“You got your wings now you can’t stay,
Take those dreams and make them all come true,
Butterfly fly away,
We been waiting for this day,
All along and know just what to do,
Butterfly fly away.”

I fell in love with this mesh skirt from Sn@tch and I thought pairing it with my new partial-mesh Zaara top gave it a whimsical feel. Although I am wearing almost head to toe mesh in this outfit, I’m sure it would have been hard for me to find a complete mesh top to go with this skirt, pretty sure there would be clipping and cutting and overlapping. I was having this discussion on plurk the other day about how a few of my friends told me that they deleted all of their non-mesh items. I just felt as if I simply could not do that. System clothes are still very much needed and useful and this look is a prime example of that.

The last picture was my photo of the day on the iRez blog today. I’ve been really enjoying creating pictures for that. I’m always too worried about overprocessing pictures for my blog, but I kind of pushed my editing skills a bit for this image. I might do that more often for the iRez pictures, it was so much fun! Check out my post at this link.

Before I end this, I also wanted to add a quick thank you to Keira Seerose for the mention in her post today. It’s such a heartwarming post to read, thank you very much for your kind words and for including me in there, even if you HAD to mention the pork swords! :P <3

Credits:
*Skin: Glam Affair – Cassiopea – India 01 BR by Aida Ewing
*Eyes: FATEeyes by Damien Fate
*Eyelashes: Maitreya V.I.P. Group Gift – Mesh EyeLashes by Onyx LeShelle
*Hair: >TRUTH< Elsa w/Roots – chocolate by Truth Hawks
*Hair flower: LaGyo_Lily head pin by Gyorgyna Larnia
*Top: Zaara : Nina tube top *cream* by Zaara Kohime
Skirt: :::Sn@tch Mesh Elena Maxi Skirt (Blue-Large)::: by Ivey Deschanel
*Necklace: MG – Necklace – Jewelled Butterfly – Short 2 – GOLD by Maxi Gossamer @ Collabor88 for August
Ring: Paper Couture Golden Wings Ring by Cora Lu
Feet: Slink Barefeet Mesh Flat by Siddean Munro
Sandals: Slink Ilena Sandals Large White by Siddean Munro
Nails: Candy Nail #FP006 Clear Glitter French 3color change by Peche Bury
Butterfly prop + Pose in 1st pic: Baffle! [Paper Butterflies.] by Samantha Smadga @ Vintage Fair 2012
*Dock in 2nd pic: :Cheeky Pea: Bae Dock by Isla Gealach
*Pose in 2nd pic: Adorkable Poses by Adorkable Peapod

So I’ve been seeing a few people doing mirror images a lot recently, like this amazing one by the infamous Mr. Jefferson, and I thought I’d give it a try. I have to admit, Mr. Jefferson totally encouraged me to do it. He linked me to all the appropriate tutorials and even sent me the water file inworld (I’m so spoiled). Anyhow, I kinda had fun playing around with this pic. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, check out the following tutorials:

• Zonja Capalini – This is the one Mr. Jefferson sent to me, it has all the info on it and the file that you need.
• Cajsa Lilliehook – I also found Cajsa’s tutorial helpful cuz she has the latest windlight settings interface displayed.

Sorry I haven’t shared a tutorial for a few weeks, I’ve been a total slacker this summer and now I’ve been busy getting ready for school to start again. But no worries, I’ll be back to harass y’all more often soon!

Also, I wore a teal bikini in this post just for Mr. Jefferson (he knows why).

BTW, this video has had me laughing (and dancing) all day today so I really wanted to share it. I love this song even more now!

EDIT: I have gotten a slew of questions regarding this post since yesterday so here are the answers to the questions y’all are asking:.

Raw shots from SL, resized & cropped together, resolutions on top

1. Mirror Water – Some of you were having difficulty making the windlight preset required to create the mirror water, so I’ve created and uploaded mine at that link. Now you just have to copy it into your water folder. You can find the water folder here: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\user_settings\windlight\water

   If you are using a third party viewer such as Exodus or Phoenix, remember to place the settings in the correct folders by substituting the “SecondLife” folder for the name of the viewer you are using.

2. Why are your reflections all jagged? It may be because you are shooting your images at a lower resolution than I am. I’ve noticed the higher resolution you shoot the images, the better the reflection (and most of the time the overall picture). As you can see in the second picture I’ve posted in this post, the one shot at the higher resolution has a much cleaner reflection. So try fiddling around with that and see what works best for you.
3. Raw shot without using the mirror water – Some of you asked to see the raw shot of the image while I was NOT using the mirror water setting so you can see what it looked like before I turned that on. At least, I hope that’s what you were asking, I’m not 100% sure but there it is anyways.

For all the images in this post, I used my diamond windlight setting which is in the 10 pack of settings that can be downloaded from my windlight settings page.

Please email me if you have any more questions as I can respond a lot faster to those than notecards. Thank you and have fun with this! <3

» For more of my tutorials, check out my tutorials page.

Credits:
*Skin: *Apparence Skins* MERIT SKIN T3 E4 by Marisa Gregan
Hair: [LeLutka]-MAGDALEN hair – AlmostGoth by Thora Charron
*Bikini: *BOOM* Ellio Bikini (teal) by Aranel Ah
*Earrings: [MANDALA] Leather Feather Earrings/Lara Blue by Kikunosuke Eel
Ring: Donna Flora AZIZA aqua ring by Squinternet Larnia
Nails: Candy Nail #P032 Feather Gold by Peche Bury
*Pose: Long Awkward Pose (no longer available)

“Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.”
Hesiod

Do you ever feel like it’s never enough and all you’re left with is a feeling of wanting more?

