I just released 10 new eyes in a series I’m calling Silent Lucidity at Shine. I’ll give you a quick look at 4 of the new shades, including a freebie that I put out so you can see the sizes and style to decide if the new series is for you or not. The freebie Mardi Gras is on the far right, and from the left, the other shades are Grass, Gasoline, and Aurora.

These are similar to my Lustrous series if you like those, but the Silent Lucidity series is a bit more reflective and have more depth of colors.

I’ve been out of town the last week or so focusing on some RL family stuff. I managed to drag Mom back into SL to see our sim Covet in all its glory, and I finally convinced my brother to create an avatar. Thank you Linden Lab for having the Gearhead surname right now because I think that was the last little push he needed, or maybe I achieved a grandmaster rank in my nagging sister skills finally. I’m just happy they both got to see what I’ve been up to in SL for themselves. Dad will be a hard case, but I’ll eventually get him signed up too.

As you can tell from me bringing my family into SL, I’ve haven’t exactly been away from SL during this trip, but I’ve just been popping in to chat and see what other people are doing. The most active thing I’ve done myself is update my profile photo to something a little more spring-like. Can you tell I like purple?

I’ll be heading home tomorrow, and I’m excited to dive back into some projects for Shine. I miss playing around in ZBrush and trying to figure out more about sculpted prims. Thankfully I got to push out two sets at Shine before I left. Gothica is steel and big chain links as its name might suggest, and Gilded Lily is a little girlier and a nod to some vintage costume jewelry I own. The lily sculpt in Gilded Lily is probably my favorite piece I’ve created so far.

Part of why I’ve been so quiet can be seen in the photo above. Kavar, Kere, Ju, and I are co-owners of a lovely sim we’ve named Covet, and it’s finally open to the public today! It’s been my focus since it came into being, and it’s hard writing here when I can’t write about the main thing taking up my time in SL. I’m so happy I can tell you about it now though, and I hope you find the time to visit.

Covet is home to the main shops for Exile, Treads, and Shine. If you click through to the Exile blog, you’ll see some shots of new hair that Kavar made for the grand opening, and he’s also completely redone his textures and added new freebies and costumes and just tons of stuff. Treads is Ju’s store, and he has brown and black versions of my favorite boots available along with a growing collection of animations. Shine is my shop of course, and there’s a little preview of my new Covet series of eyes that’s currently only available in world, but I’ll be updating XStreetSL soon with all the new stuff.

And in addition to the new eyes, I have a few accessories finally up for sale too. It’s something I’ve meant to do for months, but I got so busy making things for friends that I never managed to make anything I felt like selling until now. Most of the items like my Harvest set make use of sculpted prims, and I’m tickled pink to be able to say that I created the sculpts and textures myself. There’s also a set not shown here that includes a script for choosing from 6 different tints for the gemstones. I’ve had so much fun learning while getting all of these items ready, and I really hope people enjoy them.

For the grand opening, I have 3 sets for the ladies, and I wanted to share a little preview of one of them here. I was really pleased with how the textures turned out on Harvest.

Shine also has accessories for the guys. Resolve is a reworked version of a dog tag I made for a friend. He liked it so much that he encouraged me to sell it, but I wanted that one to be just for him. I created new textures and changed a few details, and I ended up with Resolve.

There are also a few freebies in Shine, so check those out. I made some red/orange eyes in that Covet style shown above, and there’s also a leather wrist cuff made with guys in mind that works just as well on women and a chunky silvery blue necklace with a floral motif for the women. If you do visit and you see me hanging out in the shop with my puppy Winston, then you better say hello!

I have a problem. It’s really hard for me to talk about myself. You’d think it wouldn’t be such a big deal since I do have a blog and all, but I struggle a lot with what I want to blog. In fact I do it so much that I’ve thought about just shutting the whole thing down more than once, but I like having it around, so it stays.

I’ve been making stuff and learning new things, and I just feel weird talking about any of it. And I know I’ve talked about this before, so even now, I’m mentally berating myself for going on about it again. This is me though, and it’s what you get. I’m told that I’m pretty much the best me ever, so that’s good.

