I feel Pretty oh so Pretty

Hey everyone,

I am chilling a bit right now.  Trying to get my mind wrapped around something that is happening in RL but it's not going to ruin my life.  Just pissing me off right now.  I'm waiting for the 2nd set of photos to come back from the song styling photo sets I'm doing right now.  The first set was done by Leah McCullough who is a gorgeous redhead wunderkind that made me look smexy and got the photos back to me really quickly.  I highly recommend her if you are in need of shots.  They are already on my flickr page but I'm going to share them here too.  I took set two with Julie Hastings who was one of the nicest humans I've ever met and I must say I adore her.  Whenever I get my French back up to par I'm so gonna girl crush on her and chat her up.  I need to edit the outfit I put together for the Avant Garde master styling course for Maniera and then share that photo as well.  It was a fun challenge and  I did better than I thought I would but still needs a tiny bit of tweaking.  Have a good holiday weekend for those that are celebrating.  I'm going to relax if I can start putting stupid people out of my brain.

Okay wow, bad Rouge

I kept meaning to come back and post but SL and RL have been kicking my butt. Not sure what you don't know so I will try to go over as much as I remember lol. Ok since the last time I posted a few things have happened. The issue of Maniera that I was lucky enough to do the photo shoot with Sami and Mikey has come out and I love the picture. Sent the issue to as many friends as I could lol and encouraged them to go ohhh and ahhh. Not really they all seemed to like it on their own so yeah Atomic, pic was lovely. Which made me wonder again about taking my own photos all the time. Depending on the contest and timing not really a choice with my schedule but I made the choice to look for a few photographers to try to catch new images of me for three contests I wanted to enter and then ultimately a fourth I did enter.

The very nice lingerie shot Skip Staheli did for Angel Dessous garnered me fourth place for their December Angel of the month. Congrats to the winners and as I moved from no place (my first entry lol) to 4th I can't be entirely upset about that. I've entered the Blacklace Model group contest as well with a photo done by Maddy Michalski. Think bombshell on a bomber, which for those that know me know I adore vintage wear and sometimes make things vintage when they aren't really lol, and you will know know what we ended up with. I love the shot and the guys that help run the airfield we were at were beyond helpful rezzing new planes for us to use. They were actually kinda thrilled we were there and have asked Maddy and I to find a shot to put on the side of a plane they are making. So while I would also love to win the Blacklace contest (or at least place) I get to be immortalized on the size of a bomber. Woot bombshell on a bomber. Oh and he's willing to give me a copy of the plane. Isn't that cool?

Maddy also did a shot of me for Phoenix Rising in a lovely purple dress and gave me sort of a somber end of the night Blues club shot. I love it, the tones on it are fantastic. I realize as I'm rambling that I'm not posting the pics but go to my flikr page or wait for the application on the side to change randomly. If you click it you can get to the stream too. Anyway, the contest is being delayed a bit but the picture is being held until they resume. Hopefully it registers for people the same way it did for me but even if it doesn't I love the picture really. I have two sets of shots for Agnes Finney so I can enter this month and next month too. Skip did lovely vintage shots in black and white and splash of color and Maddy did more of a princess feel in a great blue dress and big blue jewels. I know we can't always afford to pay for pictures to be taken but sometimes the ideas we have in our heads can't always be translated to visuals because heck I'm not a Photoshop wizard and don't always have access to the things I need to capture a certain look. It hasn't been an inexpensive endeavor but win or lose I have great new pictures of myself and have developed new relationships with great photographers who totally rock.

The Sensations Shows were great. I saw wonderful designs from some unknown to me before the show designers. Great looks that I was wanting to buy immediately. The lag on Sunday was out of control but Monday I got to wear the favorite of my outfits from my designer, Serina Lacava, and got a very nice shot from Brock Sabra for my trouble. I need to add that to my stream too so you can see it. After all that was done I could see the light at the end of my tunnel so to speak and just had the Fashion Showdown to take care of before I could go on a focus on my hiatus. It was chaotic due to some unforeseen complications and I had to actually miss the show due to scheduling conflicts. From all reports the show went relatively well after massive lag spike at the beginning. The issues that came later are just part of the learning curve that happens when you do shows like this for the first time. I'm sure they can be ironed out if phase two happens in and 6 months I'd be good and rested lol.

