have been dropping textures, samples and yes, even a few preview skins to whet our impatient appetite for more.

Here are two more of the preview skins (they join Orchid and Farrah which are on the front page of my blog at the moment): on the left, Gala Phoenix’s “Bean” skin (light tone) in Majesty 2. And on the right, Sachi Vixen’s “Desire 2″ skin – which comes with your choice of hair base or enhanced cleavage shading. Saturday, you cannot get here fast enough!

Farrah is the latest (soon to be) release by Heather Beebe. It will debut at the Skin/Shape Expo this Saturday (September 26.) Last night she sent out a drool-worthy teaser to her subscribo-group touting this skin and the beautifully inked special limited edition shown (the proceeds of which will be part of a fund raiser for the Susan Komen breast cancer fund.)

Farrah is a bit lighter “dark” tone than sibling skin Uma (shown in numerous other posts, like here, for example) but it shared the same mix of photorealism blended with plenty of hand-drawn and hand-shaded details. Rockberry skins tend to be on the less “ripped” side of skinning – softer muscle tone and definition, with lighter shading on joints and around the breasts. Uma is one of my favorite skins in Second Life, and I think Farrah will be a worthy little sister.