One thing I’ve been doing lately is playing in Photoshop and creating textures for various things. It’s very meditative for me, and I love seeing how the textures sometimes look completely different in SL than what I expected because those “mistakes” spark other ideas and just kind of build on each other. Some of this playing around led to my latest series of eyes. I’m calling them Cathedral because Kavar said they reminded him of glass, and then him saying that made me think of the stained glass windows in my parents’ church. Like my last series, they’re not on Xstreet yet, but you can find them all in my section at Exile. I’ll try to have them on Xstreet soon too.

There was a blog challenge recently to talk about the people who inspire you, and I did a tribute post about Hethr Engle, one of my favorite fashion bloggers, over on the Exile website. That’s where most of my fashiony stuff gets put these days.

I’m sure this next bit surprises no one who is reading this, but Kavar is another person who inspires me. Who was the person who encouraged me to start playing with the eye template? The one who pushed me to try making the things I wanted but couldn’t find? The one whose rezday inspired me to make my first piece of jewelry? The one whose rl birthday pushed me to try Zbrush so that I could make a sculpty that I needed for the bracelet I wanted to make for him? The guy who bonks me on the head when I lose faith in myself or start worrying too much about what other people will think? Yeah, that would be Kavar. My SL would be completely different without him, and if I’m doing my job well, then he already knows that, but still it needed to be said again.

I was thinking about doing some SL shopping earlier and started trying to remember when I’d last bought lindens because it felt like it had been a while. Then I did a bit of digging around and realized that over the last month or so, I’ve actually sold enough eyes that I’ve earned more lindens than I’ve spent, which is why I haven’t felt the need to buy lindens recently. It was quite a shock to me. I think most of it is that I’ve spent a little less time in world and my shopping has decreased due in part to that and in part to not finding a lot to hold my interest. No matter the reason, it was a very nice little surprise, and it gives me a bit of a confidence boost in thinking about expanding to include other items in the shop!

As some of you know, my birthday is coming up on January 27, and I’m brainstorming ideas for possible projects or photo series to celebrate. Last year I had what I was calling my chair series with photos of visitors to my home in Winterfell Ebonshire sitting with me in my Rustica chairs and invited people over for a little open house of sorts on my birthday for that. I never really did as much with that as I’d meant to do, and then with my moves and changing furnishings, I stopped using those chairs anyway. Maybe I’ll do something similar with my home in Ivy Falls or invite everyone down to The Ivy, the new pub in Ivy Falls. I’m not sure yet, but I’d like to do something fun that will carry throughout the year. When I figure it out, then I’ll be sure to let you know.

Let me see if I remember how this blogging stuff works. *grin* I don’t feel like I have a ton of stuff to write about, but I can share a bit of Shine news at least. Right before Christmas I released my latest series of eyes. I’m really happy with the color and sparkle of these. The series name and the individual color names all come from the way they remind me of cut gemstones.

For this series I actually worked on a vendor layout for the first time. I had just been using plain close-up eye shots, and I felt like I needed something a little more informative. I’m also looking ahead to maybe selling other items in addition to eyes, so I wanted a format that would work for that as well. Below you can see the vendor image for the current top seller of the series – Faceted Aquamarine.

The entire series of 10 colors can be seen as usual at Exile. I haven’t yet been able to make myself update OnRez and Xstreet XL, but all the older eyes are still available at both sites.

So we’re at the final day of Hair Fair 2008. I remember feeling like it would never get here and now it’s already gone. I had a couple of related items I meant to write about before now, but I’ll go ahead and mention them briefly now. First, some of you might remember how I was really excited about a script that I’d written for one of Kavar‘s projects. I couldn’t say much about it at the time because it was for one of Exile’s hair fair styles, but I can say now that it was the highlight color changer in the Voodoo style shown below. You click the front piece of hair, and then you can choose various colors to highlight certain strands or just choose to leave the hair the base color. It’s a simple script but the very first that I wrote from scratch, so I’m really pleased with it.

