Circus Kitana - New Haunted Zuzu Outfit

A customer requested the Circus Rose outfit sans roses, and here is the result!

Circus Kitana Outfit Includes:

• Short flexi prim skirt - 3 fit options/different sizes
• Long flexi prim skirt - 3 fit options/different sizes
• top (on both undershirt and shirt layer)
• gloves

Mod/Transfer

Available
In World

Shop on Rez

Pigtails!!!

I'm in love with these pigtails. I saw the Curious Kitties ad on the Fashion Planet feed and I had to have them. And I love them. My only complaint would be that when I scroll out, the sculptie does the LOD thing and I have bald patches in my hair, but I fixed this by making a black hair base. The LOD thing is not the designer's fault, it is just a sculptie thing.

And I rarely share outfits on this blog, I just don't have the time now. But I'm stuck on my current wing project - we are having some scripting issues with how we want them to work and the obvious function to make it work that has been broken since 1.7 - you know, the release when they came out with FLEXI. Remember that? The Lindens have tried to fix it in nearly ever release since . . .

Outfit Credits:
Hair: Curious Kitties
Skin: Nomine
Top & Gloves: Noir by Nomine (Munchflower Zaius)
Skirt: Kyoot Army
Shoes: Legend by Fatal Raine

Oblivion Wings

New wings at Material Squirrel

Available in world
At the Material Squirrel Store

Shop.onrez

SL Exchange

On Camping, the old and the new

Material Squirrel has been displaced by another wing vendor for the number one slot when you search (top right corner) for wings. I'm a bit sad, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I will NOT be adding a pay to add this location to your picks type dealio at this time. I'll never say never, since who knows what market forces may occur. But in general, I believe that if you make a quality product and market it within the normal guidelines, you should not have to resort to gaming the system.

I am old enough in SL years to remember when people first started using camping. A lot of people were up in arms about it. It made searching so difficult because sometimes I'd teleport to the top spot in the search and I'd find 5 items on the wall and 20 campers. I remember one store that I went to and it was similar - now they are a very established brand but I still won't shop there.

Perhaps this is sour grapes. Maybe. There are plenty of people who will argue that any marketing measure you can use, whether some might feel it is gaming the system, or not, is fair. Perhaps. I still feel tho that if you make a quality product and get the word out, you won't need to pay people to advertise for you.

New Wings - Nocturne

New wings at Material Squirrel

In World

SL Exchange

Shop.OnRez


Also, time is running out on the RFL wings. I did not sell as many of these as last year (sadness) so you will be getting something pretty darn exclusive.

Free Tank top for Haunted Zuzu Subscribe-o-matic group subscribers

My subscribe-o-matic Haunted Zuzu group members received this tank top as a freebie gift yesterday evening. You might still be able to catch it if SL isn't acting up. Go to the Haunted Zuzu location and touch the subscribe-o-matic object and go to the history tab.

However, when I tried it, it did not give me an object.

BUT I will be doing more of these tanks and they will be free gifts to the group first, then maybe for sale later.

New Haunted Zuzu Outfit

Finally, and I do mean FINALLY finished this dress. It only took like a year. I had the idea over a year ago, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work. In about November (2007), I finally figured out what I wanted to do. I guess sitting on a rocking chair endlessly breastfeeding gives one LOTS of time to ponder. I did work on it a bit then, but I couldn't figure out how to make the seams work. Matching the wispy seams on the side was just impossible. And yes, I tried because I am crazy like that. Finally figured out another option.

And you will notice that the seller is HauntedZuzu Sorbet. Yes, Hello Alt! The inventory in my Kala account is just getting soooo crowded. It is really refreshing to have 1,000 something in inventory again. Well, in my alt. Anyway, it's not a secret hiding alt, just another way to work.

I feel rather dorky releasing just ONE outfit when I haven't done clothes for a while, but in the limited time I have, I get done what I get done, or I'll be releasing a bunch of stuff . . . next year . . . or if I ever find a babysitter for a few hours a day.

The dress details:
- Flexi prim skirt - 3 fit options
- glitch pants
- top (on both undershirt and top layers)
- gloves
- butterfly train
300L

Available:

Haunted Zuzu location in world

on Shop.Onrez.com

Monster Truck Wings - Upgrade Info

Please follow these instructions to upgrade your existing Material Squirrel Monster Truck wings upgraded to Version 4.2.1

INSTRUCTIONS
------
1 - Please RETURN the old wings to Kala Bijoux in a folder with your name in the folder title OR in a notecard IN the the folder with your name in it .

2 - In the Folder name (or notecard), please indicate the Number of wings in the folder (example: Kala's Wings - 10 Wings).

3 - Please indicate in a notecard IN the folder which extra set of wings you would like. You can choose from ANY of our wings. Please be sure to include the full name of the wings you'd like.

