Again, The White Armory

I'm not sure why Lludmila had to find out about the latest group gift from The White Armory from one of the freebie blogs (see list at right - subscribe, subscribe, subscribe), as she is a group member.  The best we can figure is that the notice is hidden deep in one of the group messages/notecards or they just show up every Sunday.  How can this be?  How can they put out freebies like this so frequently?!

Anyway, Lludmila was so excited, she forgot to put her flies back on.  Just look at the textures!  This, like, totally assuages my Barbie-jones.

Gown by The White Armory
Coral hair by Hairy Situations :(((
Shoes by - "Shoes?  What shoes?  I don't need no stinkin' shoes!"

Goth and More

Is it possible to be an unslutty goth? Just pick the bits that cover the important bits. There's lots to choose from at the Lapointe and BastChild Freebie area.

Yes, especially if you cross your arms over your bewbs. And there's Lludmila's favorite end of the color spectrum again.

The freebie area has a good selection of "separates" that you can sling together and stay covered. There are also dresses, gowns, and some delightfully scary role-play costumes - for men as well as women.

Lludmila really liked the leopard neko skins that were available. The tiger ones ... made her face look fat. These were adorable and the maribou is helping to cover up the naughty bits to aid in the unslutty. Sort of. Hee!

Gothic Clothing "Urban Angel", "Tartan Nocturnal" womens boots, "Gothique Opera" Jade Satin Formal, "Crushed Silk" Black goth separates, and "Leopard Noir" Neko skins in black and ivory by Lapointe & BastChild
Antoinette hair in first set by Novocaine
Black stiletto bootlets (50L) by Sugar
Adena hair in second set by Amacci
Maribou Peignor set by Digital Knickers ... no longer available?
Maribou mules by Sin
Ears and tail sold separately, ¡Olé!

We'll Always Have Paris Metro

At least, I hope we do.  In this post are photos of twelve, twelve, outfits that Lludmila has snagged free from Paris Metro or their art gallery for just visiting or as part of a hunt.  If they never give out one more thing, they have certainly contributed more than necessary to the beautification of avatars.  Witness:

 Pink and black animal print gown, bronze gown, yellow print dress and hat.

 Gowns in Lludmila's favorite end of the spectrum (note how happy she is in the center photo where she also has that gathered chiffon at the top - she just loves that!).

 Pink to purple gowns - Oooo, have to love the pink organza with the black spots!

Pants outfit, black and silver outfit with the gathering up top again (Woot!) and something with a touch of red.

I had taken all the photos, arranged them and photoshopped them, and then what happens?  There's another free gown!  Are these people crazy or what?  This is the Barbie experience I didn't have as a child.  Oh sure, I had dolls (I had Midge, actually - I was destined just to be someone's sidekick, I suppose) but my parents weren't going to shell out for the outfits.   I had to be content with clothes made from scraps or just fancy handkerchiefs tied around Midge's neck.  

Lludmila is my little Zombarbie.  But, oddly enough, decades later I can't bring myself to shell out for outfits either.  Wonder where that came from, eh?  Thank you, Paris Metro, for allowing me to live out my Barbie fantasy ... for free.  Y'all are just too nice.  Put up a tip jar or something.

Note on the skirts: I especially like the way the panels move, so I'm always snapping a photo either right after attaching the skirt (which means taking it off and putting it on again a few times) or after switching poses, whichever gives just the right flounce or twirl.

Paris Metro
Yellow bows shoes from Baby Monkey
Camel shoes from Glamorize
Gold and silver sandals from S H E Magic
Melanie and other hair from EMO-tions (there are more hairs for just 1L each)
Small fly swarm by RC Cluster
Jewelry from GaNKed, of course, another shop run by crazy people.

Analog Dog Free Hair

There's new hair in the balls on the beach at Analog Dog. And, of course, the color-change HUD can come in handy if you remember to make a copy.  Kathy prefers the darker hair (although she started as a strawberry blonde) so it's easy to use the monochrome hud to get the precise darkness she likes.
Also note how nice the face-friendly lighting is on her skin.  Unfortunately, it doesn't do much for the landscape.  You have to decide what's more important to you.  Or else just remember to turn it back on after altering the environmental light when informed that the scenery looks better at "midnight." 

Always please to be remembering to change the name of the hair

so you know which one you made darker.