Also, the last day of Hair Fair 2008 is Bandana Day, and there are lots of bandanas for sale at the fair for 50L. All the money from those sales goes to Locks of Love, and I just wanted to document for myself somewhere the two styles I created using the bandana base made by Damien Fate. I wrote a script for the particle effects I wanted on the halos and created simple textures as well as creating the sculpt map for the wings. They’re not complex, but I was happy with how they turned out and glad I could contribute something. And now I guess I really can say good-bye to Hair Fair 2008. It was quite an experience!

As probably everyone in SL already knows, Hair Fair 2008 started today at 8am SLT. I feel like I’ve been eagerly anticipating this event for a very long time. This is Kavar’s first time having an Exile booth there, and he’s been working so hard to have all 5 of his new hairs ready as well as special freebies for attendees in addition to all the other things like working with other designers on a group hair for auction, designing bandanas for the Bandana Day event, and decorating his booth. Kavar has truly outdone himself, and I hope all of you are able to go check out his booth even with the lag that I’m sure will be in all 4 sims today. He has hair for men and women, and actually one of the male hairstyles (Echo) looks really cute on me too, so you might want to check that out even if you’re not male. You can see the vendor displays for all the new hair along with links to buying the free demos from OnRez as long as OnRez continues functioning in this post at the Exile blog.

I actually haven’t been to the sims today because I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at everything last night. There was a preview pajama party for the designers and staff then, and everyone was allowed one guest. Kavar was letting me tag along with him, and then I found out I was one of the 2nd-place winners in the Hair Fair 2008 Flickr contest, so I got my own invite anyway. That was a major surprise and thrill and of course my winning photo shows off some gorgeous Exile hair as you can see in this post. You can click the little image to go directly to the Flickr page and see the details about the exact hair I used in the shot.

Kavar and I took a little over two hours to make the circuit around all the hair fair sims last night, and I had a ton of fun seeing everything. The best part was finally seeing Exile’s booth all set up in its official spot after being around as Kavar got it ready. I have a lot more to say later about Hair Fair, but right now, I just want to make sure you all check out Exile because Kavar rocks.

This past week I had several SL-related things I wanted to either finish or get a good start on at least, so I just wrote out a list and started chugging away at it. I enjoyed seeing the list shrink each day, and even though I’ve added a few more things, the list this week is much shorter than last week’s list.

One of the big items I got to cross off the list was getting my latest series of eyes up ready to sell in world at Exile, on OnRez, and on SLX. I’m calling this series my watercolor series because of the way the colors blend together. With the bright color combinations and swirls within each eye, these are definitely more for people who aren’t looking for realistic eyes, but at the same time, I’ve added some shadow to these that make them feel a little more three-dimensional to me. I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made in making them.

I have a few eyes for my next series waiting in the wings. Those will be called my Helena series after the friend who first requested that I do some eyes with smaller irises, and in addition to being a bit smaller, they will feature darker colors and stronger shading. As long as I have fun creating the eyes, I’ll just keep releasing them in case anyone else likes them too. I’m thinking a little more about other things I’d like to make as well under the Shine name.

Image Conscious, an exhibition of photography and art in support of One.org began this weekend and will run through Aug. 29 at Wolf Hartnell‘s Wetherbee Shopping District. Four of my SL photos, including the one above this paragraph, are on display in the park area there. Watch out for the cute little hopping bunnies and maybe feed them a carrot or two or three while you look around and shop.

Remember that Retrology Flickr contest I mentioned a couple of posts ago? I won 2nd place in the fashion category! It’s the first time I’ve won a prize of any kind with one of my SL photos, so I’m really excited about it. I was doubly happy that my friend Drew was there with me during the announcement of the winners yesterday as you can see in the photo above of us standing in front of the fashion category winners. Kavar surprised me this morning with a post on the Exile blog about it and once again beat me to blogging something. I think he did that when I started selling eyes too. Yay for excited friends!

Below is a bigger view of my photo “Skulls in Pink”, and I believe you can still see the finalists on display at Retrology as well as at the Retrology blog. Thank you to all the judges, and congratulations to the other winners! I’m really honored to be grouped with them. Check out the presentation speech from Jhuzen Ketsugo as well for a little look into the sim’s history.