Whole Lotta Love

When I heard that my good friend Shir Dryke was sick and in desperate need of a surgery, I knew that I had to do whatever I could to help. Flutter Memel, Annah Whitfield, Dove Swanson and I decided to form Heart of Love to help her raise money for her surgery.

The goal was to raise 700,000L in under a month. Desperate times demand desperate measures, so, inspired by the success and fun of last year's Another Fundraiser, I asked myself "what would happen if I shared my Blowpop Tuesday skins with a diverse and eclectic group of SLers, and let them go wild on them?"

Well, what happened is a whole lot of hot sticky makeup love. Pictured above is the first batch of Heart of Love skins, available for an extremely limited time at the Heart of Love Charity Fair on 100Limite. Its a varied and fun collection of looks from a fantastic group of creators.

Now I was having a lot of fun seeing what everyone did and putting them all together,when lo and behold, the outpouring of love from the Second Life community has been so overwhelming, we already hit the target total before the skins even went on sale! Its truly humbling to see people come together in someone's time of need like this . So, the goal's been reached, but there's no reason not to keep the love flowing. So all the proceeds from sales of Heart of Love skins will be donated to Relay for Life.

So there it is. I want to thank everyone who so generously donated time and money, and I want to give special thanks to the makeup artists who did such amazing work:
Amyla Wakowski
Ana Lutetia
Annah Whitfield
Antonia Marat
Averie Larnia
Autumn Hykova
Felicity Blumenthal
Grazia Horwitz
Hibiscus Flossberg
Shelly Toonie
Shir Dryke
Swirly Cyclone
Tenshi Vielle
Voshie Paine
Willow Zander
Tallyho Shawbridge (coming soon)

* and thanks to Dove for helping with the pics, and Cat Magellan for the space!

There are more makeups coming in and I hope to put them up for sale at the charity fair as soon as I can.

<3
Annyka Bekkers

ColourLovers Loves SL

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the site ColourLovers?

Its one of those color palette community sites, like Adobe's Kuler, where you can create and share colors and palettes, and get community feedback and such. These people really do love color! Consider the following:

"Nothing says love like the green surgical gloves of a doctor going inside you body holding a very sharp tool."

or...

"It’s close to a mix of Aurora Red and Burnt Orange but maybe with a little Barry White, a fireplace and a chilly fall evening thrown in."

These people really do love colors!

But what I love most about ColourLovers is their blog, which has such fascinating and inspiring articles as:

The Colors Of Salt Evaporation Ponds



The Colors Of Corrosion: Rusty Palettes



and, my favorite:
More Than Black & Blue: The Color Of Bruises




So as if I didn't already love the ColourLovers already, their latest post is all about Second Life!

Color Inspiration from the Virtual Worlds of Second Life








Anyway, give it a read. There's tons of great stuff on it!

From the Illustrators Partnership of America: Orphan Works Act News

Spreading this post from the Illustrators Partnership of America. If youre a creator, the Orphan Works Act affects you and your creations, and its about to pass through Congress. Read about the implications here and email your congressman before our copyrights are sold down the river.
____________________________________________________________________

SEPT 27 Yesterday, in a cynical move, the sponsors of the Senate Orphan Works Act passed their controversial bill by a controversial practice known as hotlining.

With lawmakers scrambling to raise 700 billion dollars to bail out businesses that are “too big to fail,” the Senate passed a bill that would force small copyright holders to subsidize big internet interests such as Google, which has already said it plans to use millions of the images this bill will orphan.

With the meltdown on Wall Street, this is no time for Congress to concentrate our nation’s copyright wealth in the hands of a few privately owned corporate databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet this bill would compel creators to risk their own intellectual property to supply content to these corporate business models. That means it would be our assets at risk in the event of their failure or mismanagement.

As David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts has said, the Orphan Works bill would socialize the expense of copyright protection while privatizing the profit of creative endeavors. Copyright owners neither want nor need this legislation. It will do great harm to small businesses. We already have a banking crisis. Congress should not lay the groundwork for a copyright crisis.

– Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Illustrators’ Partnership

NOW FOR PLAN B

We MUST try to stop the House Judiciary Committee from folding their bill (HR5889) and adopting the Senate version.

PLEASE EMAIL CONGRESS TODAY.
If you’ve done it before, do it again!

It takes only a minute to use our new special letter.
Click on the link below, enter your zip code, and take the next steps.
Thanks to all of you who heeded the call to action yesterday.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

Over 70 organizations oppose this bill, representing over half a million creators.
Illustrators, photographers, fine artists, songwriters, musicians, and countless licensing firms all believe this bill will harm their small businesses. The Illustrators Partnership Capwiz site is open to professional creators and any member of the image-making public.

New Makeups at Blowpop!!!

The Vivid Collection in Honey

I know, its been very quiet on the Blowpop front. But I'm making up for it by releasing 18! colorful new makeups for my Tuesday skins.

Part of the reason its taken me so long to release them is there was no room in my shop, so I needed to build a new, bigger store to fit them all. It started as a gorgeously grungy warehouse prefab by Kai Sion of 5th dimension, but I did some heavy modding fit my needs. Now I've finally got the space to hang the pictures from the August Flickr contest!





p.s. if you happen to be in the Blowpop Update Group, be sure not to miss the exclusive free goodie I just sent out in the notices!



Grouplove gift. Tuesday - Ocean Size, in Cream and Caramel

BLowpop Army Flickr Photo Contest Results

Ok, so its taken a bit longer to pick the winners from the Flickr Photo Contest than I had anticipated. There were just so many images that I loved, but i could only pick 5.

So, without further ado, here are the results:

First Prize:

"your doll." by Miabella Foxley


Runners-up, in no particular order:


"Just Peachy" by Torrid Midnight


"Blowpop II" by Valena Glushenko


"JungleChoi1" by Choi Zhangsun


"Hush" by Mochi Milena

(I'm still behind on remodeling my shop, because my simple remodeling plan got alot more ambitious, so I won't be ready to display these for a few days or so, but I'll have some great wallspace for them.)

I want to thank everyone who entered photos in the contest. There really was such an amazing amount of creativity, and it is just so exciting for me to see all the different ways that folks wear thier Blowpops. It really is amazing. I just make flat skins, but you all make them come alive, and that's what really makes doing this so much fun.

Decisions, Decisions...

See all of the entries in the Blowpop Blowpop Flick Photo Contest

I want to thank everyone again for submitting such gorgeous photos to the contest. Its not easy picking winners out of so many beautiful images. I'm a bit behind in choosing because I've had a pretty crazy week in RL, and I don't want to rush it, but I'll be announcing winners soon, I promise!

Flickr Contest Reminder

www.flickr.com See more in the Blowpop Army pool tagged with blowpopaugustcontest

I hope this flickr badge thingie works. Just wanted to post some random pics from the Blowpop Flickr contest and remind anyone who's interested that the deadline is this coming Wednesday, August 20 at 9pm SL.I also wanted to remind everyone that in order to be counted, photos must be tagged with "blowpopaugustcontest". Otherwise i won't know if theyre in the contest or not. Full rules here

One thing I know, I'm gonna have a hell of a time choosing winners. I'm totally floored by the entries already. I'm gonna stop looking til its all done.

(btw, the pics are totally random Flickr Badge thingie. They change with every refresh)