Helyanwe Vindaloo – Kittywitchin'

It’s always a bit tough looking at photos on Flickr because so many times I’m not just absolutely blown away not only by what I see but by the knowledge that my images will never come close. Not that I’m seething with jealousy, but it’s fair to say that a lot of the best visual artists who post their Second Life snaps to places like Flickr also have access to some of the best photo-processing kit you can buy, the jammy chuffs! This doesn’t detract from their achievements because there are some truly talented Second Life photographers out there who deserve our praise and admiration, but what can we do to make the best of our photographs if we don’t have access to Photoshop etc? Well, you can do a lot worse than check out PICMONKEY. I’ve been using it for a few years now and I absolutely love it; it’s great for adding oomph to my pictures along with text, stickers and filters and is just the ticket for quick tidy-ups and tweaks. I pay a few dollars every month for a pro account, and it’s one of the best things that I’ve ever done. I don’t just use it for Second Life either, I use it for my real life pictures too, but there’s no doubt in my mind that my blog would be a lot less interesting without it!
Something that I really enjoy is the theme area of the website. Picmonkey provides a variety of themed items including text, filters, stickers, fonts and everything you need to make pictures that really come into their own on occasions like Christmas and Halloween. You can have hours of fun adding ghoulish tints to photos or hanging baubles on images for home-made Christmas cards.
I’m particularly enjoying their ‘Comic Heroes’ theme at the moment. It features a selection of visual options, such as newsprint, that you can use to decorate your images, along with graphic-novel inspired fonts. The results are excellent and you can knock up a fun image in no time at all, which is what I have done with my LOTD shot for today!
Actually, I wouldn’t have messed around with the picture had it not been so light-blown when I took it but I just couldn’t get the right windlight setting. Fortunately, by using some of the Picmonkey features I’ve been able to turn my image into something that really does belong on the pages of a graphic novel! (Quick Kitty-Note: There are two graphic novels I urge you to read at the moment by the way: ‘Saga‘ and ‘God Is Dead‘. Both of these are amazing and you will thank me for recommending them, I promise!)
Of course, my picture is just a way to display the urban touches to my look. The majority of my items are from this month’s round of UBER which is continually jam-packed and with good reason, it’s an absolute corker with practically every contributor getting the theme spot on. In fact, my look is exactly the same as the one I was wearing in my previous post, with a couple of exceptions. First of all, check out this jacket by PIXICAT. Yes, PIXICAT strikes again with another awesome item, this time a perfectly rendered jacket. I’m thinking I should stop talking about PIXICAT because I’m not on their payroll, but it’s very hard not to talk about Areve’s work because it’s just so damn good.
Reason to like this ‘London’ Jacket? Well, first of all, it’s incredibly easy to wear, and I found that I was able to layer it over other items very easily without other mesh coming through. It’s available in pattern and prints and the range of options is very solid indeed. What I really like however are the sleeves; it’s much easier to spot this on the plain versions of the jacket but take a good look at all the creases and folds in the fabric. It looks as though the sleeves have been pulled up and dropped down suggesting a worn feel, which I’m really liking.
I’m also wearing yet another new hairstyle (I’ve bought so much hair this past month it’s unreal, and has been incredibly painful to my Linden balance!) but this one is from a brand I’ve never worn before. The brand is DOE, and the style is called ‘Puddin’ and is obviously a homage to everyone’s favourite psychopathic ex-girlfriend, otherwise know as Harley Quinn. I could have opted for traditional Harley Quinn colours, but I know that I’ll get more use out of brown shades, especially ones with dipped options, and that’s what I plumped for. I love the shape of this hairstyle; the ponytails on either side are perfect and I love the little curls that flick upwards. I like how the fringe is over to one side too meaning you can show off your brows. I think this is as close to perfect-ponytails as I’ll ever get in-world, and I’m especially chuffed with them!
Last but not least are my spectacles which are actually about five years old! I doubt very much that you’ll find them anywhere. I bought them in 2011 and they’re from a brand called DECEMBER which no longer seems to exist but they’re so well made that they stand the test of time. You know, if I was a content creator from a few years ago and someone was still wearing items I’d made after the fact, I’d be pretty chuffed, wouldn’t you?

