"Horror Show"? Oh, I though she was Russian!

Say what you will about Goth, but one thing it doesn't lack is variety. Sure, most aspects of it revolve around death and pain—physical and emotional—and for some, gore. But only the stauch cross-up-their-asses Gother Than Thou types will deny that there are so many styles that encompass what Goth "is". Personally, I never felt the appeal of the latter two—pain and gore—but I am open-minded enough to understand the appeal.

My point to all of this is that Horror Haute has been a challenge for me. The good kind of challenge. The kind that expands the limits of my creativity as I strive to balance that which I find aesthetically pleasing with the Horror theme of the event. I'll freely admit that I don't always hit the mark, but I'm always satisfied with the results. It's a challenge that I look forward to in the coming months.

This month I blended a little old with a little new. One of my first creations was the Bloody Tears brow piercings, and it remains one of my favorites. I've been wanting to use the animated blood pendants again in something, and after a bit of brainstorming and prim slinging, came up with the idea for wings. To give them an extra horror twist, I made them into piercings and added an optional blood layer for the hooks.

I'm really happy about how the blood layer came out this time. I've done blood layers and tattoos in the past, but I was never 100% satisfied with them. Working with prims is one thing, for me that's easy. Making clothing layers is the huge challenge. And it's made me admire the people that can really pull of beautiful clothing that much more.

Shape: Mine
Skin: *Rag Dollz* Deadly Rose
Hair: [Nikita] Rocked Hair - Coke Cherry (2012 Hair Fair)
Eyes: Faerycat Designs *FCS* Mesh Eyes - Wine (2012 World Goth Fair)
Tattoos: [White~Widow] Hiver (face)
              {VR} Holistic Haven (body)
Piercings: @->~ InSpired Designs Chained Ear Piercings ~ Ruby
                 @->~ InSpired Designs 'Captive Flight' Wings (July Horror Haute)
Pants: ~.:.Hysteria.:.~ The darkness (July Horror Haute)
Feet: E&A mesh feet


Backdrop: !~! TechStylez  !~! Crypt Hangout MCH
Poses: Leafy 'Of Motion' (#1 and #3)
           IOS 'Claudia 1' (#2)

Forward into the Past!

Actually did get back to work today, and it feels good to get back in the groove. Of course, it helps that I've got a couple of commitments that are due in the nearish future.  Keeps me more-or-less focused.

Anyway, one of the upcoming commitments is the Past and Future Hunt coming in August. I've participated in their past hints, as both a hunter and a merchant, and they are very well organized. This one's gonna be huge, 150 stores.

Since I haven't done any hunts in the last two months (5 hunts in April, including Twisted, and two fairs kinda burned me out), I'll have three gifts for this one: two in the 'Past' theme—one for the ladies and one for the gents—and one in the 'Future' theme.

I knew right away what I wanted to make for the Future theme: I wanted to make a tribute to +DV8+. I've just put the finishing touches on it, and decided to give my readers a sneak peek at the prize.

 I call it 'Deviant Future', a unisex posture collar full of shiny, glowy cybergothy goodness. Copy/Mod as always, so you can tint it to match whatever you want to wear it with.

I'll be working on the other two prizes tomorrow, as well as something for July's Horror Haute. Yay for new shinies.

☥ Stacey

I'm still not speaking to you, Marketplace

It's done.  I finally stopped procrastinating and the last of my SL Marketplace listings have been reworked after the great FUBAR a couple weeks ago.  Everything is back up as it was, with small improvements along the way much like with the script update.


Maybe now I can get back to actually, y'know, making things.  Crazy idea, I know.

@->~

One thing all of this made me realize is that the Marketplace makes up a good 95% (probably higher) of my actual sales. Not that I'm concerned with sales, just thought it was interesting to note. Personally, I love shopping in world. It's worth putting up with all the pains of getting around in SL because to me the store itself is just as much part of the shopping experience as the shinies I get from them.

But believe me, I understand the notion of wanting to get your stuff, put it on at home then slip off to the night's hot spot and park your virtual butt there so you don't have to put up with the pains I mentioned above. Same with furniture and decor, without the going out part.

So yeah, all this Marketplace crap is worth the hassle. I just wish there wasn't so much surprise buttsecks involved. All this bending over is murder on my back.

     ☥ Stacey

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back and a Boot Up the Ass

The good news is, I have all of my merchandise repackaged with the new petite-friendly resize script, fixed up a few minor errors I never caught, added some additional options to a couple of my items, got everything swapped out in the in-world store (except the gachas, I'll get to those next) and successfully uploaded all of them to Direct Delivery.

The bad news... SLM completely fucked up my Marketplace store. First it refused to deactivate my Magic Box. When I finally convinced it to, about half of my items were delisted or 'unassigned'. On top of that, a nasty browser crash obliterated all the item listings for the unassigned items (I had them open in separate tabbed windows, because I knew I had to copy-paste the descriptions). So this means I have to make brand-new listings for almost half my crap, plus update the listings for the other half.

All for a direct delivery system that's still broken as shit.

Suffice it to say, it's made me more than a little stabby. To alleviate the stress, I've simply delisted everything from my Marketplace store until I can get everything back to the way it was. I'll post again when it's up and ready to go.
    ☥ Stacey