This is so exciting a concept, and while Alaska Metropolitan gives full credit to those that helped her, and also discovered this ingenious process, it is Synergy by Opium her own brand that is going to make us all sit up that didn’t know about it and go OMG.

You are wondering what I am raving about I am sure, well first lets do the pics and then I will explain. The store the tie is from has a story, some of you have read it before, so bear with me, because it is one of my favourites.

2nd day in world Sasy goes to a fair at Transylvania, stands there in awe of the beautiful items on show, popping gum with her hair from Panache that she swears she will never take off. She comes across a booth which is now, not sure about then, called Gothic Dreams, and the lovely Xultana Lowell passes her a folder, squeeling with delight she puts on the items and declares that she will stand there all day and show how wonderful the School Girl Goth set she was handed as a gift is to the public – and I swear I was serious I would have stayed there until my face hit the keyboard.

Xultana is I am sure amused by me and invites me to her studio to help her do the vendor pic for the set, as it had not been made or released yet. I go with total excitement and got to pose for her pics, she even let me keep my bubblegum in lol, come on you all know you were hooked when you came into world and found the 5L gum machines.

I put on the shoes I had at the time which were from Parallax View and Xultana passed me a pair in plain black, same exact shoe and let me keep them – such a generous lady… and to this day I am still in her store in the vendor ad for that set, I even went to check tonight to be sure before I bored you all to death… due to prim limits I am in the multi vendor so if you want to see Sasy when I was 2 days in world thats were to look lol, but nearly 3 years later she has never replaced me, and I still have that outfit ♥, and the memories.

Ok so back to the tie, every so often I get nostalgic and go and visit Gothic Dreams, and the last time I was there with Fia I picked up the wonderful British Love tie, it would probably look hotter with a collared shirt perhaps but I love it this way, because of the collar built into the tie itself. The red, white and blue is just fab for mixing with casual or punked out looks, that this one is slightly.

Concord Clothing has a smallish range of casual/dressy items, the store is a small one but hopefully will get bigger over time, one thing as a blogger that freaks me out is misplacing a folder within a folder, luckily for me this one ended up inside one that hadn’t been put in the correct place; but was still in my to blog folder. So I apologise for the lateness of showing these items.

The Red Low Scoop Shirt actually comes with two tanks on all layers as well as the shirt itself. Great layer options in this store, pretty much every option is covered, with the benefits of extras like the tanks. Whether with or without the tanks the shirt is really well presented, and the shading is perfect for the style.

The Black jeans by Concord Clothing are fabulously low cut and beautifully stitched and shaped, with two prim options for the cuffs, as well as without cuffs options on the clothing layers. I will talk more about the jeans next pic.

The hair is by Truth and is the Tahlia hair, beautiful tails that end with loose braids, the thick bandeau style hair wrap is texture change on click with oodles of options colour wise, and because Truth rocks he has left the hair mod, so you can still change the band if you choose to a texture you like from your own inventory.

The gloves are the Leather Gloves Grey, from Sassy Kitty Designs that I bought the other day when grabbing the skull gloves. The Valentina Slouch boots are from Lya that I showed in the black the other day, and come in both slouch plain and slouch lace upper parts for whatever mood you are in.

Ok the more about the Concord Clothing jeans is, how curvy do I look, wowza. These are the dark Blue Jeans, and there is something just sexy about that shade of deep blue denim that makes you never want to take them off, especially for those of you that love your curvyness these are tremendous.

The Tshirt is the Red Tshirt also from CC and again for a casual look that has some class to it, the shading on these is wonderful. Wanting to finish off that tight jeans and ultra smart casual look , I went with the Snakeskin boots by Lya, these come in two options of pattern and are just yummy.

Brand Spankin New hair from Truth is the Amber style, the demo is in carrot and made me salivate for his new textures in the light natural reds, this is the Pumpkin and don’t you just want to eat it up. A lot of the time the windblown look hair only really works with pics, this style is just shy of being too much that way inclined and works well for just every day wear.

The Hair Rose in Red Harmony by Essentia, really works well with the red tone of the Tshirt also from Essentia is the Blue Tortoiseshell bangle, which now comes on both right and left.

Mmmmmmmmthat make up la di da, wont be long and I will fill you in :P.

It being so long since I got the folder of Concord Clothing, I went over tonight to see if there was anything new, not so much but I couldn’t resist another pair of jeans, this time in the red, also the Black Cardigan is a lovely mid length cardi that I have put on over the top of the white tank that came with the scoop neck shirt.