All this makes the typist wish she hadn't started life as a blonde because dark hair is soooo ... mysterious annnnnd ... mysterious.  It's ... dark.  I don't know.  Now my Real Life hair is some dull brown color and the grey hardly shows up at all. If only it were nice and dark and ... and mysterious, the grey would show up better and I wouldn't have these "What grey hair? You don't have grey hair!" conversations with my husband.  The reason little Lludmila has white/grey hair was that I originally tried to represent myself, but couldn't get the system hair to portray the correct salting of my dull, brown hair color.  In frustration, I just greyed the whole head and now I have to create a different av (say, "Kathy" above) to use hair of another color.

Analog Dog for free hair on the beach
Pink and Black Cardie from Artilleri
Torn Black Outfit from IdealIllusion
Corset from OoEas
PK Illusion Pure Morning Skin from Heartsick
Gemstone Eyes from Umedama Holic
Prim Lashes by InSanity (from a long-gone Car Wash sale)

The Black Canary Uncaged

 Lludmila as the Snow Queen/Blizzard Dancer

Lludmila slipped this chilly number on for a little ballet dancing at Grizzy's Friday night.  She put on a frozen skin and some silver sparkly flats as well.   What a refreshing change from the heat outdoors!  Wearing this reminded Lludmila of all the great freebies she had gotten from The Black Canary in the Old Days ... when there was a lucky chair upstairs and models slowly rotissering in the front windows below.  Lludmila used to stop and chat with one of the models while waiting for her letter to come up.   This could take hours.  One of the models was very friendly, so she got a tip.  Well, the lucky chair is no more, but you can still get a freebie now and then - or you can buy one of the beautifully designed outfits - they aren't that expensive.  

More past freebies from The Black Canary (the top/Pious at right being a current freebie):

Winter coat and dress/Frigid Belle, cute flats/Rozen Beauty, a little crown/Divine Right ...

The Black Canary's style saunters coyly from Lolita through androgynous and on to period.  The textures are lovely and Lludmila can wander the shop gazing at them for hours, even without a lucky chair to keep her there.

 And more past freebies: white babydolls/ Dreamer, parasol with animation, 
shoes/Harajuku Streetwalker, and scarf; 

long winter coat/Winter in London with scarf, fancy pants outfit/Frill Life.

Being short is a bit of a disadvantage here - you can't see the bloomers that go with the white outfit on the left.  Posing in midair over a modeling disk is all that shows the long coat.  Lludmila in this outfit on an upper floor would be showing about a foot of hem through the ceiling below.  But it's just so beautiful!  And no one knows where her feet are in the frilly pants on the right.  

By now you may have noticed that there's a hint of monochrome about these outfits (excepting the scarf and shoes at left, which were Christmas gifts, hence the red and green motif) - and I can picture them in an Edward Gorey illustration.  

Current hunt gift/Illuminati, reminiscent of Little Lord Fauntleroy that looks better on Kathy

Cold breath made by SR Puff.

Snowflake emitter made by Tyranor Horus .

Silver flats from BabyCouture.
Hair in top picture: Asako from Hairy Situations, now sadly closed.

Hair in middle two pictures: Kissy Kissy from Tiny Bird.

Kathy's hair comes with the hunt gift.

Undead and a Little Bit Twee

 Lludmila as the Cabbage Fairy.

After a happy evening of ballet dancing at Grizzy's with DJ Kero, Lludmila went searching for some ballet shoes, but found some other things instead.  And when I say "she went searching for" I don't mean shopping.  Not having won any trivia recently and the depredations from Relay For Life have left few Linden dollars in the pixel wallet.  Lludmila wanted free ballet shoes.  The best she found in the free line were system shoes with prim ribbons at Pas De Deux, where she also got this free Jade Butterfly outfit she prefers to call "The Cabbage Fairy."   There were also 13 lucky boards going at it, set to five minutes.  You're bound to win something in very little time.

Lludmila in her Alice Blue Gown

A little later she ran across a new shop (to her), Tikisma that was having its own mini-hunt for this Alice gown.  It comes with some black and white striped socks (to match the fingerless gloves?) and black high heels, but if you want to you can wear some TESLA black mary janes instead.  The "Drink Me" hearts are easy to find, but hard to keep track of.  Most of them are numbered and in folders, but a few are in boxes that appear in your Objects folder.  I went crazy until I realized I had found all ten boxes.  This dress is very sweet (and might not be as long on a normal sized avatar - remember, Lludmila is only 4'8"), if a bit alpha-y.  

