Adam n Eve Breaths New Life Into SL with Shelby

 

Adam n Eve have been making state of the art skins for the 6 years that I have been in SL. For some people, Adam n Eve skins are the first skins they ever had on, since when Linden’s updated their newbie avatars to have modern features like…Oh…Prim hair…instead of the monsterish hair that we started with when I was “born” they turned to Adam n Eve to produce the skin for those newbies. I remember when I made my first avatar I went through the walk through, and I tried to make my system hair, which basically looked like thick brown lichen growing like a bush out of your head, into the beautiful hair like the people I saw all around me…gave up and quit the game. Eventually I came back and created Tapika, learned about prim hair, became a lot less frustrated, and the rest is history.

One of the things I like about Second Life is its ability to evolve, some designers fail to evolve with it, and still create items the same way they did from the beginning and get farther and farther behind in quality, but other embrace change and keep to the head of the pack. Sachi Vixen is one of those designers, her mesh work she does with Siddean Munro in their One Bad Pixel shop is second to none, and her skins continue to be some of the best SL  has to offer, working from scratch to create her own skins. I love her ethnic skin lines, they are some of her best. More than just darkened versions of pale skins.

Today I’m showing one of her new skins, Shelby, she comes in 4 different skin tones, tone one through to tone 4, with tone one being the palest. The photo above shows Shelby in tone 3. This skin has great lines, contouring and shading, everything that Sachi is known for. There are a lot of extras in these packs, some of which aren’t done by many other designers at all or are increasingly being sold as separate add ons.  She gives you 4 tattooed hair bases, in the 4 main hair colourings, which I have found actually handy for hair stores that don’t have hair bases like Elkatira. You get a tattooed bust enhancer  for those like me who like the extra cleavage look above, and for those who don’t want much less in the way of breasts there is a breast dehancer tattoo. The skins have dark eyebrows by default, and you get tattooed red head and blonde eyebrows. My most favourite add on of all from her is the gloves to hide nails.  Every skin designer should put these in, but I only know one other designer that does.  These are fantastic for those of us who wear prim nails, no fussing matching skin colours and tinting gloves, these gloves are perfectly coloured to match the skin. WONDERFUL! You also get a freckles tattoo and a tattoo for dimples on your cheeks. You can bling yourself to your complete satisfaction. Oh yes…you also get a skin. All this for 949 a skin pack or 2,900L for the fatpack of 6 skins.

You can also buy a set of 6 lipsticks especially made for you skin tone for 300L. These will go great with any of the make ups, especially the bare. Below I’m going to give you a photo of all the make ups other then the bare, since I find bares are mostly bare canvases for people to make up tattoos on anyway. Adam n Eve does make a very pretty bare skin though, it is great for a fresh faced look, if you like that style. I would like to note that I have fairly heavy eyebags on my SL shape because I like the under eye make up to show up more then it does on most make ups. If you want your make up to show more or less under the eyes, play with your eyebags. Eyebags can be pretty, but only in SL . Who knew?

This is Tone 1 in the Cat’s Eye Make up

This is Tone 2 in the Fawn Make up

This is Tone 3 in the Pale Make up

This is Tone 4 in the Pinky Make up

This is Tone 4 in the Scarlet Make up.

In this shot you can see the great body that Sachi as crafted for this skin, not too much muscle, not too little, sleek feminine curves, beauty marks intriguingly placed, soft shadow of bones to make you look slender not emaciated. If you haven’t given  Adam n Eve skins a try before, I hope you go out and grab a free sample and see what they can do for you. I think you will be thrilled with the results.

The outfit I’m wearing is one of the new lingerie releases from Blacklace, called appropriately enough Rousing. It comes with the bra, panties, stocking and mesh corset that I showed here, but also with a demi bra that I hesitated to show for fear of getting my blog restricted. It’s wonderfully naughty, just a wee bit too short to be proper. Great for those alone times when you don’t want to be proper. The corset/cincher is mesh and comes in the  5 standard sizes, large through extra extra small. I’m usually a small in standard sizes and a small fitted me perfectly with this. There are 2 different alpha layers included to make sure that all shapes have trouble free fittings.

