Relay for Life: Jailhouse Rock Sunday

We've been having a blast with Relay For Life this year and now its time for the Jailhouse Rock! Its a fun even where some poor SL residents are cruelly locked in the hoosegow til your generous donations free us from our bondage.

Mmm... bondage.

Err where was I? This year I've agreed to be one of the victims locked up, so please come down this Sunday and help spring me from the joint! Its for a great cause and promises to be a really fun day!

Here's the official writeup:

Come on over and join the fun!

We'll have folks trapped in Jail until enough Bail is gathered to free them, DJ's rolling from 6 am until 9 pm SLT on June 1st and lots of other fun goings on!

This is a multi-team fund raising effort on behalf of the American Cancer Society and the Second Life Relay For Life, being held in the Haute Couture sim! DJ's from 3 stations will be covering the event, providing non-stop fun and entertainment throughout the sim!

Teams Participating:
Relay Raiders
RadioRadio
Caledon
SLRFL 2008
Relay Roleplayers
M.A.S.H.
Relay Roadies

Some of the people you might find in Jail are........... dana Vanmoer, Dolly and Lilith Heart , DJ Dakota Christensen, DJ Bcreative Wilde, sachi Vixen, Etain Peregrine (that's me!) , DJ Natasha Leckrone, Forda Fairlane and many many more !!!!

New @ Dark Eden: Magic Circles Set

Purchase Inworld
Purchase Online



The Magic Circles set are fantasy attachments perfect for roleplayers of demons, wizards, witches, psychics, etc, plus great for a little punch up to a more traditional outfit.

The set consists of seven wheels corresponding to the seven chakras of the human body. Each chakra wheel is made up of six spinning magic disks that together form a sort of moving mandala pattern. They go from Crown to Root Chakra, with a notecard explaining in a little more detail what each one symbolizes. Added to this are magic circles around the arms and legs, plus two more simpler disks around the hands.

Filling the set out, each part has my handy dandy color change script. Simply type “/4 magic (colorname)” and the magic circles will all change color. Also as per Dark Eden tradition, the arms and legs are lockmeister.

The Magic Circles set sells for 200L and includes a total of 51 attachments. The set includes 17 attachment points: 7 Chakras from Crown (top of head) to root (naughty bits), 6 arm attachments (upper arm, lower arm, hand) and 4 leg attachments (upper and lower leg). Additionally there are three glow settings. Noglo, as it sounds is 0 glow. Loglo is set to 0.4 glow, and Woahglo is set to 1 glow. Since the pieces are mod, if you don't like these settings you are entirely capable of setting them to whatever you want.

Dark Eden Girl Finalists: May

We are proud to announce the Dark Eden Girl Finalists for May '08! As usual, our finalists submitted both a screenshot and notecard detailing their wonderful outfits. This is a pretty fresh batch of girls. No returning contestants, no one from COLA (what's up with that roleplayers!). Its always good to get some nice yummy fresh meat.

Anyway on to the May Finalists!

Hair: ETD Couture Collection: The Unique (no longer available)

Skin: (CS)Vogue Skin - Pure (Burgandy - Smoky)

Shape: Self-made

Neko Bits: Fa Nyak Ears in White (tinted black and gray)

Eyes: Miau Haus Cat Eyes in Aqua

Outfit: Graves G41 Corset Suit

Boots: DE Eve Ballet Boots in Midnight

Manicure: Sin Skins Gliiter Manicure in Black

Outfit [DE] Midnight Oshun Mega Set

Hair Deviant Kitties Manko Black Blonde

Skin Laqroki Sofia from RAC

Photo by Kasumi

Outfit: Dark Eden Phobos Mega Set Candykill

Shirt/Pink Corset, Jacket/Pink Pasties, pants, Buckles Gloves long, CandyKill Boots, attachments

Hair: Chouli - White (Deviant Kitties by Helyanwe Vindaloo)

Headgear: CW_Bunny-headgear1 pink (Techpanty_Clockwork_Bunny-Pink)

(!H4D techpanty roborock by Wewi Yin)

Socks: scratches low body socks - Blood & Scars by Linda Poplin

Undershirt: [HS]Bloody Hand Prints - [HS]Stores by Sarah Hollywood

Skin: Detour - Lilith 3 by Keri Clip

Photo Entry: Taken on location at: ~HARAJUKUBOX CITY~ Japanese Neko, Harajukubox (141, 215, 37)

Clothes/Fairies: Dark Eden - Obsidian Medb

Skin Gala - Pale Sultry Lustrebeam

Eyes: Gurl 6 Eyes by PopFuzz - Silver

Hair: Here Comes Trouble - Pysa(black w/ texture 7 bands)

Lashes: Cake - Bedroom Lashes

Face Jewel: Elements in Design - Face Jewel

Pose: Long Awkward Pose - Still Reaching

Fireflies: LaynieWear - Fireflies

Teagan sent in the following note describing the process of taking this lovely picture:

Laynie Link and I love to have fun taking pictures. I saw the calendar contest and thought it would be fun to do a photoshoot with the fairy silks that I bought from Dark Eden. I have a deep love of fairies so these silks caught my eye when they were released. So Laynie and I played around with her making all these cute fireflies. She shot this picture for me because she was in windlight and I wasn't.

