The Bleeding Edge: "New Avas" by Xplosion

Kaliha just released 10 new complete avas.  These come complete with everything you need to get started in SL, or would make a great compliment to a veteran's wardrobe.  They include an outfit, skin, shape, hair, eyes, shoes, bodylight, facelight, eyelashes, bracelets with nails, and a starter ao.  Obviously I can't really take advantage of these, being a boy, but I did use them as inspiration to come up with my own twist on 5 of the 10 outfits.  Up first are the adverts from Xplosion, with my variants at the bottom of the post.  Enjoy!

Inspired by Street Elf

Shape: Custom
Skin: Subaru ~ "Edward Earth Normal"
Eyes: L. Fauna ~ "CHAI Eyes Gray 3"
Lashes: KOSH ~ "No Alpha Lashes V9"
Hair: Purple Moon ~ "Sun Midnight Brown"

Shirt:  Xplosion ~ "Space Shirt Wollpulli Black"

Jacket:  Xplosion ~ "Space Jacket"

Pants:  Xplosion ~ "ColourCrazy Pants Black"
Face Jewelry & Elf Ears:  Xplosion ~ "Street Elf Part II"

Bracelets: Finesmith ~ "Morrocan Bracelet Silver"
Pose: Body Talking ~ "RicoRacer 2"
Model & Photographer: Sy Whitesong

 Inspired by Pam

Shape: Custom
Skin: Subaru ~ "Edward Earth Normal"
Eyes: L. Fauna ~ "CHAI Eyes Gray 3"
Lashes: KOSH ~ "No Alpha Lashes V9"
Hair: UW ~ "Ilias Mesh Black"

Undershirt:  Xplosion ~ "Sweet Lady Blouse White"

Shirt:  Xplosion ~ "Sweet Lady Shirt Black"

Pants:  Xplosion ~ "Bobbes Jeans Blue"

Boots:  Hoorenbeek ~ "Karsen Boots Black/Black"

Jewelry: Finesmith ~ "Celestial Veil" & "Zigi Chestpiece Male"
Pose: Body Talking ~ "RicoRacer 2"
Model & Photographer: Sy Whitesong

 Inspired by Business Lady

Shape: Custom
Skin: Subaru ~ "Edward Earth Normal"
Eyes: L. Fauna ~ "CHAI Eyes Gray 3"
Lashes: KOSH ~ "No Alpha Lashes V9"
Hair: UW ~ "Ilias Mesh Black"

Undershirt:  Xplosion ~ "Sweet Lady Blouse White"

Shirt:  Xplosion ~ "Sweet Lady Shirt Black"

Pants:  Xplosion ~ "Crazy Business Pants Black/White"

Tie:  Xplosion ~ "Sweet Lady Tie White" 

Jewelry: Finesmith ~ "Lorena Ring"
Pose: Body Talking ~ "Patty"
Model & Photographer: Sy Whitesong

 Inspired by Jenny

Shape: Custom
Skin: Subaru ~ "Edward Earth Normal"
Eyes: L. Fauna ~ "CHAI Eyes Gray 3"
Lashes: KOSH ~ "No Alpha Lashes V9"
Hair: UW ~ "Ilias Mesh Black"

Undershirt:  Xplosion ~ "Space Shirt Wollpulli Black"

Shirt:  Xplosion ~ "Summer Glance Shirt Black"

Pants:  Xplosion ~ "Crazy Business Pants Black/White" 

Jewelry: Finesmith ~ "Celesial Bracelets"
Pose: Body Talking ~ "RicoRacer 2"
Model & Photographer: Sy Whitesong

 Inspired by Melanie

Shape: Custom
Skin: Subaru ~ "Edward Earth Normal"
Eyes: L. Fauna ~ "CHAI Eyes Gray 3"
Lashes: KOSH ~ "No Alpha Lashes V9"
Hair: UW ~ "Ilias Mesh Black"

Shirt:  Xplosion ~ "Chill Ripp Shirt Black"

Pants:  Xplosion ~ "Chill Jeans Blue" 

Jewelry: Finesmith ~ "Blackbarbie Set"
Pose: Body Talking ~ "RicoRacer 2"
Model & Photographer: Sy Whitesong

The Bleeding Edge: "Sweet Lady" by Xplosion

Xplosion JUST released a new set, "Sweet Lady", 2 days ago.

You can purchase the whole outfit, shirt/undershirt/tie, or just the undershirt/tie in a wide range of colors.  I paired the top half of this outfit with some older Xplosion pants from the "Crazy Business" line.  YAY SHOPPING!

Shape:  Custom

Skin:  Subaru

Eyes:  L. Fauna

Lashes:  Miamai

Hair:  UW

Shirt:  Xplosion

Pants:  Xplosion

Shoes (not pictured):  REDGRAVE

Rings:  Finesmith

Wings & Halo:  Living Lights

Pose:  Body Talking

GLANCE: Day 3

Third class with Wicca Merlin at the GLANCE Model Academy.  Today's topics:  inventory organization and runway/posing.  Inventory organization?  PLEASE!  I'm the most OCD guy I know when it comes to organization.  I can probably name every item I have in my inventory from memory, and find it for you in less than 5 seconds.  Runway and posing, however, have me TERRIFIED!  As is blatantly obvious from my previous pictures, I have little to no photography experience in SL (or RL for that matter)...hence, no posing experience.  Runway scares me even more, as there are SO MANY things that can go wrong during a fashion show (lag is a beast!).  However, Wicca is a rockstar, so I'm sure she'll have me whipped into shape in no time.  She gave me a lot of helpful tips on fighting lag during fashion shows, as well as some helpful pointers on improving SL performance overall.

