Glass Houses

Wow, its been a busy weekend. But I feel like I’ve gotten a fair amount accomplished.

Where to begin? First of all, I’ve been trying hard to be more productive with my art and building. I got a few pieces of art done over the past week or so, but I’ll still need to do several more before I can have another exhibition at the gallery. I also invested in a pack of sculpties, because I would really like to start building more. I want to try to make beds.. so I got a pack of sculpty bed parts, and I’m working on texturing them and assembling them together. Here’s my first ‘rough draft’, that I snapped a picture of in my studio. It has no bedframe, headboard or pillows. But I think the plaid bedspread texture is SO cute. I have a set of sheets in real life with a similar pattern, only in blue.

I also want to learn how to put animations in.. learn some scripting, things like that. I have a long way to go, but this was a good start, I think.

The next thing thats been preoccupying my time this weekend, is that on Sunday I decided that it was time to tear down our cave build on Corona Cay, and do something different. Technically, its Keeme’s turn. But he said he didn’t have anything in mind that he wanted to do, just yet. I felt like it was time for the cave to come down anyway, so I tore everything out, leaving our parcel completely bare.

I really had no idea what I wanted to do, next. Bored, I tried sticking some walls together at a half-hearted attempt at a house. It looked like a piece of crap.. just a huge box with no ceiling, and a sorry cut out that was supposed to be a door. I ripped it all down again and was standing there, when I noticed something across the way..

That curved house over there belongs to one of my neighbors, Jesta Noonan. Its been there for months.. but I never really looked at it that closely before. Now as I stood on my empty parcel, bored and restless, I noticed how interesting it looked. Really modern, which is my favorite style of prefab houses. I wandered closer to check out the creator, and saw it was a person by the name of Porky Gorky. Thats a name I would recognize if I had heard it before, and I’m pretty sure  I have not. I looked at his profile to find the name of his store, which turned out to be Hydro: Funky Modern Prefabs. There are a LOT of really neat prefabs there, each one cooler than the last. Even the smallest ones that were made for 512 size parcels are very well done. I was torn between one of the 512 houses, and another one for the next size up, 1048 I believe. I decided to sleep on it, as I usually do before making a big purchase in SL.

The next morning, I went straight to Hydro and spent an hour so browsing prefabs on the demo rez areas.. again, flip flopping between the two I had my eye on. Stuart Warf came online and IM’d me, so I sent him a teleport so he could help me decide. We both agreed that the larger one was better. It was extremely cool looking, and since its so much bigger, there is a lot more I can do with it. Here’s a picture of the outside, taken on the demo platform.

The demo platforms rez with each house, and are customized to the individual build. I really loved the way Porky Gorky had the platform set up for the house I got, which is called The Pacifica. I took an overhead shot for reference, because I really wanted to build something similar for the landscaping around the house on our parcel.

I brought the new house home and set it up.. and it wasn’t long at all before friends and neighbors started to stop by and check out the new build. Thats the fun of living on Corona Cay. We’re a very tight knit community of close friends. And everytime someone does something different with their land, everyone likes to go take a look. Pictured here is me with Stuart and his dog, Bracken. The owner of Corona Cay, Itazura Radio. And my good friend Hope Clary, who I had not seen in ages! She lived across the channel from Keeme and I, when we lived on Nowhereville.

After everyone left, I rolled up my sleeves and started to dig into my inventory, which has seriously been growing out of control lately. I finally set about doing what I’ve been intending on working on for months- boxing up some of my furniture that I’m not really going to use anytime soon. Thats whats filling up the majority of my inventory.. I like to keep it tidy. But when it comes to anything home related, I am a serious packrat. And yes, I know its a bad idea to store things in boxes instead of folders.. but most of what I’m boxing up is freebie gifts I’ve picked up from groups, grid wide hunts, etc. The more expensive items or things that I’ve purchased, I will probably store in folders. As for the rest, I put in color coded boxes, seperated by categories like Couches and chairs, plants and garden, tables, lighting, bathroom, Christmas, Halloween, etc. Now and then a friend would come by and wonder what was up with all the colored boxes, and then just shake their head at me. But hey.. I have my system, and I like it!

