There’s nothing like a bold, red dress to make a powerful statement and that’s exactly what this dress does. I’m wearing the latest mesh fall/winter release from Celoe. I fell in love with this dress as soon as I saw it.

I’ve been listening to Nadia Ali all day, so I thought I’d share.

Credits:
*Skin: Glam Affair – Roza Basic – Jamaica02 D by Aida Ewing
*Hair: >TRUTH< Josie – espresso by Truth Hawks
Dress: [celoe.poppy.dress.blood.XS] by ShaySibrian
*Mesh Hands: Slink Mesh Hand Casual & Elegant by Siddean Munro
Ring: Donna Flora ORIENTE ring by Squinternet Larnia
*Pose: Geez Editorial by Grazia Horwitz

I know it’s not Halloween as of yet, but I couldn’t resist playing around with the fantasy skins from Mirror’s Enigma. This is the Vanity skin and I’m wearing it in the exotic and drow skin tones. This is the first time I went drow, I hope I did it right. :P I must admit, it was kind of fun to experiment. I might have to do more experimenting soon.

The outfits are both from Deviance, a great place for costumes of all kinds.

I know the anecdote I’m about to tell you now is totally irrelevant and it may make me sound stalkerish, but I don’t really care :P When I blog items, I usually look up the designers and see what different social networks they have, if they have blogs, flickrs, facebooks, etc… and what they do on them. (I know, I’m a stalker.) Anyhow, it’s really hard to track down the designer of Deviance. She’s on marketplace and the only other place I could find her was on flickr. So I went to her profile on flickr and noticed something that I found to be totally adorable and hilarious. All of her favorite photos on flickr are of animals. LOL She hasn’t faved anything else. I thought that was just totally adorable.

Anyhow, it’s 2am and I’m totally rambling so I think I’ll shutup and head to bed. I hope you enjoy the fantasy skins and gorgeous costumes from both these awesome stores.

Credits:
Enchantress:
*Skin: [:Mirror's Enigma:] Vanity Exotic Skintone (Natural 01) by Ydreece Forster
*Hair: >TRUTH< Vicky w/Roots – clove by Truth Hawks
Costume: * Deviance * – Enchantress (Cream) by Surreal LeShelle
Nails: Candy Nail #FP006 Clear Glitter French 3color change by Peche Bury
*Ring: Zaara : Oyster shell ring 2 by Zaara Kohime
*Pose: Geez by Grazia Horwitz

Demon’s Mistress:
*Skin: [:Mirror's Enigma:] Vanity Drow Skintone (Smoky 02) by Ydreece Forster
*Hair: >TRUTH< Dahlia – silver by Truth Hawks
Costume: * Deviance * – Demon’s Mistress (black & white) by Surreal LeShelle
Nails: Candy Nail #P024 Magic of Witch Black by Peche Bury
*Pose: Geez by Grazia Horwitz

After teasing us for a few days, Maitreya has finally released the adorable tunic and boots this morning. I love the casual, laid back style both have so I wanted to shoot them in or near a field of some sort. I found Abduction Alley which is on the Nestlefire sim on Koinup Places. I fell in love with this place immediately because it was so interesting. It has a mix of an old hometown feel but then of course a big gaping alien landing hole behind the diner. It’s really nicely done and definitely a fun explore.

Anyhow, I found this field of wheat with the scarecrow and the windmill and I just felt it was the perfect place to take a picture, however there was one issue. There was a huge amount of glow coming from the wheat so it was totally destroying the picture. So then I asked my friends on plurk because I couldn’t remember the debug setting to turn glow off again and of course, as always, they came through.

So that gave me the idea to share some of my favorite debug settings with you guys, figured it would help me remember them next time too. Debug settings include unsupported hidden features that are not exposed in the standard user interface, in addition to settings that are exposed through the PREFERENCES window. To access debug settings, go to the Advanced menu > Debug Settings.

These are the settings I always setup (or try and remember to anyways) whenever I install a new viewer.

1. RenderGlow – Set that to false and it will disable glow. However I noticed it didn’t take ALL the glow away from the wheatfield. I also had to fiddle with RenderGlowResolutionPow. I knock that down from 9 to 5 and it got rid of glow completely.
2. RenderVolumeLODFactor – This one makes all my prims and sculpts look 100 times better. The default is usually set to 2 and they say you should at least put it on 4, however I keep mine on 14, cuz that’s my lucky number. :P
3. RenderUnloadedAvatar – This one saves me every time I’m stuck as a cloud. Just set that one to true and it will show avatars which haven’t finished loading.
4. The following are my three favorite mesh settings, I was having a lot of problems with mesh and I just set these and it fixed a lot of issues for me:
   Meshbytespertriangle: 128
   Meshmaxconcurrentrequests: 128
   MeshminimumByteSize: 1
5. YawFromMousePosition – This one helps a bit with photography when sometimes in certain poses if I’m moving my mouse around my head follows the mouse and I don’t necessarily want that. The default to this is 90.0 so if you set it to 0 it’ll fix that.

What are your favorite debug settings?

Click here for the Debug wiki page for a full list of all of the settings and what they do.

EDIT: Torley Linden has a great Photo checklist up on the SL wiki that also covers some debug settings.

