Easy on the budget and the eyes

O.K. let’s not beat around the bush. For starters, why are we beating “around” the bush and not “in” the bush? But life is too short for spending much time on such philosophical questions, so instead I’ll move along quickly to the discussion of an almost-free look I created with some fabulous new pieces and a couple of golden oldies.

I went back to the combination of the free TMP mesh body and the classic avatar head, a.k.a. system head. For a more elaborate review of this free body, I refer to one of my older posts. The skin you see on the body is one of its 30 built-in skin tones and for the system head I have used Odin by 7 Deadly S[k]ins which currently is one of the prizes in their store hunt, running until the end of October. You do need to be a member of their group to be able to hunt for the pumpkins that contain all the goodies, but the group fee is only L$ 225. You can get the hair from Argrace as a group gift and there is no fee for joining that particular group.

The boxer shorts come free with the TMP body and if you have a bit of spare cash, you’ll find that you will be able to wear designer underwear with the free body, as those often have been made in such a way that you don’t need to alpha-out any body parts. Well, they usually don’t cover much of your ass anyway.

The coat and t-shirt are from Aitui, the scarf is from ::K:: and the shoes are from ILLI. All of these can be found in the current Men Only Hunt which runs until 28th October. You can get the hud for this hunt at the Flair For Events office. The skinny trousers are a group gift from Gild and again, you can join this group for free.

The free TMP body does not have an alpha hud. If your are quite new to all of this, you may not know that this means you will not be able to stop body parts from sticking through clothes (how rude!). I am only wearing the TMP hands with this outfit and to be able to do that, I’m using an alpha layer from a pair of free gloves to hide my system hands. Unfortunately Aitui does not support classic avatars with their latest creations, so there was no alpha layer supplied with the coat and t-shirt. I borrowed one from an old sweater, but as the t-shirt is rather low cut, there was a gap which I cleverly covered up with the scarf. There is no alpha layer for the shoes either, but I used one from a pair of boots. I believe it is possible to create your own alpha layers, but I don’t want things to get too technical here.

All the while I was hearing Tim Gunn in my head, telling me to “make it work”. Is this a perfect look? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the standard avatars.