New price ranges and gowns

Greetings!

It's a lovely Friday morning in my neighborhood, I hope it is in yours as well. Today I wanted to write about the new price ranges and other things affecting Greenwood Designs as the year comes to a close.

As of today all gowns in the Old World and Medieval Fantasy lines have been permenently slashed to $350 lindens each. It has always been my intent to have a broader price range of gowns, and this is part of my efforts in that direction. These are all good and lovely gowns, but they're also last seasons and pre-GIMP. So they're less detailed than I would have wished them to be at the time. I have improved on my skills and it's reflected in the new ones just released. All newly released gowns in the Victorian collection will be at the standard $695 price, and of course the Boudoir gowns will stay the same price as well.

With my new GIMP skills I've been making more intricate outfits. It's been a lot of fun seeing these new outfits manifest themselves! I have two new Victorian outfits out already and another one coming out this afternoon. I do hope that you all will enjoy the new offerings!

That's it for now. I have only one last thing to say: Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly, Laugh uncontrollably, And never regret anything that made you smile.


Bright blessings,
Kembri

Relay for Life and my personal connection

Greetings all,

today has been a difficult day in some ways. I found out a week ago that my real life sister-in-law probably has ovarian cancer. They will know for sure after surgery, which is scheduled for a week from tomorrow.

Yesterday I got the invite for Relay for Life's March Fashion show, having been a designer for them last year. I've accepted, and Greenwood Designs will have a store there.

I have mixed feelings. I love my sister-in-law and I don't want her to have cancer, but as hard as it is for me, it's worse for her. Just the sheer terror of knowing you have something like that isn't easy to deal with. For us, her extended family, it's been a week of disbelief with a lot of tears. I would ask for your prayers for her, her name is Mary Ann, and that today you take an extra moment and tell at least one person you love how much they mean to you.

Bright blessings,
Kembri

November firsts

Greetings my friends!

Wow, last night a very exciting thing happened for me. I finished my GIMP course with flying colors! We were supposed to create one men's shirt complete with buttons, pocket, and placket. But last weekend I had a falling off the fence or lightbulb moment. I finally understood how GIMP worked for making clothing. Finally! That moment is like falling off a fence as a teacher friend of mine once told me. That's when the knowledge hits home and everything makes sense!

I spent the last week making clothing. I made four new corsets, three new outfits, one complete one called 'Scarlet Fever', and another one that's still in the works. The second one has a black and bronze brocade corset along with all sorts of other nummy little things. That's called 'Steam Punkin' and is Victorian and done by request. The third outfit is still being finished off, and if I want to be very technical about it, I have a fourth as well.

Oh yes, and I made a shirt to finish the course.

So last night I graduated from the Gimpster's course in Second Life, and will be continuing to work with that set of people to keep abreast of updates to GIMP. There has been a major one about two weeks ago, and GIMP is quickly becoming as powerful as Photoshop and the like. If you're a beginning dressmaker or designer on a tight budget, I recommend you go to www.gimp.org and download the latest GIMP. Then go into Second Life, look for the Gimpster group and take the course. It's well worth the money for it. It lasts ten weeks, and by the end you will have an excellent understanding of the program. That's my plug for today!


The Ghost Hunt was a great success. I had two outfits in that hunt. "Blood Lusty" and "Twilight Screams". Yes, I'll put them for sale in the vendors. I figure you all had your chance to get the outfits for free!



Some other very exciting things are in the wind as well. I realize I've said for about 90 days that I have something very special coming out in SL. Well so I do, but it is taking time to make sure it all works properly. Time and a LOT of hard work! When the time is right, all will be revealed. Until then, look for something around Thanksgiving week.


I'll post some pictures of outfits in a bit. I hope you all step outside and enjoy some small bit of lovely autumn weather!

Bright blessings,
Kembri

Ghost Hunt madness and Halloweenie goodness!

Greetings friends,

wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I have three new releases out. Saucy Bits is a modern line of short short skirts and fall plaids. There are also mid-length and longer skirts in each package, though these aren't really Free Womeen gowns without some adjustments.