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

Credits:
*Skin: [PXL] FAITH OLIVE RC.16 MEB by Hart Larsson (Not released yet)
*Hair: ::Exile::Quiet Dream:Brownie by Kavar Cleanslate
*Tunic: Maitreya Xarra Tunic – Flamingo S+ by Onyx LeShelle
*Boots: Maitreya Stagioni Boots * XS-S Sand by Onyx LeShelle
*Necklace: [ glow ] studio – Key to my Heart necklace (no bow) by Jocelyn Anatine
Wheat in mouth: Contreverse Epi de Ble For Mouth by Ameno Heron
*Pose: Geez by Grazia Horwitz
Location: Abduction Alley on the Nestlefire sim (Found on Koinup Places)

So, I was a bad girl this week and totally goofed off instead of learning something new in photoshop. Therefore I thought this time I would share a skin smoothing tutorial that helped me a lot a few years ago. This is the technique I still use to smooth skin. The tutorial is by Ryker Beck and can be viewed at this link. I get asked a lot how I smooth the skin in my pictures so I figured I’d go ahead and share that. And while I’m sharing tutorials from other SL residents, this is another great one by Elysium Eilde showing us how to get rid of those pesky grid lines you get in shadow pictures.

Today I’m wearing a new skin by Shai Delacroix of Casa Del Shai. It’s a very realistic dark skin. I love the warm tone and the makeups it comes with. You can check out the Casa Del Shai facebook page for more pictures of the skin and all the makeups. Then take the slurl to straylight to try on a demo yourself.

The light and summery mesh top I’m wearing is a new release from Zaara Kohime of {Zaara}. This is Zaara’s first mesh release with a lot more to come in the following weeks. I am so excited for all the stuff she’s about to release so make sure to add her blog to your readers and like her facebook page to keep up with all her upcoming releases. Zaara has also put all her new releases on marketplace.

I also wanted to share this last picture as well which I blogged on the iRez blog earlier this week. I love the mesh sunglasses from Maxi in this image that I picked up at Fameshed this month. Check out Seraphim for all the details on what’s available there this month.

Credits:
1st & 2nd picture:
Skin: *Shai* Jamaica Skin – GREEN by Shai Delacroix
Hair: booN KBO906 hair chocolate with booN hairbase by boo Nakamura
Eyes: Mayfly – Deep Sky Mesh (Desert Dawn, w4) by Arkesh Baral
*Blouse: Zaara : [Mesh] Ashima Blouse *fire* by Zaara Kohime
*Shorts: Zaara : Mitya shorts *red* by Zaara Kohime
*Headband: LaGyo_Catalina headbend gold by Gyorgyna Larnia @ Collabor88 for July
*Earrings: Intrigue Co. – MESH Sandcastle Earrings @ Collabor88 for July
*Poses: Geez by Grazia Horwitz

3rd picture:
Skin: [Aura] Helena – Love Notes – Caramel by Tyr Rozenblum
*Hair: >TRUTH< Ashlee Streaked - fairyfloss by Truth Hawks
*Sunglasses: MG - SunGlasses - Milano Cats-Eye 40's by Maxi Gossamer @ Fameshed for July
*Necklace: [HANDverk]Coral Pendant Necklace by Daphne Klossovsky @ Fameshed for July
*Blouse: Zaara : [Mesh] Ashima Blouse *ivory* by Zaara Kohime
*Shorts: Zaara : Denim shorts *ivory* by Zaara Kohime
*Pose: Magpie by Echo Davi
Location: {Zaara}

I’m going to have to disinfect my blog now that Mr. Winter Jefferson has graced it twice in one day. Anyhow, I’m so happy and excited to share this post with you finally. I was asked to create another image for the SecondLife.com main page, this time with the theme of masquerade. I knew right away who would be the perfect person to ask to pose with me, the infamous vampire himself of course!

After submitting an almost raw shot on a green background (what Linden Lab had requested) I decided to photoshop it a bit myself for fun and had posted it a few weeks back on my flickr. I’m sharing my photoshopped version now below.

Thank you again Mr. Jefferson for taking the time out to pose with me for this. <3

Along with Mr. Jefferson and I, you will also find Whimsy Winx, Sasy Scarborough and Mel Vanbeeck, so congrats to them as well! You can view all of the images on SecondLife.com by clicking on this link (you may need to logout to view them) and then just hit the arrows to see them all.

Thank you to Linden Lab for involving the community in this way. Last month they did a music theme and shared all sorts of music venues and other music related info on various social media. You can follow them on the following social networks to check out all the masquerade theme information they’ll be sharing over the next few weeks:

1. Second Life Profile: https://my.secondlife.com/second.life
2. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/secondlife
3. Google+: https://plus.google.com/108633455224826641550
4. Twitter: https://twitter.com/secondlife
5. Plurk: http://www.plurk.com/secondlife
6. SL Community Forums: http://community.secondlife.com

Credits:
What Mr. Jefferson is wearing:
Hair – Orion in Ethereal by Wasabi Pills
Mask – Carnivale King by Illusions
Skin – Vincent in January by Tableau Vivant
Tuxedo – Fur Mantle Tux in Black by Gabriel
Shoes – Christian in Black Leather/Silver Studs by Entente
Fangs – I Growed These M’Self

What I’m wearing:
*Skin: Glam Affair by Aida Ewing
*Hair: *Plume* – Mademoiselle Butterfly/Onyx by Fauve Beaumont
Mask – Carnivale by Illusions
Gown: [LeLutka]-REINA gown/ice by Thora Charron
Necklace, Earrings & Bracelet: Zibska ~ Zara Jewelry Set by Zib Scaggs
Ring: Donna Flora ANEMONE ring by Squinternet Larnia

*Poses: Geez and Long Awkward Pose