New @ Dark Eden: Lilith Revamp

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We are proud to relaunch the Lilith Mega Set! This was the outfit that put Dark Eden on the map and I thought with the new focus on ARC numbers, this was a good time to give it a retooling. The lilith set includes prim and clothing pieces that together make an outfit of thick leather straps and shiny silver buckles strapped across your body. It is a very versatile outfit that works as a full bondage outfit, a few extra bits to flesh out your look, or just some funky boots to wear out on the town.

I simultaneously added a new prim piece to the set (waist buckles) and brought the ARC amount down from 280 to 244. Every piece has been retooled and redesigned with a lot of the tricks I have learned over the years, but this was balanced with the desire to keep the set still recognizable as the original.

The most radical change was to the foot. I got rid of some of the odd bumps and smoothed out the look and curves of it to a much more natural look. I also updated the interface of foot and ankle to make it a more smooth and natural looking motion.

The final change was of course to make the lilith outfit Lockmeister compatible like all my modern sets.

The new set includes 19 prim parts in two sizes. The old size is now considered 'small' and there is a new 'normal' size that should better fit the average SL user and not just the average Etain. There are four different clothing styles to go along with the suit. There are straps alone, straps plus a sheer bodysuit, and then both with a 'bare' look that leaves the naughty bits exposed, for those daring enough to do so.

The Lilith Mega Set comes in eight colors and is 300L per color. The Lilith Boots are sold separately at 200L per color. There is also a mega set of all eight boot colors available which is 800L.

Those Pesky ARC Costs

Well the latest buzz has been about the new feature allowing us to see our Avatar Rendering Cost. There's definitely some flaws, for example treating all prims equally when you can torture them considerably especially with torii. However, I think that its a useful feature, though one I have been a bit nervous about.

I decided to take a serious look at my product line and make sure they would mesh with this new ability we have. My customers come first and I want to make sure then can enjoy things with little or no guilt, well not guilt about ARC anyway. Dark Eden Girls have plenty to feel guilty about already, the naughty things.

With some trepidation I took some time over the weekend to check the ARC costs (is that repetitive?) of various items in the Dark Eden Catalogue o Kinkitude. There were definitely some big surprises...

QUICK NOTE: The prices listed for the various outfits DO NOT include the hairs. In the first three pictures, I included my own hair designs. Their ARC costs are listed above.

1 to 250

Outfits:
Primkini (52), Shibari Set (125),

Boots:
Tanith Elegance (65), Tanith Engraved (149), Stripped Boots (151), Thetis Boots (176), Phobos Boots (185), Lilith Boots knee high (188), Lilith Boots w thighs (224), Metis Platforms (231)

Other:
First Hair (106), Latex Jacket (134), Metis Skirt (173),

This is the sweet spot, ideally everything would be in this category of very light ARC numbers. Lots of low cost boots from Tanith to Lilith to the Stripped Boots. There are also a couple of simple/minimalist outfits, such as the Shibari set. That's a good way to get your SO all tied up. “But baby the whole set is only 125 ARC! Don't you care about lag?” I am glad my new prim latex jacket design made it here. You can have a funky primjacket thing and still be low lag.

251 to 500

Outfits:
Lilith Set (280), Phobos Set (340), Stripped Set (385),

Boots:
Metis Heel Boots (256), Mania Boots (391), Nemesis Boots (442),

Other:
Sarubobo Belt (299), Second Hair (463),

Okay this is still fairly low ARC as far as I can tell but not the ideal. I am happy that quite a few of my fairly heavy prim sets are still this low. The entire Lilith outfit set is only 280 ARC! That blew me away. The phobos set and the new stripped set are also very reasonable in numbers for such prim heavy outfits. The most prim heavy boots in my catalogue are the new Mania boots and Nemesis boots. It surprised me that my old Nemesis boots are so high. I guess I have to go back and look at what exactly I did with those. Why so high!

