A Spot of Blue

The Fantasy Gacha Carnival opens on November 4th (in just a few hours!) and remains open until the end of the month. Sadly, long before that The Trace will close on the fifth, so head by to enjoy it while we still have it.

The outfit I'm wearing from Cila will be released there - and almost everything I'm wearing is a common, which should entice those of you who normally avoid clothing gacha due to the difficulty in getting needed pieces to complete the look. The rares are the red corset piece (not shown) and the staff with the enormous blue stone. You can also mix and match between the colors, as they're in complementary shades of red and pink, and use the same decoration pieces. I kept to one shade for the full effect, though! It can be worn with and without the jacket, offering up varying levels of the theme, which is layers of scale skilfully rendered and colored. If you approach them from the side, you can see it isn't just a texture pattern, but rather looks like layers of cut and sewn fabric have been layered over each other. It's also all fitmesh, which led to interesting effects with my stomach in particular - Deoridhe's mesh form has a belly, which is extremely rare in Second Life, and enough saddlebags to smooth out the line from hip to waist. In the past, this has led to a problem with fitmesh because the mesh ends up rippling unattractively around those areas. With this mesh, however, I really liked the effect of a bowling out forward, and it made the bloomer sides look cute under the curve of the corset.

Recently, a few people expressed a desire to hear bloggers talk more about our styling choices and reasons for combining things as we did - and I thought I'd make a few notes here, since this is a very simple look. I wanted to center and highlight Cila's outfit, which is unusual and cute, and I used all of the pieces which didn't overlap, choosing a single color so that I could keep my shading mostly monochromatic with the single drama point of the blue ball in the staff. The high neckline of the jacket discouraged jewelry, and I decided to leave it off altogether. I wanted a cute hairstyle to complement the look where the hair would have bits of the same pink as the outfit, and I settled on Ploom's recent release, which comes with adorable headbands. Hair color was easy - the pink matched perfectly - and the only thing I struggled with there was how to tint the ears; as you can see I settled on the dominant shade of the look, white.

The cosmetics and nail polish was where I spent the most time - both in trying to match the slightly cool, matte pink and in the question of whether I wanted a second (or third) spot of bright blue. I ended up settling on a matte pink eyeliner from cheLLE (closed) - one of my go-to eyeliners because of the brightness of the color and the solidity of the shade - and layered two lipsticks, a matte shade from Damned to set the tone, and a gloss from Mock to finish it off. Ironically, the final effect is to make them vanish all but entirely except in closeup; in this case I wanted that, though for other looks or when I'm highlighting the cosmetics the focus will shift. Finally, I picked through nails I hadn't tried yet for something that had the right warm pink-white I wanted, trying on a bunch of different shades of pink and white until finally selecting a pearlescent shade from Frogstar. Like the cosmetics on my face, the ultimate goal for this look was to have the nails fade into the background in concert with the outfit, and I think this shade - a gold edged nailbed with a white french manicure - accomplished that well.

There's a part of me that always feels bad when I select a creator's work in order to fade into the background, harmonized with the main theme of the look I'm trying to make. That is part of making a look instead of just combining disparate elements, though - some must play a supporting role to the others, or it's chaos.

( More pictures here. )

Credits: 

Skin: Izzies, Irene
Sparkles: Folly, Rainbow Sheen
Hair: Ploom, Hare
Ears: Illusions, Seelie
Eyes: .:Soul:., RooMee
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: FLugeln Brise, 05-A
Eyesliner: cheLLe, Cleo Called
Lipstick 1: Damned, Alice
Lipstick 2: Mock, Fruitilicious Gloss
Wings: Deviance, Sidhe
Hands: SLink, Rigged Mesh Hands
Nails: Frogstar, Pearlescent Princess
Clothing: Cila, The Oriental alchemist (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Pose: Long Awkward Pose

Location: The Trace 
Light Settings: TOR, MIDDAY Baskaholic
Water Settings: Glassy

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only