Side Note: Blogger has improved a bit recently.  Illustrations are being sized to fit the template of the blog (although the upload confused me at first because it works differently), you can have more than one

alignment

in the same blog (not being able to have left and center alignment in the same blog used to run me right round the twist), they can provide stats for each of your blogs (I have four on Blogger at this writing), and there's a true preview in a separate window so you can see what your post will really look like.  I don't know how long this will last.  I expect that as soon as we get used to having such nice features and change our minds about fully migrating to Wordpress or, say, Vox, Blogger will try to charge us for the upgrade.  How much u wanna bet?

Hair in top picture: Kissy Kissy from Tiny Bird.
Hair in bottom picture: Asako from Hairy Situations, now sadly closed.

Unteal We Meet Again

Lludmila tried to put together a new outfit, because she hadn't been able to find anything free and unslutty recently. To this end, she put on one of the Djunk (which doesn't seem to exist anymore - pity!) Black Beauty dresses - choosing the one in teal because, well, who doesn't love that blue-green? Then the problem was finding some things to go with it. Well, what a coincidence! PixelDolls was kind enough to provide some leggings, in many designs, but all in teal! Lludmila just had to throw on a little more black in the form of the Bows Bows distressed black flats from In Her Shoes at Vignette, and some lacy collar and gloves, also from Pixel Dolls and cap it off with some funky Lemoria hair from Curious Kitties.


Now Lludmila is all dressed up and nowhere to go. Looks like the "Red-Headed League" discussion at UUtopia.

The White Armory

Lludmila did not believe the group gift from The White Armory, so she had to go look for herself. It is every bit as beautiful as its hyperbolic name (Soul Eternal) and comes with tintable pasties, in case it's cut too low for some, which appeals to Lludmila's sense of propriety. The hair, Quaint - White Queen from !SyDS! is a lovely style, but Lludmila didn't care for the blue cast to it - which is a shame because it flows so nicely. The Quaint - Red Queen has the same blue - not sure why that is. The blue doesn't seem as noticeable with this dress. It looks like it's picking up some of the blue-grey color near the hem. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


The Fann's Touch dress, one of three cheapies from Phoenix Rising, provided an opportunity to show off more GaNKeD innovations with this Goldblooded in Iced Onyx set. The skirt to the dress has black feathers cut on the diagonal. The silvery bodice is detailed and understated for an elegant look.


Intentions was not Lludmila's favorite of the three cheapies - she didn't quite understand the white lacy bra thing that showed, but it was on another layer and could be left off. The petticoat is a puffball of white feathers (I'll not share the handstand shot because that would be slutty) that shows better with movement - which I caught just a smidge of here. This also exposed the fact that Lludmila sneaks about shoeless - but the toenails on the new Absentia zombie/undead skin are very nice!


Lludmila loves the contrast of the white brocade on the bodice and the black of the Edo's Onjah dress. It comes with a more slender skirt option, but Lludmila loves poofy! The more slender skirt shows off her "back shelf" too well, which is fine in pants, but the prim skirts don't work as well with it. Lludmila can adjust her posterior for such things, but, she loves the poofy.

Short hair worn with the Fann's Touch dress is Kissy, Kissy from Tiny Bird.
The updo is Adena from Amacci - nice and messy. All colors have been available for this free hair since May.
The long mermaid tresses came from the late, great Hairy Situations that closed its doors in June.

Hunt Bonanza!

Cal told me about this. You may be as tired of going on hunts as I am, but if you go to just this one place, you'll hit at least 7 of them all at once: Before Sleep. There is a gift in every category for men and women: skins, alien skins, furniture, textures, clothing ... I thought these were particularly cute:


Bed with sitting and jumping animations. Hee!


New porch furniture - demonstrating the man-sit. These are very low prim and in that lovely hospital green, too!


This coffee table, which wasn't in any of the hunts, is made from an old (very old) window and books (perfect for me!) but it was only 50L and I wasn't able to find a tip jar so I bought it and some seating. When someone is this generous, I hate to just scoop the loot and run, so I usually look around for a tip jar or something small to buy.
Hints for all the current hunts are in the little man outside the store; just click on him. Everything is very easy to find. Not pictured, but also very cute, was a vintage pants outfit in black with a coordinating bolero jacket (if that's not a redundancy). The dress Kathy is wearing is from some other nameless hunt at another location - she's so vague about stuff.