4 - If you have more than 10 wings, please break them into separate folders - 10 wings each.

5 - You do NOT have to change the wing names back to their original names.

---

Version 4.2.1 is NO TRANSFER so please be sure you give me the wings from the avatar you want to receive them!

***Upgrade bonus - I have lowered the price on the MTV wings. To make up for that, upgrades on the MTV wings will get a bonus wing of their choice (if they follow the direction correctly!). If you don't specify a wing you'd like, I will just give you one of my choosing.

If you give me a discontinued wing, I will give you back the original wing.

Wing upgrades are free.

Offer is good on Material Squirrel wings ONLY. If I didn't make 'em, I won't upgrade them.

I will upgrade any previous version of my wings.

Version 4.2.1 is the latest version for all flexi wing sizes and shapes. If you have that version, then you do not need an upgrade.

Future upgrades will be automated! Thank you for your patience!
---
Thank you,
Kala Bijoux

Monster Truck Wings are Back!

The Monster Truck Wings (our HUGE size of wings) are now back in the store with the new upgraded 4.2.1 features. I also managed to get a few new styles out for these wings.

Please note that these wings are as large as prims can go (without mega prims) so the size change works in the smaller direction. These wings differ from the normal 4.2.1 wings as they go a bit larger and the textures are made to specifically work with larger prims. Due to the size, however, the fit is NOT perfect so please use the demo stand before buying. If you are looking for a pefect fit, these are probably not the wings for you.

Upgrades - Give me a few days and I will have the info for people who wish to upgrade their old Monster Truck Wings! I plan to do something a little special for the upgrades due to the price change of the MTV wings.

Location in world -
Material Squirrel Wings

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winged%20Isle/110/59/47/

Violent Nightmare fashion show

A shot from the Violent Nightmare fashion show. I was there, but very briefly as RL called in the form of dinner and a baby who needed to sleep. I keep hearing about these babies who just sleep all the time. That is not MY baby.

Credits:
Skin - Nomine
Hair - Philotic Energy
Clothes - Sn@tch

I wish I'd caught the model's name.

2008 Relay for Life Angel Wings

Finally finished - my contribution to the 2008 SL Relay for Life to benefit the American Cancer Society.

Aside from helping out a great cause, this is a Relay for Life exclusive - meaning once the final bash is over with in July, these will not be available. So . . . you can get some limited edition wings that will be pretty unique. In past years, I've had people ask for the angel wings well after the fundraiser was over, so . . . get them now, I guess.

Turn on glow on these wings for a different look.

Only 299L - all proceeds from these wings benefit RFL

Available:
In my store

Relay for Life Angel Wings - Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peek at the angel wings I created to benefit Relay for Life 2008. This is my 3rd year making a pair of angel wings! The photo doesn't show the detail in the wings - but you can get this effect by turning on glow.

They aren't quite available yet, Ziggy needs to do a bit of scripting since these are a different size and with the normal scripts, droop looks spastic, but soon, soon. I even completed the adbox shots.

New Wings - Lorelle Fairy Butterfly

I also created 3 other colors, but I don't want to list them all.

This week I'm putting the finishing touches on the Relay for Life fundraising wings and they'll be ready soon!

Available:
In my store


On SL Exchange

On Shop.OnRez

New Wings - Lachrima

I am still blogging the new wings I designed for the WingFling, even tho it is now over!

Available:
In my store

On SL Exchange:
Red Orange Green Purple

On Shop.OnRez
Red Orange Green Purple

New Skirt Single to benefit Wheelies

My friend Sasy Scarborough put in a request to all her friends to help raise money for the Wheelies group in SecondLife.

I really wanted to help out and also create something new. But these days I am so short on time and I still haven't done the the Relay for Life angel wings yet (they are in progress tho!). But I did remember this skirt single that I had almost finished, so yesterday, I put the finishing touches on it.

And here it is:

I changed the skirt singles a bit - I removed some of the old styles since one had massive texture transparency flicker issues and the other I didn't like. So you still get a nice mid-length (pictured, full color in ad), but also now you get a shorter length(greyscale full image), and an extra-long ball room gown length (not pictured).

The skirt pack is only 100L and all the proceeds from this skirt sale go directly to Wheelies.

And I should add, once the fundraiser is done, I will not be selling this skirt - it's a limited time dealie-o. I prefer charity raising products to be like that - so you know you are getting something special! And if you feel like 100L is too little, I placed a donation kiosk right below the ad, so drop a little more in the pool.

Available in world, at my store
SL URL

New Product - ColorFX color changing scripts

A new product add-on available for Material Squirrel 4.2.1

This product was created by Kim Ninetails and we loved it so much that we decided to work with Kim to bring it all of our customers. (And yes, we are profit sharing with Kim since she did the main work.)