Kitty wears:
Skin: ZOUL CREATIONS (Della sk1 – Dk Brows – chC worn with Della Eyeshadow – Carbon 03 and Della Lips Red 02)
Lashes: HUSH – Lashes – Flirt
Lips: PXL SweetLips v1.4
Ears: AITUI – Ear: Gen 4 Heart Plugs
Body: SLINK Physique Mesh Body (+ SLINK Casual Hands)
Tattoo: WHITE WIDOW ‘Insidious’ WIZARDING FAIR 2015
Eyes: BUZZ Cora Eyes – Honey {Medium} THE EPIPHANY
Eyeliner: MONS / Makeups – black eyeliner series-8
Septum Piercing: YUMMY Spiked Septum – Silver
Dress: EATERS COMA – Dress w/ waist tied shirt / Dark Gray (S)
Shoes: REIGN.- Thigh High Sneakers (Slink Body)- Red
Jacket: PIXICAT – ‘London’ Jacket in Red – UBER SL
Hair: DOE ‘Puddin’ (Browns) UBER SL
Pose: BOUNCE THIS – Pose from ‘Destiny’ Pack (Cannot recommend these poses enough, check out the MP store!)

So SKIN FAIR 2015 has finished, *blub*. The doors have closed for another year, but WHAT AN EVENT. It really was brilliant this year, and I enjoyed every minute. I purposely didn’t blog everything at the event because I knew I would struggle to keep up as you can tell with the delay on this, my final event post, BUT my final offering for you is a bit of a 2-in-1 triumph.

First of all, PAPER RABBIT skins. A brand I’d heard of but never tried, so SKIN FAIR 2015 was of course the perfect opportunity for me to give them a whirl, but my experiment was actually due to the fact that I’d been given a new mesh mouth to play about with, this time from SOUL.

Now as you know I’m quite enamored with my PXL SWEET LIPS that I blogged just before SKIN FAIR 2015. They’re a bit pouty/grumpy though, and I don’t want to look like that all the time (99.5% of it maybe, but occasionally I’d like to have a wee bit of a grin on my chops!) So thank goodness for SOUL KISSERS, a range of mesh mouths that cover a huge wish-list with their range; Closed, Open, Smile, Vampire, Orc AND Neko are all available for a cheap-as-chips price of L$599.

If you’re a SOUL skin wearer you’ll be delighted to know that every single Catalina skin shade is covered in the skin applier that comes with the HUD, plus there’s nine luscious lipstick shades from that skin line too. These are Omega Applier ready, and we’re promised that quite a few skin creators are planning to expand their range to include SOUL KISSER appliers, so I decided to hunt such a brand down and kill two birds with one stone, as it were. (Note, I wouldn’t actually do that because a) my aim is dreadful and b) I wouldn’t be throwing stones at birds..)

So, that reasoning brought me to PAPER RABBIT. I’m wearing the Willow ‘Cotton Candy‘ skin in Peach tone, and I chose this because I was seriously drawn to the eyeshadow colours, and the fact that the appliers I purchased (For my Maitreya body) included HEART SHAPED NIPPLES. (A friend had a photo on her wall of a girl in RL who’d had her areola tattooed to make them look heart-shaped and it looked super cool. (Either that or she was blessed at birth) I thought it was a GREAT look, so I was super eager to get the skin on and see how it looked. Fabulous is the short answer!

Guys this is just such a pretty skin and super fun to wear, it really is. The make-up is beautifully applied. I mean, LOOK AT THAT FACE! JUST LOOK AT IT!! I mean if that’s not a face that doesn’t need a serious amount of kisses then I just don’t know what is; it’s absolutely beautiful. I thought I’d seen all the best make-ups at SKIN FAIR 2015 until I saw this face and fell fast and hard for it. The details don’t just stretch to the face either, all the shading across the body is pretty darn fabulous, and again those nipples! OOSH!

But back to the point of the PAPER RABBIT PURCHASE, what was the SOUL KISSER like? Well, the picture above should give you some idea. I initially found it a little difficult to apply but that’s because I’m impatient! Having said that it’s not exactly rocket science to fit these lips though, so once I’d tweaked and twizzled and added the applier I was soon in action, and you know, I think they look great! They have a lovely shape to them, incredibly pert and pouty and kissable, and it’s just so nice to see some mesh chops that show teeth and the potential for a smile.

So with that in mind I went out and bought the ‘Cupid’s Pout-Smile’ version, and well, see the results below, doesn’t it look authentic and girly and just, well, super nice?

I really love the combination of this Cotton Candy skin AND the Soul Kisser. It helps that the lipstick on the applier is a scrumptious purple-pink tone that just works utterly beautifully, I’m super-chuffed with it, and I think it makes for a super pretty Kitty. Incidentally, Cotton Candy includes a no-brow version (much to my delight) so I added some of my favourite brows (JUST MAGNETISED ‘Diva’ brows) and TRUTH’s latest release, ‘Fynn’. I think the result is just outstanding, don’t you? So, here are your instructions for today: Go to SOUL and check out the SOUL KISSERS range. I did pop by the PAPER RABBIT store but this skin wasn’t available yet so perhaps Helyanwe Vindaloo is working up to it?

Pester her for the speedy release of this one, it’s bloody lovely I’m sure you’ll agree!