501 – 1000

Outfits:
Cephalopod Silks (543), Oshun Set (750),

Other:
Midori Hair (822), Sarubobo Skirt (824),

Now we are getting a bit high, into the yellow zone. The cephalopod silks are fairly low, for silks, at 543 ARC. That's not wonderful but I can live with that, hopefully you can too. Oshun is 750, probably because I used so many textures. The Midori hair is 822 which blew me away at first. Apparently hair is quite ARC heavy in general, who would have thought? That's probably my biggest surprise in all this. Check your hair. That funky flexi wavy hair you're wearing is probably a good chunk of your ARC number.

Another thing that blew me away is the numbers for the Sarubobo Skirt. 824?? 824?? I might need to try a redesign to get those numbers down, that's insane.

1001 +

Outfits:
Mania Set (1052), Kanji Straps (1105), Anath Harness (1139), Nu Kua Set (1143), Erebus Set 1980, Medb Set (3289)

Other:
Kanji Skirt (1342)

Alright... these are the guilty pleasure sets, numbers that I am not happy about. These are also the more roleplaying intensive sets. Going through COLA and New Gomorrah the other day, I found ARC's from 3000 to 6000 to be the norm, so I guess this isn't SO bad.

I used other peoples' hairs in the pictures here, because the outfits would look weird bald. Their costs are not included as I want to focus on the ARC costs of my sets. Also, I feel a bit awkward publicizing other people's ARC's without their consent.

Okay, I knew Medb, that's my fairy set, would be high. 3289 high... This isn't as bad as it sounds, because I don't know about you but I rarely wear all the pieces of this particular set. Second highest Erebus at 1980. I thought it would be higher actually, that's mostly due to all those flexi transparent ribbons. I might try to make a lower ARC variant without them and see how different that is.

Another surprise... the Anath harness is 1139, and for the life of me I don't know why. Its just a leather harness with chromed studs. Also shocking is the Kanji Straps set at 1105. I just don't get it. I'll have to rip these two apart and see if I can get these numbers down some! Finally the shocker for me is the new Mania set. Its loaded with sculpties, chromed spikes, chains, its scripted, and with all this its only 1052 ARC. Clearly I have to go back to the drawing board.



So there you have it... my ARC record for all the world to see. I think I came through it fairly well. I definitely have some lag bombs, but most of my inventory is very reasonable, for prim clothing. I'd be curious how other designers products compare on ARCs. Especially hair!

Dark Eden Girl April: Terry Toland

Congratulations to Terry Toland, our newest Dark Eden Girl! She has an erotic, ethereal quality dressed up as one of our Medb fairies bound in the shibari rope set. She graced us with a writeup of just how she put together this astounding outfit:

I'm a huge fantasy fan and I really wanted to do something original. While I love the disturbing adorable Medb set, I wanted to shine the spotlight on something new. While wandering through the store for inspiration, my eye caught the Shibari set. My gaze went between the coiled ropes and the bound fairies in my outfit before I was caught up with glee- I knew what I was going to shoot! After strapping up and shooting, I'm happy to present my entry, "Bondage Fairy". I used a combination of basic lighting and environmental change to create the atmosphere, and the background is part of the *CWS* Photography System (version 3.0).

This outfit was created with:

- [DE] Shibari Silver Chain set (the primary focus), with some personally modified additions: a 'nice' tag from the White Shibari Tags set group gift added to the top and a mouth-gag made of the same pieces as the Shibari Silver Chain. ((Dark Eden sim))

- Personally modified dragonfly wings, created with parts from the Medb set. ((Dark Eden sim))

- Nomine's Ultralight - Glossy Viridian skin. (((Nomine sim))

- Intense Violent/Obsidian Eyes by *Sin Skins*. ((Sin Skins sim))

- ETD's Lily - Black hair (slightly modified so pieces didn't go into my ears). ((ETD Isle sim))

- Mystic-style jewelry ears in the Fairy style and Natural tones (Tarnished metal and Blush skin used) by *~*Illusions*~* ((Carnivale sim))

Congratulations Terry!

This also means we are officially accepting entries for May. Here is how you enter:

• Take a screenshot of yourself in world. MUST be a screenshot, textures will be disqualified.

• Write up a notecard describing all the clothes, skin, hair, etc you are wearing and where they are from. Look to previous dark eden girls for examples.

• Attach the screenshot to the notecard (just drag and drop it in!)

• Send the notecard to Alexander Stygian.

Its just that simple. I know its a bit of an extra complication but I think its worth it.

Dark Eden Gift Chairs update

We have been experimenting with some new gift chairs lately and they seem to be a big success! How these work is you sit in them for either 30 or 45 minutes, and you get a wonderful prize.
Earlier this morning I finally updated the gifts that they give out. The new giveaways are the Metis Platform Heels in Mistweave (white for those unfamiliar with the DE lingo) in the 45 minute chair and the Mania belts in white in the 30 minute chair.



I hope you enjoy them!