At the end of class, Wicca announced that our next meeting would be used to style 4 outfits for my portfolio shoot:  formal, casual, swimsuit, and headshot.  I swear, you could probably hear the neurons firing as I ran through all the possibilites in my head, coming up with outfit ideas left and right!  The last 3 don't worry me too much.  I'll probably wear some casual stuff from Xplosion, my swimsuit will definitely be from Kobalt, and I'm absolutely wearing the Valeria set from Finesmith for my headshot.  Formal, however, is not my forte.  After stalking the blogosphere for ideas, I settled on four outfits (2 from Champagne, 2 from Violator), then sent out pics to several friends, asking them to choose their favorite.  Below was my top pick, and the one that I thought was the most "me":

I can rock purple like no other, and I love the soft shimmer of the latex.  However, most of my friends agreed it wasn't dressy enough, so I went with 2 of my original options from Champagne, plus an additional Champagne outfit.  I also stopped by Essential Soul earlier today to pick up my X-Poser HUD (which I LOVE), and dropped by Body Talking to buy some poses.  Below is a preview of one option for my formal pic, with my new favorite pose from the "RicoRacer" line at Body Talking. Thanks to Brendan Macarthur for the pic!

Shape:  Custom
Skin:  Subaru
Eyes:  L.Fauna
Lashes:  Miamai
Hair:  UW
Outfit:  Champagne

Pose:  Body Talking

Seen On The Scene: "Metropolis" by SL Art Couture

This was my first fashion show I've attended, and it rocked my world!  Every aspect of it was absolutely beautiful...the set, the models, the skins, the hair, the shoes, the jewelry, the music.  In a word:  Gesamtkunstwerk.  I took an unwieldy number of photos...below are my favorites:

sitting back, waiting for the show to start...

the stage

Wicca Merlin!!!

4 of the 8 AMAZING models, taking their 

final poses

Yula Finesmith *heart*

IT GODZIRRAH!

Please note that I suck at Photoshop, and do not pretend to be good at photography, either in RL or SL.  All photos on this blog are provided in their raw, unedited glory...unless otherwise specified, or until I magically become competent with photo editing software.

This pic is really just to show off my new shoes (which are still peaking through my pant leg, after hours of fighting with resizing scripts...grrr!).  They're from Xplosion, and I absolutely love them, but (as they're girl shoes) they were quite problematic to fit.  After an hour of experimentation, I discovered that I could attach an invisible prim sphere around them, to hide my foot (i felt like just shrinking my foot size in the shape was cheating).  This looks AMAZING, unless i walk on or in front of transparent surfaces, such as my studio:

Seriously though, the shoes look amazing, and any part of them can be changed to 1 of 27 colors with the touch of a script.  Xplosion also makes a version with cute little wings!  *heart*

Shape:  Custom
Skin:  Subaru
Eyes:  L.Fauna
Lashes:  Miamai
Hair:  Gritty Kitty
Face Tattoo:  White Widow
Hoodie:  Xplosion
Jeans:  Xplosion
Shoes:  Xplosion
Bracelet:  Finesmith

GLANCE: Day 2

The first part of today's class was all about one's attitude as a model...being pleasant to work with, accepting and incorporating feedback gracefully, not being a raging beast, etc.  I like to think that I'm a fairly agreeable person, so I don't really have too much to work on here.  The last half was about something super exciting though:

ACCESSORIES!

I'm a bracelet/watch/wristband WHORE!  I love them, and they love me.  But, a huge part of this experience is going outside my comfort zone to find new things that compliment my style, making me better and more versatile as a model.  So, I embarked on an epic journey to THE Second Life jewelry boutique:  Finesmith.  On my first visit to the store (accompanied by Jonas Laviscu, my SL hubby), I may or may not have overheard a scandalous conversation being held between Yula Finesmith (owner) and Cade Nansen (manager) on the roof...but that is another story, and shall (not) be told another time.

A lot of the stuff at Finesmith is (obviously) too girly for me, but most of their bracelets and bangles do have a very unisex appeal.  Yes, I know...MORE wrist jewelry.  But this is shiny CLASSY wrist jewelry!  :-D  Then, when all hope seemed lost, I came across this (yes, the outfit still needs some adjusting...focus on the jewelry):

Behold...Valeria:  a limited edition necklace/earring set, with only 100 copies available.  Now, I'm a sucker for anything exclusive anyways (aka limited edition), but just look at the detail!  I'm in love, and it  is by far my favorite SL investment to date.  P.S.  it comes with scripts to resize, retexture, change the gems, add/remove glow, add/remove fullbright, etc.

I also bought some spiffy shoes from Xplosion (new fav clothing store), but that will be saved for another post...

Shape:  Custom
Skin:  Subaru
Eyes:  L.Fauna
Lashes:  Miamai
Hair:  UW
Face Tattoo:  White Widow
Outfit:  Bare Rose Tokyo
Necklace & Earrings:  Finesmith
Wings & Halo:  Living Lights