There are a lot of prim bows on this outfit, 3 at the front and 2 in the back, and a lot of shops would have put them all on one or two objects to make less items in the bag, but Blacklace is all about making it easy for the customer, so they keep the back and front bows on separate objects, only putting the two bottom bows in the front together. This allows you to edit the bows into place without having to worry about having the ones in the front look right and the ones in the back look out of tilter or visa versa. This way they all look perfect. The outfit also comes with everything on every possible layer for incredible flexibility.

The Rousing set comes in six beautiful colours, the Pink Satin and Cream I’m wearing here, as well as Red, Chocolate, Purple, Blue and Mint. Each set costs 398L each and are transferable for easy gifting. You can get them all in the sexy pack for 1,599 which is like getting 2 free.

The hair I’m wearing is from Exile and is called Crazy in Love. It’s  a rigged mesh hair, and I think it’s amazing. I love all of Exile’s work.  I love even more that he has a natural’s pack so I don’t have to just get one hair colour, but can get a mix of one each from all the natural hair colours.  This is the red hair from the naturals pack, Sunset. I’m wearing it with his hair base in sunset, his hair bases are free and right in front of you when you walk in the door. His hair packs are 250L each except his two varigated hair packs which are 280L each. His fatpacks if you want it all are 1,000L.

The eyes I wore are from Mayfly, and are called Deep Sky Mesh Eyes in Deep Shadow. Mayfly makes their eyes with 4 different white shades so you can get them the way you want them, and they are sizable by scripting, or if you don’t like mesh eyes you can get the same great colours in system eyes for the same price. They sell for just 99L a pack.

The prim nails I’m wearing are from Jamman nails and are the most expensive thing I have on. They are their ultra mesh rigged nails and they cost 1,499L for the set. Now anyone who has read this blog knows I’m pretty cheap.      I don’t mind spending money, but I want to get my money’s worth, and if it’s expensive I’ll brood for days before I will fork over the cash. Well this purchase I think I brooded for weeks. Every time I had just decided…no..not worth the risk, they would send another notecard out and I would go look at them and go…well maybe…until one day I just did it. Well it was worth the risk. This are wonderful nails. For your lindens you get 800 different colours of nail polish, for a start, so it’s less then 2L a polish colour. You can colour each nail individually or do them all at once. Now not every polish colour is going to be to your liking,  I admit that to me the silver and gold tabs are way too much  of the same things, the designs are different enough to justify the space used, I would have much rather had half of each combined on one tab and another tab for animal prints which is something this hud is lacking in. The gold and silver tabs were the last 2 tabs, and I can just image the brain burn the poor designer was going through after having created 600 nail textures at that point, it’s no wonder that animal prints didn’t occur to her. If I had to create 600 nail textures they would probably find me walking down main stretch in my underwear with tinfoil on my head talking about how the aliens are listening. It’s a miracle that she pulled out  200 more.

With this nail set you get all the future upgrades. Normally with SL stuff that means if they have to fix it, you get the fix, and that’s it. These nails really have been upgraded since I first bought them. A great deal. They are now on version 4. There are more shapes and lengths of nails now. You have the ability to create your own solid or tipped nail colours. She added shine in 2 intensities.

One thing for those of you with shapes that are not modifable so you were unable to wear prim nails before…these nails size themselves to your hands…anything from 0 to 100. It doesn’t matter, it’s done automatically for you.  No muss no fuss.

Would I buy these again…in a heart beat.