The Perils of Amphibiaphilia

One of the first things you must learn about finding your Prince Charming ...

... Is that you shouldn't be holding him in your hand when you make that all-important transformative kiss. Here Lludmila has been nearly squashed by her handsome prince.

Lludmila tenderly gathers her prince in her arms and takes him off somewhere to recover ...

... which he plainly does very quickly. And he likes what he sees.

"Mmmmrrrgggglllmmmmm!" exclaims little Lludmila (which, translated from Zombish, means "But we come from different worlds! You're a prince and I ... I'm decomposing! It would never work. Your parents would object. Society just isn't ready."

The prince convinces her that they can beat the odds, make it work, make beautiful music together ... blah blah blah ...

And then, just like a man, after he's gotten what he wanted, he scarpers leaving sad little Lludmila to lament, "Nnnnngggggllllmmmmfff. Bbbbllllddddfffff!"


Which, translated from Zombish, means, "I'll kill the [Zomb uncertain]! But at least I have this fabulous dress from Dany French Touch."

Note: Both outfits are the group gift from Dany French Touch. While Lludmila receives her fabulous creations from DFT through the group, Cal [and many thanks to Cal for being so patient during this photoshoot while I dug through my vast inventory and at one point pushed Lludmila out of the skybox, letting her fall 350 meters and didn't realize it for quite a while because I was still scrolling through the inventory - Yer a peach, Cal!] had to wait two hours for his letter to crop up in the new lucky chair. He should have joined the DFT group when it was still free. Now it's 150L - although you make that up with the first set of outfits that arrives. DFT is very generous also with their dollarbies. If Cal has any requests for Dany, it's to put more regular seating around because his typist got very tired watching him stand there all that time!

Decomposition Notebook -

I feel like a real fashion blogger now! A real content creator/artist has asked me to vet a new skin for zombies. The skin Lludmila wears all the time and that has made me so happy for the past two years came from Absentia. Recently, Jupiter Vale asked her subbers for ideas and feedback and so I thought I'd put in my notecard with its two lindens' of considered opinion ("OMG like I TOTES [heart] UR stuff!!!!!") and, of all things, she replied! And sent me a new skin! And asked for my feedback!
I had logged on early in the morning because I'd missed the cut-off for the Midnight Mania board that was giving out the free pole dance (I know, I know, pole dances are slutty - I didn't say I'd deploy it anywhere!) and there was a gift skin from Jupiter at Absentia for me to evaluate! I only had time to rush to [insert name of store that's actually having a stupendous sale right now where everything, even the 1200L mini-cave, is going for 100-199L] to slap the MM board, still wearing the 18th century gown and powdered wig from the night before at Grizzy's (have I mentioned Grizzy's Cafe before?) before heading off to work, but -
I threw on the skin and, in the relative privacy of my skybox, removed all my clothes to drink it all in. Awww, shhhhhhugar! My clothes wouldn't come completely off and I had to get to work, delaying my leisurely but expert critique until afternoon. See photo below. For some reason, Blogger now gives me crummy photos, but if you click on them, they sharpen up something wonderful. No, really. Try it.
Lludmila in the new skin looks more like she's intentionally green. If I had a dollar for everyone who thought I was just melanin free ... I mean, get a decent graphics card, people! The darker green with the pink tinge looks like a zombie version of a tan.

Lludmila tests the new skin ... and, umm, gravity.

Jupiter did some tidying as well as enhancing the skin color. Note below how much smoother the shadow on the jaw is. This was something that always bothered me a little ... but only when I was looking up at Lludmila, which was not very often, being 4'8" tall. But I recall thinking, if only that shading on the jaw could be smoothed out. It looks like she tried to hide her jowls with make-up. She also made the eye sockets a bit less dark, which gave the opportunity to make nicer eyebrows - which don't signify in this photo because the hair is in the way. You'll just have to trust me on this. I thought the lips were just a little too light - making Lludmila's rather large Sally Kellerman-ish mouth almost disappear. We can't have that. I've asked for a little more color there. [Gosh! It's like being a Real Person, or somfin', ordering an artist around - "You there - more lip color!"]

The Jawline - before and aftah.