This hair is also New and is the Miabella hair from Truth, this is so beautiful, named after Miabella Foxley the incredible Photographer that recently did the Maitreya spring campaign ads, as well as the owner of my favourite Flickr Group SL Picture Pile Ups, if you ever want to play with pictures in Gimp or PS, and you are a bit hesitant or don’t know where to start this group is BONZA.

There is something so interesting about editing other peoples pics, you see things and are inspired more sometimes than with your own, you can also add a pic to the discussions and let others edit yours – suggestion, use a plain background when submitting one, as I have noticed people don’t like doing much to ones with lots going on in the background, it’s a lot of work removing all of that.

Oooooooooooo so I am ready to shoot the rest of the skin and a notice came about a New release from Paradisis, PERFECT timing, I mean seriously it could not have been better, I try not to jump ahead with items I post on, it gets confusing after a while, but again PERFECT TIMING. For a start they have moved location so yes I have updated my slurls page, the other thing is the outfit is way too cute.

The Jacket is the G Girl Jacket , and the pants are the G Girl Luv Jeans. Lets point out the love, first off the jacket, the back has 100% Geekette emblazoned across the back, so that’s love right there. Then you have the ipod in the front pocket that is primperfect and so cute. Now on the arm pocket there is a cigarette, and as I have been smoke free for my second full week now after 20+ years that had to be hidden in edit, thanks for it being mod lol.

The collar is soft and warm with it’s pink knit, ending with the same knit at the cuffs and band. Then moving down to the pants, low hipsters, that go so much lower than you might want in your pants, lol but that is why they were PERFECT.

The have fab tear/rips across the backs of them and full rolled up cuffs – not shown- that are just great. These come as seperates and are so fun to have, especially the wonderful jacket.

The hair I am wearing is Wendy also by Truth and has sideswept bangs in this version as there is a number 2 I showed earlier in the week.

Ok OK OK , so ready , are you listening ?.

Synergy by Opium is Alaska Metropolitan’s new foray into Skins, this is by no means Alaska’s first skin line, many of you know that already, but some wont, so trust me :P.

VERY IMPORTANT, these are not released yet, but this is something that you will want to pay close attention to the release of.

We are all the same underneath, has never been more true, when you realise how these new skins work. Right now I am different from you , but you are all the same lol. That’s confusing but let me explain, because until last week I never knew this.

Every one of us has a default skin, a skin layer that is actually part of the avatar that does not come on any layers at all. If you have ever seen the really old old New Resident skins you will remember them as being very flat, no real texture to them etc, well they live in your hard drive.

That is what I mean by us all being the same, inside every you there is the exact same avatar skin, no matter what skin creators skin you wear, underneath it is the default LL skin.

Now Alaska does not take credit for being a genious, she passes that to Namssor of Second Skin labs…but regardless of who this is to me incredible, and I can see it changing many things in the skin/tats/fetish industry.

Ok so think about that LL default skin a sec *shivers with you* and imagine if you were able to make that default one that was a hundred thousands times better looking. That if you somehow were able to peel off your (insert name of other skin store here) skin and have something that wasn’t so cringe worthy underneath…interesting thought right.

Well between Namssors knowledge and Alaska’s brilliance you can, you see when Synergy opens you will be able to buy a new default skin.

Now you are asking why the hell you would want one…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thats the exciting part. You see if you have on a beautiful default, then anything you put on an in world skin layer goes over the top right ? nods*, and if you were to put something on the skin layer that wasnt solid but was in fact mostly alpha that would show up as an EXTRA LAYER OPTION.

*picks most of you off the floor*. You know those plea’s you hear all the time, for tattoo layers, or why can’t i just buy make up?… well now my lovelies you can.

This is how it works.

1. You buy the files of Head, Upper and Lower body parts from Synergy. When you get them in your inventory you will see them as textures.

2. You right click and open each texture, then you click on File at the top left of your screen and press on Save Texture As. This will save that texture to your harddrive. I recommend when saving it, save it to a folder on your desktop called Synergy.

3. You need to open that folder on your desktop and rename each texture… head needs to be head_color , upper body needs to be upperbody_color , and lower body needs to be lowerbody_color…these will need to be saved as TGA files, so make sure that they are when you save them.

4. Open the folder on your harddrive C:/Program Files/Second Life/character/ and then copy paste those three textures into that folder, there should be a popup asking if you want to override the ones already in there, press yes to all.

5. Relog

6. Make a new folder and name it Synergy Skin – Yours or something you will remember. Then Right click and create new body parts> Skin. Wear the new skin it is blank of anything, once you have it on rebake, Ctrl Alt R , and you will see the base skin you purchased.