As I was working on my inventory, I also started to try and organize my textures folders, as well. Not long ago, I was asking Radar Masukami how builders like him keep track of their textures. I could never find what I wanted.. even if I put them in folders by type, I still had to click on every single texture and wait for it to rez before I could see what it actually was. It was taking FOREVER. So he gave me a suggestion. While time consuming, its been a HUGE help. I save each texture as a .jpg image and store them as thumbnails on my hard drive. That way, I can go to each folder and see them all displayed. It makes things a lot faster and easier when I’m trying to build something. So for several hours over the past couple of days, I’ve been switching between boxing up my inventory, saving my texture files and putting them in the right folders.. and slowly putting out furniture in the new house. Plus, trying to work out the landscaping outside. I have a fairly good start, so far.. its not perfect, and there are a lot of seams and fighting textures in some places. But I just take my time.. tweak a few things here and there, and come back to it later. Here’s how its looking, so far.

I really want to have curving areas of grass, stone and water surrounding the outside of the house. I will probably tear this all up several times and start over, but I am really liking the general concept of what I have going so far, and I’m happy with it. 🙂 Plus, its good practice.

The inside of the house is still mostly bare. But here are some pictures of the interior.

Milkbone and Fricken, in front of a really good example of some of the graceful curves and glass inside the house. Once I get some good rugs on the floor and art on the walls, I think the colors will make this all look even nicer.

A nice furniture set by Mudhoney, on the ‘First floor’ of the house. I would have called it the second floor. But according to the teleport system, this home has a ground floor, first floor and second floor.

Now that Soho is off the map, I have a stunning view of the ocean. It seemed like a perfect spot to put this comfy chaise lounge chair. And I’m thinking that a couple of tall, green plants on either side would look  just perfect.

One of my favorite features of this house is the wrap around glass front. The windows stretch from floor to ceiling, and I can see a lot of the island from here. Its funny to be standing near the curved window as someone speeds by on the road.. the road bends at the very last second before they crash into the front of my house, and its a trip to be standing there when they go by.

The first (or second) floor has an L shaped balcony that opens up to the ground level below. I love that! I also love that the front window extends up to the ceiling so I can see out just as well from up here, as I can down below. Oh and I have to note- another cool feature about this house is that it comes with a HUD that controls the doors, lights and the windows. You can set the opacity between clear, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100%. I think I have it set on 60% right now, which is why the windows are such a deep shade of blue. I could make it lighter, but I really like it this way.

The very top level is a cross between a second (or third?) floor, the roof, and an upper patio. There is an enclosed area with a sun roof that I’ll probably use as a sort of ‘garden room’.. lots of plants, maybe some wood or wicker furniture, nice rug or two. Right now I have another furniture set from Mudhoney up here, but I imagine the furnishings will change several times before I settle on something I really like.

Finally, on the other side of the roof is the really nice hot tub that was included as an extra with the purchase of this house. That was another feature that I loved. And from up here, I have a beautiful view of most of Corona Cay. I’m very, very happy with this prefab. 🙂 In fact, the more time I spend here, the more I love it. I think this was one of the best purchases I’ve made in SL, so far.

Oh, and one final thing I meant to mention. I did end up doing the Twisted Hunt, since I love grid wide hunts so much. I originally was not going to, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to use most of the hunt gifts. When it comes to clothing and fashion, I’m typically one to stick with sun dresses, or lately, jeans and blouses. But I figured I may as well give it a try – I might find some new designers I would normally not be familiar with. I’ve gone on a few other grid wide hunts over the past few months. But so far, I’ve been the most impressed with the gift items from the Twisted Hunt. WOW, these designers went all out. Here are just a couple of items that I will definitely be keeping.

These Love & Pain gothic boots by Self Expressions are just amazing! I can’t imagine how long it took to make these. The detail is incredible. They are beautifully made!

I was equally impressed by this Cyber Latex Reloaded outfit from Fatal Error. After I put it on, I hid up in my studio and looked at it for the longest time while I decided if I should keep it, or not. I absolutely love it- and yet its so completely the opposite of my usual style of how I dress, I’m almost afraid to wear it, lol. I’m not even sure where I will wear it. But its so pretty, and so nicely done that I decided to keep it, even if my friends do look at me oddly for wearing it. I will also be making a point of visiting both of those stores to see what else they have. I’ve only gone through about 30 of the 103 gift boxes from the Twisted Hunt, but I’m having a blast looking at everything and trying things on. I just barely finished the hunt on time! I believe it ended today, and I finished the hunt on Sunday. I can’t wait to see what else is boxed up in my inventory, that I haven’t discovered yet.

Anyway.. more pictures of the new house will be coming soon. I’ll post an update once I finish decorating the inside, and figuring out what to do with the landscaping outside. Meanwhile.. I’ll just keep on enjoying our little piece of the world. 🙂

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~ by Nika Dreamscape on March 31, 2009.