Alas, we can't give Lludmila cleavage - but, stickler for decorum that she is (note the modest application of pasties), would she even want to show cleavage? I mean that cleavage that's all the rage now, where it looks like a successful application of eyeshadow to suggest that the mammaries are siamese twin cantaloupes.

Torso comparison - breasts are slightly more defined. Ahem.

And is this really all about Lludmila, anyway? I'm sure Jupiter (or, "Jup" as I call her now - "Hey, Jup! More lip color, babe! Get on the stick!") plans to market the final product to all SL residents with undead leanings, not just me. In fact, her intent is to portray some real decomposition. [/me shudders with delight.] To this end, I have tried the skin on some of my other avatars to see how it translates.

Clockwise from upper left: Lludmila, Kathy, Plushmilla/Tammy, and Jane Doe. Not shown: pubic hair - 'cause there ain't none. Great, now Lludmila can "safely" wear those plunging pubeline gowns.

I think it's brilliant. Well, it will be with a little more lip color.

Lluscious Llobster

Lludmila was just wandering around Vintage Village, minding her own beeswax, when she found a free-range freebie at Allegorie. It's worth wandering around Vintage Village and the other outlying areas just to look at the textures and the builds, but if you can pick up a freebie as well - Bonus! This little number that makes Lludmila llook llike a llobster is called Paris 1900. There are 129 prims just in the bustle regions and, as you can see, it flounces divinely! The hat comes with it but, as you can't find feet in all those flounces, it doesn't need shoes so you don't have to worry about finding any that match. That's Lludmila's Fashion Tip for the Day.

Sun, Fun, and UN-slutty

If you are as concerned about not being slutty as Lludmila is, you might choose to eschew the thongs and string bikinis rampant in the virtual world. The red and white plaid bikini from Absentia (home of the fab zombie skin) has an adorable top, but the bikini bottom is making her slightly nervous. Fortunately, it does not thong in the back. The striped bikini came in a pack with many colors from artilleri, home of many good things. Note what great coverage is provided by the pantie (now large enough to support that title). The flip-flops, by the way, are color change (handy with a large set of colorful bikinis) and always free at the Vignette shoe outlet, In Her Shoes. I highly recommend Vignette as a stop for newbies. Got some great vintage hair at the hair location.


If you want to get some coverage, go for vintage. These two examples were recent freebies from Doux Couture and Aqua. I had to play a lot of spider solitaire hanging out at Doux Couture to get that vintage bikini in peach! And what's more, I had to beat out two other people in a wildcard round. The suit on the right from Aqua was described as "teal" - but I call it green. The pix here are so fuzzy, I wonder how anyone can tell. Not sure why that's happening. I apologize for the quality of the uploaded photos.

This bikini was labeled as "pink." It looks purple to me and matches nicely with the flip-flops in purple. Lludmila loves purple and it looks good on her skin. This suit from the Indie Rose Midnight Mania board is not too scanty. It covers the crack in back, anyway. The Lani blue one-piece currently free also at Indie Rose shows another way to accentuate the "peaches" without exposing nearly everything - it boasts a frill. This is seen more usually on babies and little girls' behinds nowadays, but this blogger remembers when the vestigial petticoat was more common for older bathers. Frill on the bottom and a rubber swimcap with damn flowers all over it. Now, that's modesty! Ha!(If you think the next descent into sluttiness for bikinis will be translucency, it was already being done in the 1970s. The white suits were totally opaque until you got in the water.)

Halloween In July

Visited Halloween today for a little Halloween in July. There was a rumor about some prim-toed sandals for 25L (that don't match Lludmila's zombie feet - plus she prefers flats, being 4'8" tall) but also a boot hunt going on in the cute haunted house.



Being a connoisseur of haunted houses, Lludmila went just for the experience. She gives it a thumbs up for originality - it's very small but has some nice features. More pix of Halloween are at my Flickr page.

There's also a cute pair of skully high-tops in the mini-enchanted grove which shrank down nicely for Lludmila's size one feet. I've made her calves sort of muscle-y, so prim boots don't fit her so well. Good thing she prefers flats. She gives all the tall prim boots to Kathy.



There's more to see at Halloween - to supply your creepy Halloween needs (never too soon to plan!) and a nice little skiff to ride in to the pirate's cove (four speeds available). The cove unfortunately abuts a private area and if you accidentally run into that, you're ejected. Oh well! On to more shopping elsewhere!