ColorFX is a script that you add to your wings to get the color effects. The effects include emotional color options - like heartbeat, dead, and other cool things. My favorite is the color flows - which cycle the wings through colors.

This works best with certain wings - such as the Avalon wings or the Storm wings. I have a list up at the WingFling with what wings work best.

Available - or check out the demo at:

At the WingFling Fair

soon to be in our store, need to get that setup!

New Wings - Daray Wings

More new wings! These have a nice transparency effect and also look great tinted.

Available:
In my store

At the WingFling Fair

On Shop.Onrez

On SL Exchange

New Wings - White Dragonfly Wings

I've had a lot of customers asking me for white dragonfly wings and I finally managed to get a texture that works.

Available:
In my store

At the WingFling Fair

On SL Exchange

On Shop.onRez

Press

Some recent press:

Sasy Scarborough blogged about the WingFling and featured some of the Material Squirrel new wings debuting at this show.

Elysium Eilde wrote a wonderful post with her trademark striking pictures that mentioned how she turned Material Squirrel wings into feet wings.

The WingFling is now open!

Here is the SL URL

Wing Fling

So . . . what has Kala been up to and why haven't there been any new wings recently?

Mostly, because I have my hands full with the baby.

But I have managed to get a handful of new designs done - and I'm saving them all to preview at the Wing Fling - a wing fair organized by Jen Shikami of Seven's Selections.

The basics are - it opens this weekend and will run for a week. More info here.

There are still a few spots left too if you are a wing vendor and want to show your goods!

Flux Wings - New Fairy Wings

New wings at Material Squirrel. Yay for more fairy wings. Well, with a big of goth feel.

Available in our store in world.
SLURL
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winged%20Isle/27/127/47/

Or
SL Exchange
or
Shop on Rez

Evolution of a wing design

I do not do custom work and one of the reasons is that I rarely succeed in having a wing design finish the way I intended it to look when I started. Oh, sometimes sure, I sit down with the pen tablet and photoshop and bust out an awesome design without breaking into a sweat.

Usually tho, I go through many many steps before I get something good.

For example:
I started out with a basic outline in illustrator, brought that into photoshop, added some blur to the edges. Ok, this is a decent fairy wing. I intended to make something in white with points of light in it.
So . . . points of light, where do those go? Not sure. So I made some bevels and added sparkles. Everyone needs sparkles, right? Ok. . . this design was not working. I knew that. I asked some friend's advice and got some. But still, not working.
I decided to go in a completely different direction - using some overlays from butterfly textures and a gothic purple gradient, I came up with this. Yes!!! Now, this is something that has potential. But it needs something else . . . . something on top.

Yay, little feathers on top. Very dark fae. I have a hard time doing anything that doesn't have a gothic feel to it. Don't know why. I had to muck with the size. I'm still mucking with some very small details on the alpha channel (one or two pixels wide each). But almost done! Now to do these in more colors - the fun part!

I wish more designers would share their design process. I think it helps people to learn what goes into a design - then they will be willing to protect their favorite designer's creations even more than they already do.

Upgrades Again

Upgrades are now available to everyone now, not just group members. If you have Material Squirrel wings to upgrade, please stop by our store and touch upgrade sign number 1.

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring Moody Blues Butterfly wings.

This and That

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring Autumn Rainbow and Jade Dragonfly wings.

The Dazzle Viewer - If you try to reposition your HUD (any HUD), it will snap back to the default position. The work around is to reposition the HUD in the regular client and then it stays there in the Dazzle client.

Yabusaka Loon is our featured sculpture this month at our sculpture space. He writes more about his setup and products in his blog (see previous link) and has pictures so go look there or better yet, go look at our main store on Winged Isle.

Elysium did a bunch of promo photos for me and they all rock. She has them in her flickr account, but I'll be featuring them here on my blog slowly but surely. Blog posts are just better with pictures and I rarely have time to take any but ad box shots. If you are looking for good photos, I recommend her. Just don't make her so busy that I can never hire her again, hehe.

I'm working on some new wings, but having trouble with them. And that's it.

Wing Upgrades

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring the Black and White Angel Wings

Wing Upgrades. Yes, we are now ready.

First, let me just say that I really appreciate everyone's patience on this. I have a lot of 4.0 wings out there, so we had to set up a system to make upgrades a bit easier on me. In the future, all upgrades will be completely automated. But this time, I am asking my customers to help me by doing a bit more work.

The upgrades signs are now up. And this is how it works:

1) You need to be a group member of the group - Material Squirrel. For now. In a week, I'll open it up to everyone but for this week, I am restricting it to my group as a group perk. (And yes, if you have a free group slot, you can join, get your upgrades and leave.)

2) Go to the Material Squirrel store and go over to the signs on the opposite side from the demon sculptie wings (SL URL at the bottom of this post too). Click on the Step 1 sign.