Other than that things are going fine. Just waiting on contest outcomes and casting calls and the like even though I will really enjoy the calm down if it happens over the next few weeks. Plus there are a few other contests I need to decide if I want to enter and what I want to do with photos and how I can just keep moving myself forward with this whole modeling thing. Be good everyone. Have a blessed Thanksgiving if you celebrate and just a good day overall even if you don't.

Love ya
Rouge

Skin I'm In and Other Things

It occurred to me that I never gave you a review of the skins I had been testing out. Honestly there were some great tones there and I loved seeing that they were available. I especially like Cupcakes and YourShape & YourSkin as I think they did a good job of balancing the tones with the makeups. However, I didn't end up buying a single solitary skin--which is odd cause I'm a bit of a skin whore--because they each ended up having the same issue (except YS). The shape of my face (particularly eyes and mouth) changed so much that wearing them would make even me wonder who I was. They are great skins and as my partner pointed out if I wasn't so accustomed to seeing my face then it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. But because I have a thing about appearing like myself lol skins that don't allow me to do that don't get purchased. YS did it to a much less degree but the fatpacks were hard to choose from in the tone I like so I have momentarily held off on their purchase until something jumps out at me. I liked the skins at MAI too so if you are looking for darker skins try all of those stores and of course my favorites Laqroki, Rockberry and well you can't get them anymore but the old CHAI skins were great.

That actually leads into another discussion I was planning to have. Model's Workshop is a great avenue to learn new techniques and network and the like for new and old models. This last week was about learning to market your face. Our shapes, skins, hair, clothes are changed pretty readily as models but if your face changes dramatically from shot to shot then you are in a world of trouble. Because they don't identify you strongly with any look in particular. Topaz Joubert, CEO of Maniera, led the discussion along with Lola Baudin and Sami Kutanaga. I've never met Topaz but she did a great job of showing us transformations that managed to maintain their face as much as possible while refining their other characteristics into a unique overall appearance. She also emphasized that it wasn't bad to be flexible but to attempt to make yourself into a commodity (my words not hers). All in all it was a very good program and made several of us interested in participating in the academy including me. I haven't been pursuing more formal training for a while. Most of the new agencies I'm with require pretty regular rehearsals--some overlapping each other depending on the day--so I've been afforded opportunities to do a variety of things outside of classes. Each academy handles things a little differently but the overall course description seems to be constant among several of the better academies. Not to mention that there are a few that just aren't friendly to US work schedules. I can't be on SL at 12PST for classes---I'm still very much in the middle of my workday. The Maniera curriculum for the course I'm interested in seems to take what I've learned a few steps further and agrees with my schedule so it's a win win if I'm accepted. I'll let you know how that goes.

Beyond that I finally put up some new pictures on flikr from a few contests I did enter/planned on entering/or just took randomly. I'll try not to take a month between uploads again lol. See ya later.