All About Amacci

Yesterday Skin Addiction had it’s Black Friday sale and a ton of great skin creators participated. One of them, Amacci, had a problem with her demo for her offering, Oleana in nutmeg, well SL lost it from it’s data base so people couldn’t try it on so she has fixed the problem and put the sale on for another day.  So her loss is everyone else’s gain, because you have a chance to get this great bargain for another day! Happy dance everyone now!

This is seriously one of the best if not THE best bargains of the sale. You pay 950L, and you get back 475L if you join Skin Addiction, a free group, which is in my opinion the friendliest group in SL which everyone should be in, and have your that group active when you buy.

I showed you the body of the skin above, well here is a close up of the face, Carina does a marvelous job of shading on her skins, she highlights and shadows with skill and panache, never too much, never too little. I have a very narrow face shape, so blush tends to make me look like a drag queen, but her skilled application makes it look great on me. I love these eyebrows but there are 4 eyebrow shapes included so you can make the skin look great with your shape, and have eyebrows that appeal to you.

You also get a freckle version of the skin, not just a freckle tattoo. I’m not a big freckle person, I tried on a freckle skin yesterday that actually scared me, the designer will remain nameless, but this one I like. It’s heavy enough that the freckles don’t just look like a case of run away moles and not so many that you look like a red head that someone tied out in the sun about 10 days too many after the horrid sunburns have healed but the extra freckle storms have arrived.

You have probably noticed the eyes I’m wearing. These are Amacci’s new Look eyes. I’ve been lusting after the fatpack of these since they have come out, I’ll get the money and buy it someday. I love all my Amacci eyes, they are great. These eyes are included in the skin pack, and would be 120L if you just bought them by themselves.

With this set you also get 10 lipstick tattoos, I have photographed all of them above. I love the shine and subtle colour changes.

So what else could she put in a package of skin that your getting for 475L?

How about hair?

Yeap…you get the hair I’m wearing too..including the hairbase. This hair is called Nena and it’s even prettier in the game then it is in these photos.

You also get the cleavage enhancements, and smaller breast options too in tattoo and underwear layers.

You also get the Oleana shape, which I’m not wearing here, but is a nice one, I just wear my own shape with all skin examples in my blog so my readers can compare skins more easily, knowing what is a skin feature and what is shape.

Here is a sexy photo of the skin, and a better look at the Blacklace Lingerie I’m wearing. This is one of their pieces that is on sale today as part of their Model’s Choice Black Friday sale this weekend, it is called Leave Your Hat On in Burgundy and Black. You will find it is on sale for 199L and has a ton of pieces that I haven’t had a chance to show here.  It get’s it’s name because it has a fedora hat and an open and closed versions of an man’s black shirt. Perfect 50’s jazzy look for any seduction scene you have in mind for that special someone in your life. Like almost anything you buy from Blacklace, it is no copy/transfer for easy gift giving, and the pieces are put together in dozens of ways on dozens of layers so you can combine it with whatever else you want to wear in the way of tattoos or collars and still wear it with ease. Drop in and check it out, I’m sure you will pick it up..You’ll love it.

One last look…the back of the skin and lingerie. A lot of skins leave an ugly smear on your butt when your moving around, this one doesn’t…I love that!

The shoes I’m wearing are from one of my favourite designers in SL. I’m just sad that the photos don’t show them off the way they deserve but I’m sure I will be using them again soon. These are the Platform Pumps by HOC Industries. These shoes come texture change, not colour change, because colour change never looked this good. There are 15 textures that everyone gets, and 6 textures you can have any time you want by joining her free group and attaching the hud. The members only textures are always there, haunting you, saying join..join..you can have me…you want me…join. It’s evil or darn good marketing. It might be evil and darn good marketing.

The shoes can be coloured on the top, the platform part of the shoe and the heel, so you can make a whole lot more then 15 different looking shoes with these shoe pack. It doesn’t come with a foot in it, so you can wear it with stocking like I am doing right now. Always a good thing.  The cost of this fatpack of shoes in hud? Not 1,000L…not 800L…not 500L…not 400L…not even 300L. It costs 175L. Guu Nishi believes not only in making a high quality product but she believes in giving it to people at a very reasonable cost.