I also participated in the great grid wide Ghost Hunt. Our new flagship store, Blisswood, is part of the hunt as is the store at Gorjus Island. So there's two new freebie outfits there. One is called Twilight Screams, the other is Blood Lusty. I have my favorite, I hope you pick them both up and find a favorite too!

I've also been making high heels to go with the short outfits. There's something fun about having matching heels, though I will still always love my ZHAO's! Yes, even designers have favorties.

I've already been working on the winter holiday gowns, with ideas swirling through my head at any given time. I look forward to having a few new things out.

Blisswood, as I mentioned a moment ago, is the new flagship store. It's a lovely place with areas to relax and sit, watch the waves or the sunset, wander the grounds and wave at the peacock, or just hang out and enjoy the ambiance. It's a place that was built out of passion and love, and I hope that feeling of bliss is something I can share with all of you at some point when you stop in to visit. It really is a place meant to stop and relax, not just to shop.

I'm close to completing my GIMP classes. For those of you who don't know, GIMP is a shareware program that is almost as powerful as Photoshop. For a good example of how versatile GIMP is find Bedrock in Second Life and visit it. Yes, that's Bedrock as in the Flintstones! It's a fun sim to visit too, and rated G I think.

Now, for those of you looking for the start of the Ghost Hunt, go to any Greenwood Designs group terminal, join, and ask for the old notices. It'll explain where to start. If worse comes to worse, IM me in world and I'll try to help. The hunt goes until noon on October 31st. There's over 100 stores, and I've already done about 1/3 of the hunt. It's a lot of fun. I've seen stores I'd never heard of before, and found new places to shop! I've also seen some very cool areas. While not ever prize was something I'd consider great, it has still been very enjoyable.

That's it for me today, I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and come by Blisswood sometime soon!

Soft paths,
Kembri

Late night thoughts and new gowns on the horizon

Greetings and salutations!

It's been forever since I last posted. I've been very busy learning new skills for designing. I have always felt I needed to constantly improve my graphic skills. With each new set of gowns I put out, I try to do at least one new thing for them that I haven't attempted before. With the Gypsy Princess gowns it was the V-neck prim ruffles. I love those gowns by the way. They are very richly colored and have a wonderful movement in the skirt.

This next line of gowns coming out soon (October 5th) is called Harvest Home. They're all reflective of this time of year when the harvest is in, but the cold has not yet driven those of us in the more northern climes indoors. This is the time of cool, crisp nights and a sudden shiver down the spine at some far off howling that could be the Wilding on the Hunt. Also known as Annwen's Hunt and other names for the Fae creatures of the Other world hunting for hapless mortals! It is a time when folks play and enjoy the brilliant autumn days. So the Harvest Home gowns are made with this changing time of year in mind. They're also based loosely on a time period of about 1790. I like the flow and line of those gowns, and attempting to do a specific time period is always a challenge. I do term these fantasy gowns however, as SL does not really permit totally faithful copies of gowns without a LOT of hard work and time. There are some very wonderfully talented designers out there that make perfect replicas of period gowns. I'm not one of them! I make my interpretations of the period, adding bits of whimsy and fluff as I see fit. I also keep in mind that the majority of my clients are Free Women and Victorian women and they need a certain degree of modesty in their gowns.

I won't be releasing as many gowns at once as I have in the past. These gowns are more time intensive because there's a lot more work involved. Remember I said learning new graphic tricks? Well, those new tricks take time to master! I'm very picky about what I put out under my name and label, so this time there will probably only be two or three gowns instead of six or so.

Then there's a brand new blow-you-away thing coming around the end of October. I can't reveal much at the moment, but I can tell you Second Life has never, ever seen anything like this in clothing before. I can't really rave enough about this exciting new thing. I've been working on it with a close friend, and when it's released, my flock will be the very first ones to know and have a chance to see and wear them! Now you must be asking yourselves, what in the world could Kembri offer that hasn't been seen in Second Life before? You'll just have to check back or keep an ear open to the in world Greenwood Design group to find out! I promise you, on my honor, that this is very much worth the wait and the excitement.

I wish you all soft paths and joyous, warm days filled with love, laughter, and good friends.

Bright blessings,
Kembri