Combo Post

Okay so on Monday I was telling you about changes I was making in the push to be a more proactive model and all that jazz. I did end up getting cast in the show and that rehearsal starts next week which rocks. There is nothing like being in a live runway show. I'll be sure to post that info in case you're interested in seeing it but right now keeping that mum lol. I had my interview/evaluation with Maniera on Tuesday afternoon as well and that went great. I'll start the Advanced classes in a few weeks so I'm happy about that. I ended up chatting up one of the execs during the interview without my knowledge. He's great though and I appreciate that he took time to speak with me when it was probably clear I had no idea who he was. If it wasn't clear yippee for me but I hate doing stuff like that. In my defense I don't often do stuff like that though lol. Anyway, I'm concluding this post with a What Was Rouge Wearing from my interview. I liked the outfit and felt like I managed to accessorize it well. Feel free to tell me what you think.



Hair: Zoe by Maitreya in Chocolate
Earrings: Dela by JCNY
Eyes: Chocolate by Prismatic
Outfit: Jacket and Pants: Stella in Black by MichaMi
Shirt: White Shirt from Celeste set by Ivalde
Purse: Coco Clutch in Silver by CoCo Designs
Shoes: Coco Spangles Stiletto Heels in Black by Coco Designs

Round and Round We Go

Life is good in the Rouge camp. Well it is and it isn't. There is some shifting in the universe of my agency reputation for various reasons. It's a good time for me to make a few breaks and get refocused with the agencies that I have been enjoying working with and whom seem interested in giving me a decent push. Had a great walk I think at a recent casting but still waiting to find out whether or not I got the show. Waiting for a pic to come back for a contest I want to enter. It was nice finding the right style amongst the things I already own instead of going out to grab something. I love shopping don't get me wrong but I wanted to see what I could pull together and try to pull off the haute couture look. Could have possibly gone with darker and different hair but I think I was too cute lol. I am interviewing with Maniera tomorrow for the class they offer. I also get to ditch mommy tomorrow for three weeks so I'm going to have to fight to stay sober till the interview. You'd have to know my mother to know why that would be the case. Anyhoo, I'm excited about that and will probably spend the rest of the day choosing an outfit. Had to skip work again but we're in phase two of diagnosing the issue now so what can I do but toe the line and see what happens. I need to get some food in my stomach though. Haven't eaten since like 11 this morning. All right boys and girls see ya later. Oh and check out the new link. Just found Icing on the web.

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.

updates woot

Okay I didn't mean to totally bounce for nearly two weeks. Like with all things in my life I keep meaning to do something and yeah don't quite get around to doing them. I still need to write a letter to one of my friends in RL but between work, being slightly sick again and my ever more disturbed mother I just haven't had the patience. But I haven't been completely dormant. After really just forgetting to send in an entry for a few weeks for JCNY I got off my touchie and sent one in for week three and got in for my 5th time and then surprised myself with the 6th selection this last week. They have introduced something new as part of being a showcase model too. Sunday fashion shows that feature our own wardrobe and a pretty cute walk down the runway. If you want to see my first go round check out the link to the JCNY blog. Sparkie was nice enough to take pictures of it and post them.

I didn't make the cut for a few castings and contests but again if a model can't handle rejection no need to be doing what she's doing. I'm still having fun and really that's all that matters. I'm looking for a new place still but I'm difficult. I want more privacy than I have now but I really need like 600 prims or less and those tend to be plots were neighbors are VERY nearby. I might have found a place but I'm gonna look tomorrow too and then just go for it. It's time for a change in scenery. I'm going to post a picture of me from last week on the runway and tell you what I'm wearing and then I'm gonna actually pay attention to being on the runway now. Love ya lol.

Rouge

Dress: Phoenix from Dangerous Lace---great store found out about it from BOSL group
Hair: Lua in Black from Analog Dog
Jewelry: Young Hollywood Bracelets from JCNY
Skin: Imani in Ebony from Lakroqi

This dress is just gorgeous to me. It's very feminine and a unique pattern. It's available in several colors too. I did longer hair cause really I like long hair and this seemed to be a great complimentary style. No jewels around my neck because it just seemed to much but the bracelets--especially with the ability to change colors--felt like a nice island match.

