So much to post, so little time

Where to begin?
Ah yes, what have I done since my last post here? Well, I've been busy. A lot.

Firstly: I built another version of the Shop Ship (and remade the logo).

My business partner Gorkie had a moment of "no sense in keeping all this boring stuff" and took all SLC and VIVIANE Fashion vendors down, leaving the Shop Ship nearly empty. So I started to talk some sense into her, and even built a bigger ship: a 70m long, 35m wide catamaran, with 4 floors to fill.
Then, we removed everything from our land sweetgorkie Island, and I put the new Shop Ship, and another house there - of course the big medieval well and its smaller brother found their place, too.
Now, visitors of our land arrive on a kind of a kind of L-shaped landing dock, and have to walk alongside the ship to reach our house. :P

 

This is the Shop Ship as seen from the Linden Sea. The wall at the left and behind belongs to one neighbor's Japan-themed parcel. If you look closely, you will see that the landing dock in front of the Shop Ship directly leads to the Big Medieval Well which is shadowed by that wall. And yes, the tiny figure there on the dock is me :)

The palms and beach behind the ship belongs to another neighbor who lives on the corner piece of the sim and obviously prefers to be left in peace, as the ban lines are showing.

 

Here it's me near the TP point, and we see the Shop Ship from the front, with the loading/entrance gate open. It clearly can be seen that it is a catamaran, that it has four floors above the water surface, and that it's even bigger than my house on the left... The tree house though in the background left belongs to that neighbor on the corner parcel.

Through  the gate of the ship, you can see the new logo of my shop to the right, and the vendors of VIVIANE Fashion in the background. 

The thing stuck in the floor is a VIRWOX™ vendor that I couldn't move due to permissions of VIRWOX's own avatar - but, I'll have it repositioned shortly.

When I made this screenshot, the second floor wasn't entirely filled yet, that's why it looks like empty here. 

The third floor which also looks empty on this screenshot will soon be filled with the products and/or vendors of a friend of my Mistress, the marvelous, multi-talented creator Haven Ditko. I know a small part of her products already because i was allowed to help create vendor pics for her some months ago, upon a favor i did for my Mistress. Miss Haven has created lots of heart-warming, beautiful and wonderfully scripted and sculpted garden and fantasy stuff - and that was even before she added even more to her shown talents, like animations, photography and so on. I wish I were as talented a content creator as she is. *sigh*

Here another look on the first floor of the Shop Ship, shot from where a few of my Virwox vendors are standing.:

Yes, I renamed my own shop to "Gem's Timber Works", because most things I build are either mainly made of wood (according to the textures), or have parts made of wood - and timber is another word for it.
You see that there are a lot of "VIVIANE Fashion" vendors in the background now. I know it's many more than ever had place in and around the former version of the Shop Ship. I think it's three times as many - on this floor alone.

Here I stand in the back of the ship, near its backside terrace door. You see here  that the Shop Ship is really big. No complains about "to narrow aisles" and "cam problems while shopping" anymore. And with 5m height, the floor is also high enough I think. The only problem while shopping on board of the Shop Ship ought to be the huge selection of products now. On either side of the center stairway, there are shoes - heels on one side, sneakers on the other.

Here's a look on the second floor now:

You see, there is an entire hair shop now in the front: matching the name of the parcel, sweetgorkie Island, it's sWEET HAIRs which has been chosen as franchise partner. It's one of the handful hair designers where you can buy really life-like flexi hair of nearly all styles and colors.
And, there's even more of VIVIANE in the back of this floor.

As already mentioned, the third floor will be filled with Haven's vendors soon (and maybe with added vendors by other creators of a similar theme).

The fourth floor of the Shop Ship though is being furnished as a club. There'll be no vendor at all on that floor, just the dance machines and the DJ desk that are already there, plus some chairs and tables to rest from dancing or shopping.
Miss Haven sponsored one of these dance machines, while the other one, a dance machine for handicapped avatars, was sponsored by a friend of Gorkie, Alexis Odger - who devotes much of her time and creative talents to help disabled residents both to run SL despite their handicaps, and to mirror their RL handicaps in SL - some rather prefer to see their avatars as handicapped as they are in RL.



So that's about what I've done in SL so far - aside of serving my Mistress, working on new products for my own shop, learning, and having fun with my friends...

In RL though, I still work on writing part 2 of "Mirror Visions". I currently battle with myself about entirely giving up the illustrating part - somehow I never am satisfied enough with pictures intended to become illustrations for my story. And I have the nagging feeling that a huge deal of the current two chapters rather fits into an alternative plot than into the storyline originally planned for this book.
But such things can happen when one lets the characters decide where they want to go...

Hunter

(© Lyra Lestrange, http://belsina.deviantart.com/ - with friendly permission)

I am a hunter - and I represent a part of the prey as well :)

At the SLinside Helau & Alaaf Hunt,  a carnival related gift hunt that started on Saturday (Feb 19th) and goes on to March 9th, the Shop Ship is #16 of 56 shops that are to be visited to gather the gifts. These gifts are packed into balloon animals which are hidden somewhere in these shops.

see also → here ←

To hide the Shop Ship gift, I put dozens of balloons in any accessable and/or visible room in and on the Shop Ship *grin*

 Those who open our hunt gift will be surprised: Aside of gifts related to the hunt theme (made both by me and Gorkie), there is also an item in it I haven't even offered to sale YET.

So, why do I post this today, belatedly as the hunt started two days ago?
Why, that's easy: I wanted to use the hunter picture above as a starter for my post - and waited for the permission to use it. Thank you once again, Belsina.

A Promotion, and News from the Shop Ship

While I made my display name Gem out of a compromise (my slave name, plus upper case for role play reasons) I wondered all the time what my Mistress would say about that. Since Display names can only be changed once a week, I then wanted to change it to gem, lower case, in Her presence, to show my slave status. But my Mistress objected. She even asked if I would want to argue with Her. Of course not. So, my display name stays upper case, and my blog is renamed likewise, and my shop as well :)

Speaking of the shop: the shop ship becomes more and more serious business.
It has it's own logo,

my part in it has it's own shop banner,

(I'm still working on a square logo to advertize only my products too)

and I changed the look of my ad images as well.
from (for example) this:

to THIS look:

Plus, Gorkie uses a Web Ad service to help us advertize both our shops: her SLC  Franchise, and my builds :)
I'm glad that my Mistress gives me enough lenience to let me run my business, to try make Her proud in all things I do.