Photography – Photo prop – Oriental Bedroom by Katink – This great pose prop comes without any built in poses, but is a great place to use your own poses on.

Poses – Photo 1 – *Boom* – Modeling Set – 200L for 12 very very useful poses or 50L a pose  – Pose 6 – I like the head angles on these poses, a lot of poses have the head angled too far down or too far up for good face shots, not a  problem with these great poses

Photo 2 – *Boom* – Modeling Set – Pose 7

Photo 3 – *Boom* – Modeling Set – Pose 8

Photo 4 – *Boom* – Modeling Set – Pose 10 – All the small photos are using the same pose

Photo 5 – Vain Inc – Satin Sheets Pose 2 – This shop is no longer available in SL but is available in the Market place…see link on name

Photo 6 – Vain Inc – Boudoir 16

Loving Lulu

I discovered this new skin by Style By Kira just before I came down with my acute broncitus, and it’s been one thing I have been dying to get back to blog, and now I have finally done it! When it is something this pretty, you don’t want to do a half assed job of it.

One of the most frustrating things about Kira’s work is that if you love a skin style, you have to wait weeks to get more of it, and you just get a couple of pieces in a week, then you have to wait some more. You get your obscession in bits and dribbles. Not so with Lulu. She has made a whole collection so for those of us who love this skin, and I’m sure you will, I know it’s now my new favourite, you have a whole bunch to play with, right from the start!

She has also lowered her standard already low prices, instead of being 600L per skin, these are 400L per skin for the classic make ups and 150L per skin for the fantasy make ups.  You can also get all the classic make up skins – A to J in a fatpack of 10 skins for 2,400L. Almost 50% off.  You can get the matching A to J fantasty skin fatpack for 950L, an incrediable deal, or you can get the whole set fatpack, all 20 skins plus the Lulu shape for 3250L. Other then the shape I made when I came into SL on the first day, Kira’s shapes are the only ones I’ll wear, so it is worth trying the demo of the Lulu shape, she is truely a great shape maker.

I love the shading in the front and back of the body on Lulu. It’s not too much, not too little, it’s just right. It should come with a 3 bears sticker on the heel or something.

To show this great skin off, I picked Blacklace’s gorgeous Kimiko Orange Thai Silk Bra Set, sexy, silky, lush, striking, everything you want next to your skin.  This transferable lingerie set comes with a plethora of layer options, that make you feel pampered and seen to. I seriously can not think of one layer combination you could possibly need that is not in this folder, I couldn’t have thought up half of them to be honest.  The prim pieces are cute and well placed. Ribbons on the front of the garter straps and a wire clasp at the back of the garter belt to name just a couple of them. You’ll have to search for the rest yourself. Adult hide and seek.  The set comes in 7 colours, but who can say no to Orange. I mean, it’s orange. *huggles the orange* For those of you who are less in love with the russets then I am, there is Purple, Pink, Silver, Green, Red and Blue. It can all be yours for 298L a colour or 1,299L for the fat pack.

Now for what you have all been waiting for, a peek at the great Lulu make ups.  This is 01A Classic and Fantasy

01B Classic and Fantasy

01C Classic and Fantasy

01D – Classic and Fantasy – I adore these both….

01E – Classic and Fantasy

01F – Classic and Fantasy – Fantastic Colours On Theses…

01G – Classic and Fantasy – Wild and Sexy

01H – Classic and Fantasy – One of the best sexy scary make ups I have ever seen.

01I – Classic and Fantasy – I adore the scrollwork branches on this one, dying to use it for something great!

01J – Classic and Fantasy – What can you say about this one, it’s just great… possibilities endless

01K – Classic and Fantasy – This isn’t part of the big set, but can be found a little bit down the wall, same price as the individual skins.  Perfect skin for spring or summer, or just to make you feel like spring or summer.

