No water? Make puddles!

All done!

Well, at least for the Fashion for Life clothing fair. All the sims are in monochrome, so the only colors are the vendors and other stuff that the merchants have set down.

Because of my tight schedule, I was hoping I could use an existing store layout, like the ones I have at the new Sirens Mer Mall and the Female Tribe Mall. But, the rules for the Fashion for Life event was that we weren't allowed to cover the walls with colored prims.

The Mer Betta store is by the edge of a sim connecting to another, but there was no water in sight. So, I had to create some.

And then, they changed the rules yesterday to allow merchants to cover the walls with colored prims. This, after I had already spent a whole day designing and implementing a new store design. *sigh*

Come and see the puddles, as well as the new gowns. Three colors of the gown and a new sexy photography prop are on sale to benefit the RFL.

The Fantasy Faire store will be different, because that's a different configuration, so it's worth going to both events.

If you missed the purple Mer Betta RFL2010-Owain tail last year, I'll be resurrecting it in April at the Fantasy Faire and the main store.

Mer Betta loves Darwin

You've seen it before. You're driving along in real life and then you follow a car or an SUV or a truck with that witty evolutionist's response to the Christian fish symbol.

Those things always make me smile.

But growing legs is an everyday occurrence in Second Life. And even mers love to dance cheek-to-cheek in the moonlight under a canopy of stars. But does a mermaid have to lose her identity when she's swept off her tail?


Introducing....



The first of (hopefully) a long line of Mer Betta On Land mermaid gowns. It comes in thirteen colors.

A very contemporary design incorporating details from Mer Betta tails. If you look closely, the fabric has a hint of scales throughout, and the "ruffles" are made of betta caudal fins, specifically, the caudal fins of the Mer Betta RFL2010Owain tail that went on sale at last year's Relay for Life.

At long last, Mer Betta ventures beyond the beach and goes far inland. How's that for Darwinism? ;)


But, wait! Hold your seahorses!

It won't be available until March 12, when the Fashion for Life clothing fair opens. (See below for details.) And two of the colors (RFLOwainLavender and RFLOwainOnWhite) will be available only until this year's Relay for Life of Second Life fundraising season ends.

Mer Betta will be in TWO Relay for Life events this year:

• March 12-22 is the Fashion for Life. This is the first year that Mer Betta was invited to participate in this event, so it's a big deal for me.
  
  
  
• April 2-12 is the Fantasy Faire. I am sponsoring the mer sim again this year as I did last year.
  
  
  

Back in Sirens Mer Mall

Mer Betta is back in the Sirens Mer Mall. It's under new management. I've met with Matisse, one of the owners, and he's a funny guy, so I'm gonna stick around there for a few months and see if he could bring up the traffic to make it worth the rent.

Go check out what I did with the booth there. It's the same way I did the booth at the Female Tribe mall. I might do the booths for the RFL fairs the same way; I haven't decided yet.


Getting organized in social media

Because of a book I'm writing and a new RL venture I'm starting, Opal is no longer anonymous and I've had to reorganize my social presence. It's a big mess, but, suffice it to say:

• The Mer Betta website has a new look.  Check out the "Blog, etc" page.
• Please "Like" the Mer Betta page in Facebook.
• The Twitter account formerly called "Mer Betta" is now "Wild Opal Lei", due to Twitter restrictions on accounts.  I'll still post Mer Betta stuff there; you just need to keep an eye on the "#MerBetta" tweets.