well damn lol

Apparently I went on hiatus from everything. I've been much sicker this last year than ever before and I finally made myself stop this last week and try to get it taken care of but I swear I had little motivation to do anything else. I FINALLY worked on pictures I took a few weeks ago and added them to my flikr page. Then I went and took most of the pictures I needed to for a few more contests I wanted to enter. Still need to work on two others but as those are monthly contests I might hold off on those and let me brain recover from the sting of rejection lol. It's not that bad really a lot of nos in a row just don't feel good. Due to the slow down I was able to attend a last minute casting and as of right now I'm in the show. Need information on rehearsal times and all that jazz but hopefully it will go well. I'm also applying for another show but I think the deadline for that is a week or so out before I can expect to hear anything. I also got out and about and attended the Miss Virtual World castings and took some snaps of the women strutting their stuff. That's on my secondary flikr, I'll post those links in a bit. I haven't been shopping too much which is good lol. I'm still looking for new digs to rest my digital head. I want something sorta private, villa esque but everything I find is either too big or WAY too expensive. Shouldn't be so hard to find a nice quiet residential neighborhood. Other news is still pending but as soon as I know it's a lock on either one of them I will so let you know. Oh and doh I just got through with the Cinderella's Lost Slipper Hunt. Good God that was frustrating periodically. Teeny tiny shoes and hidden in bizzare place slippers. But I made it to the end. Now I just need a date to the ball. Any interested parties want to whisk me off my feet? Hee hee, just kidding my partner would kill me.

Keep it Curvy
Rouge

Casting Day One Casting Day Two
Hunt Information Hints for the Hunt

And the Winner is.....or In Other News

First things first, the runway show went AMAZING. No one crashed, the sim was actually full, no one tripped off the runway (like yours truly did in her 2nd graduation show) and the crowd seemed to have a blast. A few people were there that I knew from JCNY so really appreciate the support. Everyone else just seemed to be enjoying the fact that we styled ourselves and found the right poses to accentuate the outfits and not take away from them. I sincerely thank everyone who told me that I was beautiful or that I had a great walk. I can't wait till I get the chance to do it again because for the first time I wasn't super worried about the falling or the crashing and just focused on hitting my poses. Join the Model's Workshop if for no other reason than it's a great group and you'll likely enjoy it a lot.

Okay so we still don't know who won yet. SL was acting wonky yesterday and JCNY didn't want to have anyone miss out on the activities so the big announcement for May Model'Fest winner will happen this afternoon---which happens to be my early day so yeah I won't miss it. I did give in and go get another outfit cause while I was loving the purple gown I was rocking from Sascha's it was partially purchased because yesterday was wear purple day. Actually I got two outfits. My partner thinks I look good in soft colors and we argued over one until I found one that would work for me. But then the net went down and I didn't get to go into make it look perfect mode. Instead I worked on some pictures that had just been laying around and took some more for the Angel Dessous Angel of the Month contest. I had one that might work but in retrospect I'm glad that I went out and took more pictures. One it was just a lot of fun and two it gave me a chance to play with enviornment settings in world to change the shots I was getting. So far I've only uploaded the ones I submitted and the original raw shots I had to my flikr account but I will be tossing in the best of the others just because I think they kinda rock. Speaking of flikr, you can see what I've uploaded and toyed around with now on the page. I'd recommend going to the flikr page directly but hey whatever works for ya.

Okay so we've talked about my minor shopping addiction especially when something is on sale. The past few days, when I was on shopping hiatus, I broke down and just let it rip. Marly's is going out of business. It's a very cute vintage shop that I had never heard of before now which is probably good as I would have been broke. I found tons of cute hair (including the pixie cut I am wearing in some of my flikr shots) there as well as some cute swimwear, dresses and the like. I also stumbled over into the Einstein group sim (phoenix rising and the crew)---please keep me out of there. Too much cute stuff and a lot of cute jewelry either free or 1L scattered about the store. I might enter their Model of the Month contest if I hear about it soon. Didn't see any news about it on their page in May so I'll just have to wait. And last night right before the sale ended I happened to end up in Zaara. There are lots of beautiful things there but the traditional Indian clothing is what I ran over for hoping I hadn't missed out because I was trying to be good and not be all over the grid shopping. Turns out the fatpack of the bridal wardrobe I wanted was marked down to just over 250 of what it normally cost to buy one of them. So I bought those and one other outfit and skipped on out of there.

So now I really have three options to wear to the finals and I doubt anyone would be in any of them but we JCNY models do have good taste so who rightfully knows. I'll be sure to keep you posted.