3) You will get a message giving you a number if you are standing close enough to the sign.

4) Wait until you get a notecard with further instructions.

5) When notified, you will need to give me a folder of the wings to upgrade. The notecard will have specifics on how to give me back the wings. Please do read it. If you give me the wings before you get notified, I will give them back to you. I really do need the process to be followed or it won't work on my end.

6) After I get your wings back, I will process your upgrade. You will receive another notification and you will need to go back to the Material Squirrel store. Click on the Step 2 sign to receive your new wings. If you have more than 10 wings being upgraded, click the Step 2 sign again (it processes 10 wings at a time).

Whew!

And one more thing - the upgraded wings will be NO TRANSFER.

SL URL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winged%20Isle/27/127/47/

Dragonfly Wings

I think I am incapable of making dragonfly wings that look like normal pretty dragonfly wings. Mine always have to be, well, very different. This is my second attempt at dragonfly wings - at least this time I got the shape right! I do like these wings - they are wonderful colors!


If anyone is looking for more realistic dragonfly wings, I am going to refer you (and anyone else who asks) to Jen Shikami of Seven's Selections. She has a very nice set of dragonfly wings that are far more realistic than my fantastical colored ones.

We finished the upgrades to version 4.2.1 at the store yesterday. I think we finally re-opened at midnight. Thanks to Alexis Stapovic for helping me and to everyone for their patience. I know Saturday is a stupid day to close, but it's one of the days that Ziggy is here to help me with our baby. I detailed the new version features in my last blog post. The size change I think is the best - and you can see this feature via the pose stands!

If you have existing Material Squirrel wings to upgrade, please give us another week. We are putting a process in place to make it a bit easier on me and ensure that a ton of wings don't get dumped (and then lost to the SL inventory monster) on me at once. Which will also ensure that people get all their wings. We are shooting for next weekend to have this system in place. And then we will begin giving people numbers - like a lunch counter (mmm, ham wings!). The best way to stay on top of this is to join my update group - Material Squirrel.

News

All the news . . . well, first, I finally created a Flickr group for Material Squirrel Wings. I would love to have all my customers join and post photos. It's just me right now, kinda lonely.

Second, Ziggy and I are working on a new update for the wings. This one will have a lot of changes. My favorite is size change. FINALLY! I am testing our butterfly wings and they look so cute small. Really cute. And this will allow everyone to finally be able to have a custom size to fit their avs.

We are also moving to mod/copy/no transfer wings. This was a hard choice - I know there are people who really love the transfer option. But I feel no transfer is the best way to go right now. It will allow us to do auto-updates, instead of updates by hand, which take up my time and with our baby, time is precious. Especially since she has decided 4 month old babies don't need naps. Another plus is that you will be able to mod your wings and have several copies. So if you are in COLA, you can pull out all of the scripts in your wings to prevent lag, but still have a scripted copy when you want. Also, with the size change, think of the possibilities with a little editing, you could have winged ankles, arms, etc. I will NOT be honoring alt accounts, as I think that is just unfair to merchants and frankly, other customers as well.

Another new feature will be Xcite! message customizations. So your Xcite emotes can read whatever you want.

I've also redesigned the HUD to make it slicker and sleeker. No more tabs!!!

And the last new feature is the ability to turn flexi while flying off. This makes the wings look a lot better while flying.

I think that's it. I am hoping to have the updates out in February. We still need to test the wings further - if you use your Material Squirrel wings all the time and want to test them, drop me an IM. I look for people who can clearly describe the errors/bugs that crop up. And I really want people who use the wings - those are the people who find the bugs.

BTW, updates are always free - I'll be doing these by hand tho so I will appreciate patience. I'll have more info on how to upgrade when we are there. And group members of Material Squirrel (in world) will have first shot at upgrades.

Angel Outfit - New

Angel Outfit - includes scripted Halo (particle glow/on off), scripted Wings - and the dress. All for 499L. If you just want the wings those are available separately too.

Avalon Black Fairy Wings

New at Material Squirrel.
These look great with the color change option, you can really personalize your wings to whatever color you want.

Sculpted Prim Demon Wings - FINALLY

Ah, it's sooo much harder to get things done when you have a baby. Did I mention that Ziggy and I had a baby in September? A real-life one. Tomorrow she will be 7 weeks old!

So what does that have to do with sculpted prim demon wings? Well, nothing if you aren't me - but for me, these were a challenge to get finished, photographed, put up in the store, and listed. It took grabbing a moment here and there and doing a bit of a work at a time. Ziggy and I had these mostly completed before she arrived - but we've been putting the finishing touches on them for the past few weeks - in between comforting and feeding our crying baby. But they are finally done!

Available in world at Material Squirrel Store on Winged Isle.
Also on SL Exchange
And on
Shop on Rez