Woot Woot

Ok nothing much is going on in the world of Rouge right now. I was able to catch a graduation show tonight from my old training school featuring a new friend. I took some snaps, nothing fabulous but I'll post the link in a few seconds. I added a few links to the blogroll and still have a few more that I need to add that I have been reading more of lately. I added one primarily because they did something I had wanted to do which was look at the selection of darker skins in SL and sing their praises or not. I love Laqroki and Rockberry's Uma line is a close 2nd. I have tons of skins because I catch things on sale but I rarely wear most of them because my face changes so much in them or I look washed out. I'll post my own reviews as I can and try to take pictures. I've been hired by another agency and have joined the avvie revolution on Moolto. The show ended up being a no go due to rehearsal times but hey it happens, sorry for the missed opportunity but a girl has to mkae money to feed her shopping habit. Talk to you later so until then have a good one boys and girls.

SE Grad Show

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

the thrill of the hunt

Okay I am so not a huge hunt girl. I tend to get distracted easily if I'm doing it alone and some folks really want to make you hunt for the hidden thing and that frustrates me lol. But I'm sad I missed the one at Retrology. It's my fault I didn't check all the fashion blogs I could have but I dying cause I want the Miss USO dress from Ingenue and the nice one from Pinup Dolls and assorted other items I have seen posted that are just too damn adorable. I did hear about the Cinderella hunt and I suddenly developed a taste for glass slippers so I will be looking forward to that one. If you hear about a good hunt let me know. It's how I found my walking elephant that is just too funny for a number of reasons. See ya later

You're Just Not Good Enough

Now the life of the model, especially a new model, is full of rejection. People don't know you or your reliability enough to take a chance on you. Filling out dozens fo agency applications and getting no response well that's par for the course too. On the rare occasion you'll get back a pretty standard you aren't what we're looking for at the moment but we'll keep your app on file response or the more common: we feel you need more training here's information on our academy. All of which makes sense, an agency has the right to hire or not hire whomever they want. And it's up to us as models to decide if we want to shell out more lindens for more training on the off chance that we might end up working for the agency. I don't mind being told no or honestly I don't really expect to hear anything back when I apply for things but yesterday I and several other models got a pretty nasty one liner about our results from a casting call. At first my brain joked that my strike outs had gone into extra innings. I can admit it wasn't my best walk so really I wasn't stressing over not being selected. I think it was the way the information was relayed that annoyed me and apparently even more models who weren't as polite or in this case docile as I was in responding to the IM. I had wanted to be just as snippy back but the industry curse came into my brain then. It only takes one or two people talking about you being difficult or bad at anything for you to just basically be turned down by everyone. And in some cases it's as basic as the situation I just told you about. Nasty initial comment, appropriately nasty response. We do have a few outlets to voice our opinions but again we always have to decide if it's worth potentially not working. It's a catch 22.

And the kid strikes out

My streak at JCNY has come to an end. I will not be a showcase model for the 5th straight week which actually feels kinda weird but I'm sure people were tired of seeing me lol. I already told you that I was out of contention for this round of Miss Virtual World and I just discovered that I'm now out of the running for the Next Top Model Challenge as well. I am having a blast stretching my wings in SL fashion and the rejections are to be expected. Just gotta keep working on my look and putting myself out there. Not my best week as a competitive human but also not my worse by far lol. We'll see what's around the next curve.

Words of Wisdom from Grasshopper

Our challenge topic for the day, well mine since I'm a challenge newbie: What did you get out of your experience? Do you think it will change the way you blog in the future?

I think the blogging experience has been really cool in that 60 odd other people were all writing about the same things at once. And since we're all very different no matter what we have in common in SL it's interesting to see what everyone did with their topics. I have enjoyed it immensely and I hope that people that have stopped by have gotten something more than inane drivel out of what I've said. I don't think it will change the way I blog in the future. I like to talk but I normally get distracted and end up doing something besides blogging life in my digital world. I will be more vigilant about posting I think which could be a result of the challenge. All in all this has been a blast and I can't wait to see what other folks come up with in the future. I still want to do Hamlet's favorite movie scene challenge but finding the outfits I want has proven to be more challenging than I anticipated. Oh well off to forage for food.