01L and 01M – 2 Classic make ups, both found with the extra Lulu’s…because extra Lulu’s are a good thing.

The hair I’m wearing help this skin look so good is Truth’s Francesca, one of his gorgeous curly hairs from the long hair section. I wore the Caramel colour from the Dark Brown Pack.  All the packs are 250L each or 1500L for the buy it all pack.  This hair comes with a ton of options that let you have it your way. First you can put it on in one piece like I have, or have a top and bottom separate, to keep the hair more in place as you move.  It also comes with a streak option, that lets you put a streak of any of Truth’s colour in the hair, to give it a highlight you want, in anything from a lighter or darker shade of brown, to purple or white…the sky is the limit for colour options with this fun option.

Poses – All the poses are from TeaSoup which is closing down and have all their poses on super sale. These are great poses, I managed to do this all out of one pose pack, which is something akin to a miracle! It shows how good and versatile their poses are.  Sorry to see you close, TeaSoup. The pose pack I used was Wait Another Day

Full Body Front – Forever Loving

Full Body Back – Simple and Clean

Face Shots – Tell Me Again

Adam n Eve Does Magic

Adam n Eve have a new skin line out called Astrelle, and when I put it on I was completely Wowed by the colours. I thought to myself that this is so bright and vibrant, I’m going to have to shoot it in a jungle. I went to some jungle sims. The background looked dull.  I said to myself, I’ll shoot it in a rainforest, rainforest are filled with colour, it was, the background still looked dull. I finally went to an elf kingdom. It took a magicial land to find a background to stand up to do this skin proud.

But just because I say that this skin has intense make up, don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s not subtly shaded. I’ve been known to bitterly complain about the state of SL shoulder blades in my blog for a long long time. In my oh not so humble opinion, most of them definately would not look out of place on starving crack addicts, not healthy women. I feel half the time, like I have naked little chicken wings trying to burst out of my back, and any minute someone is going to start following me around with a fryer. These shoulder blades are NOT like that. These are the antithesis of those shoulderblades.  I can’t ever remember having liked shoulderblades more.

Astrelle comes in 4 skin tones, I’m showing you Natural here, which is the second from the lightest. There are 12 great make ups, more then you get to see here today, and demos are free, so go to the store and try them on. You get a bunch of extras with each skin. You get a freckles tattoo, a black and a nude lipstick tattoo, a manicure and pedicure in both gloves and socks form and tattoo form so you can use whichever you prefer. A variety of hair base, eyebrow and pubic hair tattoos. There is so regular and cleavage versions of the skin. The skins are 1,000L each or all 12 for 6,000L.

Close up of face with Paradise makeup

Close up of face with Fruits makeup

The cute lingerie is from Blacklace, it’s the called Meow. It’s transferable which means it’s a perfect gift and right now it’s only 99L. A beautiful gift that doesn’t bust the linden piggie bank, who can beat that? The lingerie comes on a huge selection of layers, including some that only have the top of the stocking which makes them perfect for matching with prim toed shoes like N-core which have their own stockings. This was last weeks Low, but Blacklace doesn’t always clear away LOW right on time, so grab it while the grabbing is good!

The hair I’m wearing is Maitreya’s Siri and I wore it with Amacci’s hair base tattoo, since the hair style didn’t come with it’s own hair base. This is really not a hair that you can wear without a hair base, so if you skin doesn’t come with one, I would suggest you buy the Amacci hair base set. It’s a lovely updo as long as you have the hair base it was designed around.

Poses – Just A Pose is the maker of the fine poses I used today. The front pose was from the Simply Hippy collection – Snappy Straps, and the back pose was from the Best Actress collection – Show Off. The close ups was from the Couture Shocked High Fashion Poses – Stance

Grixdale Has A Sale That Is A Steal

Tyr Rozenblum the creative force behind Grixdale is working on a new set of skins. This is good news for us skin addicts for 2 reasons. 1 – We have more of her quality work to look forward to in the future and 2 – She has put her Teagan skin on clearance sale before removing it to make room for newer and presumably better things.