7. Pat yourself on the back, your new back :).

8. Now I swear to you you are new underneath, if you do not believe me, then make another skin in that folder , and wear it, then go into appearances and press the skin button, you will see three boxes with grey filled in and a cross over them. If you want to be daring drag an image from your photo album over to one of the boxes , I promise if this is a new skin you just made yourself you cannot harm anything. DO NOT DO THIS TO OTHER MOD SKINS THAT YOU HAVEN”T MADE A BACK UP COPY OF FIRST IN THE FOLDER.

9. Now if you were at Synergy you would not have been able to pass up the Make Ups, and they are GORGEOUS. When you purchase those and they are so inexpensive its insane, you will see they look to be a skin, so you are probably well confused as to why you need to do all this at all.

10. Wear the Make Up skin, and you will see that the make up is sitting on the skin you just added to your hard drive, if you did not do the hard drive steps, you will see pretty make up on top of the default LL skin and probably be crying in a corner by now.

11. If you are crying go back to the hard drive steps and start over *hugs*, if not you will see the genious that is Synergy.

Now what are the reasons that this is so exciting, other than make up will be cheaper to buy, and you now don’t have a default LL skin.

There are many, first off realise you have been given a big amount of trust in that the textures that you bought and put on your Hard Drive are full perms, some are already scared of what that will mean, it will mean that really awful people will try and use them for their own skin store possibly, but they will get caught :).

Now those that are mod fans, will know and also see in the credits that Alaska has put in her notecards, that the skin base used in this is partially Eloh Eliots, and I do mean partially, a LOT of modifying went into this skin to make it Alaska’s work primarily.

But those that are already fans as I have said will realise this means they can make their own make ups once they buy the base, and yes Alaska also is going to set up the option for people to sell make ups as part of a Synergy third party reseller plan which is awesome, but you will need to buy the bases at Synergy for them to work correctly.

The first three skins I am wearing in the pics are Synergy make ups and they are sooooooo gorgeous, wearing the make up skins over the NEW Synergy default…now the Fourth skin/make up is my mod. This is why it was a perfect release.

I made simple lashes very dark using brushes in PS, and also a rough eyeshadow in black also , to give a kind of dramatic eyes look, there is absolutely nothing else on the layer, just the lashes and black, no face no lips nothing.

But then I got more daring, because you see as minimal down there is on the Synergy Skin base, it had a tiny line just above the pants. So being very daring I grabbed the lower layer texture in ps and cloned it away, then because it was a demonstration of versatility, I grabbed the upper layer, and threw on a heart brush and then removed the upper body part, brining it in as an alpha just like you would clothing or tattoos, threw them all on a skin base made by me in world and voila, I am tattooed, Dramaticly eyed, and discreetly not showing with my extra low pants.

Like I said this is a release you are going to want to keep tabs on, the options are going to be amazing.

Click HERE to TP to the stores shown.

Hair by: Truth

Skin by: Synergy Opium

Clothing by: Concord Clothing , Paradisis

Jewelry/Accessories by: Essentia, Gothic Dreams

Shoes by: Lya

Poses by: Digital Dragon Designs

Posestand Professional and Hud by: VR Foundry

Always thankful for:

Essentia for my Beautiful Hair Roses and Jewelry many pieces of which I have watched being made, and had the pleasure of wearing first as they are custom fit to my shape-I’m blessed. Xstreet HERE

Bootfixer by Tatiana Niven that I wear 24/7 but often toggle on or off depending on the pose used, but for AO’s it is a MUST HAVE.

My VR Posestand Professional/VR Posestand HUD/Library is by VR Foundry , The NEW Features include Keyboard Controls, MONO, HUD Controls, Locking Camera and Pose Positions, ability to save Colour Sphere Presets, Return to Poses Locked previously and SOOOO Much more. The VR Posestand is sold seperately as is the VR Posestand HUD , or in a Package .Xstreet HERE or at the VR Foundry Main Store. now also with stand alone Library HUD, for on location shoots in no build areas – no notecards needed just throw in your poses.

My eyes which I get complimented on all the time are from LeLutka the MMS Green which I love, but alas are no longer available but there are still fabulous eyes to choose from.

Poses and Stands always used by me while taking pics, even if some end up on cutting room floor:

Maitreya

Digital Dragon Designs

Pixeldolls Empire Dress AO poses

Happy Dispatch

Juicy

Grapevine

Mela’s

[LAP] Long Akward Pose

ANIMAH

Ana Lu Fresh Poses

Naughty Neko Designs

Imperial Elegance

Lost Angels

Studio Sidhe

Vista Animations

Dela

Le Boudoir Mode d’Ambre

Reel Expression

Ex- Pose & Roodie Noodie

Aphrodite Creations

Tuli

Mamesando

Street Magic