Credits:
*Skin: *Apparence Skins* MERIT SKIN T3 E1 by Marisa Gregan
*Hair: Vanity Hair:Wake up Alone-Soil by Tabata Jewell
*Earrings: MG – Earring – Madrah – by Maxi Gossamer @ FaMESHed August
*Top: [sYs] HESIOD – shirt F – Vinyl (silver/red) size S by Syane Cisse
*Pose: Adorkable Poses by Adorkable Peapod @ Vintage Fair 2012

This image is also on the iRez blog today as my Photo of the Day!

Koinup has recently added a new feature to their site where you can buy or sell virtual art. For those of you that are currently sharing your art on Koinup, you can follow the simple steps to sell prints of your artwork. I thought it was an interesting idea so I setup a few of my images to be sold. I know y’all want a print out of my ass, don’t deny! Anyhow, I haven’t actually seen the quality of the prints so if any of you decide to get it, I’d love for you to email me and let me know how it turned out! Hope you guys check it out and setup some of your art to sell!

Pixel Mode recently released their mesh feet and I had to go scoop them up. I guess I’m a body part collector because I have the Maitreya prim feet, the SLink mesh feet and also the SLink prim hands. They are so great to use in images because they bring such realism to the photos. Just look at how awesome my feet look! I know a lot of people have trouble with tinting and huds and such, so it’s great to have different options to choose from. I didn’t have any difficulty tinting the PM feet, but y’all can try all of them and see which one works best for you! If you’d like to take a look at an up-close raw shot of my feet, check it out on flickr here.

I’m going to be away on vacation for a few days, should be back early next week, so I thought I would share some awesome events that are currently happening which will keep you busy shopping over the weekend.

1. Zodiac Leo – July 23 till August 17 – slurl
2. FaMESHed August – August 1st till August 27th – slurl
3. Hope for Emilia – July 22nd till August 9th – blog
4. Vintage Fair 2012 – August 4th till August 29th – map & slurls
5. Pink Ribbon Fair – August 4th till August 25th – Map

Happy shopping and have a great weekend! <3

Credits:
Skin: Izzie's - Eliza 80's Skin yellow by Izzie Button (Available @ Vintage Fair 2012)
Hairbase: [LeLutka]-HAIRBASE Bournville by Thora Charron
Hair: [LeLutka]-SWISH-4in1-hair & pony – Bournville by Thora Charron
*Silk: *Solange!* Leona – Brown Leather by Solange Cerveau (Available @ Zodiac Leo)
*Tattoo: [HUZ TATS]-Henna 2 by Hunain Bellic
*Earrings: [Auxiliary] Alluring Earrings_F – Gold by Ivy Graves (Available @ FaMESHed)
*Hand & Foot Jewels: Zaara Nizam Set white gold by Zaara Kohime
Feet: [PM] Pixel Mode – Bare Feet – pour Femme – Small by Tya Fallingbridge
*Poses: Diesel Works by Rogan Diesel
Location: Highgarden

It’s been a week since the start of the month of Ramadan and I have been really enjoying waking up with the family and all the activities that pertain to this month. I did get sick however and had to miss a few fasts but I’m hoping to be back fasting real soon. I thought it would be fun to have an Eid sale on my advertising rates this month. So from now till August 25th, you can get my two month rate at a discounted price. Check out my advertising page for all the rates, information and also links to my site statistics at the bottom. If you already have an ad with me, you can of course also add two months to your current campaign for that price.

The skin I’m wearing in this post is the latest release from Essences and it’s my fav of theirs yet. Indy comes in a variety of tones and eyebrow options. Check out her flickr for all the details. I also love the dark tone, but decided to go with the medium tone for this post.

raw shot from SL

Finally, today I have been having serious issues with SL viewers. I cannot seem to stay online longer than about 5 mins at a time with firestorm or exodus. I was able to stay on a bit longer with the official viewer but then that also started crashing again. This also happens with my Alt that has less than 5K inventory and also on 3 different regions. I plurked about it earlier and apparently I wasn’t the only one having issues today, here’s the plurk: http://www.plurk.com/p/gy5v7s

While I was on the official viewer I decided to play with depth of field again and then I remembered why I never usually do. It doesn’t really work for me when I hit the snapshot button. I know others that have the same issue and they always IM me and ask and I never have an answer for them. Does anyone know why depth of field does that?

This is a picture I took by hitting the snapshot button and the depth of field just disappeared: https://my.secondlife.com/strawberry.singh/snapshots/50145ea390f79b3315000001
This is a picture I took with the depth of field on by hitting “ctrl~” this is the only way I can capture the depth of field.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/strawberrysingh/7664571180

So why doesn’t depth of field work when I hit the snapshot button? Anyone have a solution for this?

Credits:
*Skin: {.essences.} INDY – Medium (brunette) by Inka Mexicola
Eyes: Mayfly – Deep Sky Mesh (Deep Honey Hazel, w4)) by Arkesh Baral
*Hair: >TRUTH< Kara – clove by Truth Hawks
Mesh Feet: Slink Barefeet Mesh Medium by Siddean Munro
*Hammock: :Cheeky Pea: Lilith Hammock by Isla Gealach