As you can see from above and from pictures to come, Teagan is plenty good enough to find a treasured place in anyones skin collection, Tyr is going to have to work extremely hard to top her. Not that I have moral objections to designers sweating to make me look better, on the contrary I’m very appreciative of their talents and efforts.

The bestest news of all? Yes, bestest is now officially a word in Tapika world.  Deal with it.  Grixdale has not just done your typical half off sale, or knocking it down to 25% of the price, or even 100L per skin nor even 50L per skin. You get all the skin in the Teagan line. All ELEVEN makeups for 400L each. You also get these skins in 2 brow colours, dimple and no dimple options and 2 cleavage options. Added all up that is 8 skin versions of each make up for a huge pack of 88 skins. But it doesn’t stop there. You also get two tattooed hair bases in blonde and brunette. You get 2 eyebrow options on bald wigs and last but certainly not least you get the Teagan shape which is really cute, and mod/copy which all good shapes should be.  Please note, all these photos are taken with my shape, something I do so that my regular readers have a basis to compare skins, but the last make up I have done in the Teagan shape.

As you can see, the Teagan body has lovely lines on it, not too overly shaded, not too muscular. Long and lean, and if your tastes fall that way, this is a good body for you. I am blogging the Caramel skin tone, which is about the middle, but there are darker and lighter all on sale. Demos are available so you can pick what is right for you.

This first makeup shows Teagan with the blonde eyebrows, dimple options and Cheer makeup while the second photo shows the blonde eyebrows again, no dimple option and the Cozy makeup.

From now on all the options shown will be brown eyebrows with no dimples –

Makeup 3 – Cozy 2    Makeup 4 – Faun

Makeup 5 – Faust   Makeup 6 – Firecracker

Makeup 7 – Gold Dust    Makeup 8 – Melon

Makeup 9 – Peacock    Makeup 10 – Plum (My favourite!)

This is me wearing the Teagan shape, wearing the Spirited makeup. Since this is Memorial weekend in the states, I’m giving a little salute to all the troops. Since I’m Canadian, I want to give a special moment of thought to the family of Bombardier Karl Manning who died on Friday in Afghanistan and to the family of all the other men and women who have given their lives on this mission. It takes a special person to risk their lives to bring freedom to strangers, and they make the world a better place.

The gorgeous lingerie I’m wearing is the Taste of SL sale piece of the weekend from Blacklace, it’s a delightful mixture of adult satin with lighthearted polka dots. Of course the sexy look it brings is all adult. You get a bevy of layers so you can wear this set however your heart or mood takes you, or hide it under another outfit for unveiling at the right moment.  It actually comes in 23 pieces, a couple of them tattoos, so your options really are over the top. You can tell the designer wears what she make, so they have thought of everything.  Guys! This is transferable, so you can give it as a gift, and women, you can hint for it as a gift too, because men are always helpless without hints. The price is only 99L as part of Taste of SL, so grab it while it’s a bargain!

The rich looking hair I’m wearing is Gwyneth by Truth, I’m wearing the chocolate, but all Truth’s tones are great. Each 250L hair pack gives you 6 shades, a streaked version, the version you see here and a separate upper and lower hair. If you love it and want the whole thing you can get all the colours for 1500L

Poses – The poses I used today are another special from Taste Of SL – They are from Izzie’s, and they are a set put out for the Memorial Day Taste Of SL, they are called Pin Up Poses and I love them.  They sell for just 120L for 12 great poses.

Front Shot – Pin Up 10,   Back Shot – Pin Up 09,   Face Shots – Pin Up 04,   Teagan Shape Shot – Pin Up 01