New Pattern: Birthday Sprinkles

July 14, 2018July 14, 2018 Claire de Lune-VonLeave a comment

Added a brand new pattern, Birthday Sprinkles, to the Midnight Madness board this week! July is my RL birthday month, and had the idea to do something fun like this for it 🙂 Not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but at least until the end of the month.

I’ve also accepted an invitation to be a vendor in a fundraiser for Second Chances Equine Rescue. They’re a non-profit in Georgia that rehabilitates for adoption & provides sanctuary for horses. One of their volunteers is coordinating the event, which will be held at Elysion on the weekend of August 25 – 26. 100% of the sales will go to help the horses, and I’m excited to participate and see what everyone else creates!

New Additions: Blaze & Kaleidoscope

July 8, 2018July 8, 2018 Claire de Lune-VonLeave a comment

Yesterday, I finished Blaze, a new fiery pattern that includes leg, hoof, and unicorn tail textures! It came about after I discovered how to make realistic fire while working on another coat — and can’t say no to that 🙂

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Then today, I finished Kaleidoscope, which is my first coat with a colored/iridescent specular layer (instead of a monochrome one). I was inspired after noticing the same effect on a mesh unicorn figurine — it had a regular base design, and then a completely different design that only appeared where the light hit it. I wondered if I could do a similar thing with Water Horse, so started messing around with layer effects. It took me a while to get the right intensity, plus design the base coat in a way that still looked good on its own (for those using lower graphics settings). I definitely like the end result!

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Body Coats · Water Horse Textures

New Coat: Ivy Night

July 1, 2018 Claire de Lune-VonLeave a comment

For this one, I’d had an idea for a few days to make a coat with ivy, but it turned out completely different in the end! I think I was in a plant mood after doing so much landscaping at my mainland store — but I like the mix of spots, leaves, and dots with black and white. I also played around with windlight in the photos … trying to find one with nice shadows that wasn’t outrageous and still looked natural.

It’s also nice to take pictures at my own place for a change, instead of searching other sims for the perfect backdrop 🙂

Second Life

Expanded Mainland Shop

June 30, 2018 Claire de Lune-VonLeave a comment

After essentially doubling the size of my mainland parcel and working on it over the past few weeks, it’s now (mostly) finished! The shop itself has remained the same, but I’ve spent a lot of time creating the park. I was going for a mix of nature, fantasy, relaxation, and fun. My favorite area is the butterfly cave, which I found at Love — it was something I hadn’t seen in SL before!

Another favorite is the zip line system, which is from exploring the shopping area at SL15B. At first I passed on it, but then realized it would be the perfect way to travel between the treehouse, sky islands, and pond above the butterfly cave. An unexpected bonus of being a premium member is I’m able to get in to the shopping sims at SL15B with no problem. I thought it was that way for everyone, but last weekend I tried to show my non-premium partner what was there, and he was plagued with “this location is full” messages. I’m hoping it will be more accessible closer to the end tomorrow though.

I also added a balloon bridge, treehouse with board games (that you can actually play), marshmallow roasting, sky islands with yoga poses, unicorn hideaway, and finally retextured the ground with LandMap. While the ground looks a million times better, the annoying square of land issue is still there. Just have to build around it and deal with it.

I discovered some new content creators during this process as well — Love, HPMD, Cube Republic, 3D Trees, We’re Closed, Lore, Goose, What Next — to add to my staples of Trompe Loeil and Studio Skye. Plus, I learned how to duplicate existing rezzed items (instead of rezzing a new copy), and that has been the best thing ever!

Accessories · Water Horse Textures

Patriotic Everything

June 23, 2018June 30, 2018 Claire de Lune-VonLeave a comment

After a bit of a break to work on my mainland shop, I’ve added a bunch of accessories to match my Stars & Stripes pattern/tattoo and get ready for the 4th of July. Striped horn/antler and starry tail for the unicorn, mane & tail for the light/draft horses (and sort of for the unicorn), and feathers for all! I also used colors that were very close to the official red and blue colors in the American flag — which are actually darker than I thought — as my base.

The tail was the trickiest, as the way it’s set up on the light/draft horses isn’t very compatible with multiple colors. Once I got the mane done, I realized I needed to make a separate texture for the “tail” piece — this wouldn’t be necessary with a single-color tail. It also took some trial and error to get both of the tail textures to line up and look as convincing as possible. There’s a section that peeks out when the horse is in motion, but standing still it looks okay 🙂

I may make an additional set of unicorn-only mane & tail textures, but we’ll see how these do first!