I am still alive ;-)

At least most of the time...

...recently i dug a little more into the art of swordfighting. So it happens from time to time during sparring or a tournament that i "die".

After buying several swords, testing diverse combat meters and reading a lot pages in the i-net i decided to start to create my own weapons.

The reason for that: most swords that i found were either good looking or good working. Many works for some systems only (e.g. many Spellfire weapons).

Currently i am developing a multi-system compatible swordfighting script. Safezone, DCS2, BCS/GCS and Battlezone are already working, for Spellfire i need to buy either licenses for each single sword (300L each) or, if i get enough requests, a developer kit per weapon type (3000L each).

I will try to get my swords certified by several roleplay sims so they can be used in there as well as in tournaments.

My goal wont be to produce the ultimate deadliest "uberkill" weapons, but to make good looking weapons that obey exactly the specs of the different systems, thus creating a fair, level field for all.

More about that when i have some products to display...

Tribal: satanic?

This fine leather necklace holds a tribal pendant ornamented with sharp horns.
Is it "satanic"?

I created it on request for my friend Heckbert as a gift for the lovely Aita.

Workshops and stores

Creating new jewelry is something i cant just do at home in my livingroom (due to prim limits). Instead of having to go to a public sandbox i can work at my workshop in Faerun due to Christi Maeterlinck's generous offer to let me work on the isle whenever i like.



At the moment you can buy my products inworld at:

Isle of Faerun
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Faerun/144/184/26

Outside SL you can find my stuff at

Xstreet SL
https://xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=52287

Samarkand crown jewels

My biggest task so far:

I met Lanalii Nishi October, 13th at the opening of the beautyful Freyas Desire on the island of asgard. She seemed to like my jewelry and asked me if i could develop the crown jewels for her and Creyes Beresford, the soon to be queen and king of Samarkand.

I had a picture of the symbol of the city of Samarkand:



and the titel "golden rose" for Lanalii to start with.

I choose to trace the outlines of the symbols with tiny prims to create the crests and then merge them for the final Samarkand royal crest.

The coronation was held on November, 3rd at the palace of Samarkand.
It was a wonderful ceremony and a great party afterwards!
I took a lot of pictures, you can look at them at my flickr place: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ca_sands/

These are the crown jewels i made for the coronation of Creyes Beresford and Lanalii Nishi as Khagan (king) and Khanum (queen) of Samarkand:

Lanalii's jewels:



Creyes' crown jewels:




Each got a crown, a royal necklace and a handpiece with the crests on them.
Additionally they got a special necklace to give to their loyal followers...


And as a little extra... the Coat of Arms Shield of the new Royal family:




As a reward i was promoted to the Royal Tala Saaz (goldsmith) of Samarkand, a title that i wear with honour and pride!

Cat's heart

Around October, 10th Salamander Maroon asked me if i could create a necklace with a heart as a special gift to Cat Gisel. After some days of fiddling with tiny pearls "Cat's heart" was born:



It is made out of 119 prims, the heart itself being 83 ;-)
I learned a lot about positioning 2mm and 1.6mm pearls onto 3 dimensional surfaces while creating this...

Balance of Power

The Balance of Power came to life after i created some crosses with pentagrams on them. It seemed neccessary to create a "light" as well as a "dark" version to keep the balance...

(below is the text of the group notice i sent out for this)

Greetings, you Fighters and Warriors out there!

This time i made necklaces for men. Real MEN, that is!

To keep the Balance of Powers intact we need fighters for the good as well as the evil forces in the multiverse!

(If the need arises i will create corresponding jewelry for the Ladies too...)

best regards,
ChrisAlex, creator of powerful artifacts ;-)

Trapped! earrings

One evening while showing some friends how to play with tiny prims i put together these tiny earrings:



A small red pearl cought in the middle of a silver cage, surrounded by darkness...
That poor little pearl is:

Trapped!

These tiny earrings bring that extra sparkle into your life. You can be sure that only those you look really close can see the mystery that lies within them!

The earrings come in a nice gift box.

Spine claws

Something completely different: a warrior asked me if i could make some implants for him. So here they are...

These claws were implanted into a warriors spine.

They protect the back and are a vicious weapon in close combat!

I take no responsibility for damage done to others or furniture ;-)

White Laurel of Peace

This is a custom creation for a good friend of mine. He asked me to design his crest for the homestone "White Laurel of Peace". The design was the most complicated so far. I made necklaces and hand pieces in a male and female version each. A picture of the female hand piece can be seen below.



Since this is a custom creation i will not sell this to anyone.

Brisingamen Pentagram necklace

The Brisingamen, necklace of the norsk goddess of love and beauty, Freya.

Although very little is known about the actual looks of this precious necklace many sources in the internet show this pentagram as the "Brisingamen Pentagram".

(should anyone possess knowledge about the look of the "real" Brisingamen, please tell me...)

Just Pearls! black

Since the plain, elegant pearl necklaces turned out to be an article often asked for (and in black, too) i made a complete set in black:

a short necklace (preattached to the spine to be easily combined with either the long or the double stranded)

a long necklace

a double stranded necklace

small earrings and

long earrings

in one "Mega set" or to be bought piece by piece.

Useful info: my jewelry and the "shiny" thing

My lovely Natasja told me she couldnt see some details in some of my creations. It turned out she hadent activated the "shiny" setting in her graphics settings. Maybe this is a default in SL?

Since my creations all rely on the shinynes of the materials this should be turned on...

So now i include the following note in my new sets:

Thank you for purchasing these fine jewels!

To enjoy them the way i designed them it is essential that you set the "Bumpmapping and Shiny" switch in the
preferences menu / Graphic Details on:



otherwise you see something like this:

Infinity! set gold / green

(Text taken from my ad on shop.onrez.com)

Made of the finest tortured prims and without any textures or bling scripts,

this necklace and earrings reveal their true beauty only to those who take a close look.

Watch the sunset reflect inside the hollowed beads and dream of:

Infinity !



This gold / green edition was made to harmonize with that beautiful black/golden dress i wear on the snapshot ;-)

Just Pearls!

You surely know the problem: you found the perfect dress for that ball, but your jewelry case just wont show the right necklace to go with it.....

You do not have to look any further!

Here comes the solution: this plain elegant pearl necklace and the small pearl earrings add that little extra to make your outfit complete!

Just pearls! are made of finest prim pearls only,no strings, textures or bling added!

A "short" version of the set is also available.

Infinity! necklace

This was my second creation. I played with spheres, twisted and hollowed them. Using the infinity sign i used on my bicolor series before i made the centerpiece (10 pearls cought in a hollow sphere behind the infitity sign).

A Glow in the Dark!

On the evening of September, the 18th, while talking with my friends Aita and Heckbert, i played with a "skullptie" and some horns and "alas" "A Glow in the Dark" was born:



We decided to make this available as a limited edition of 10.

Infinity bicolor bracelet male

The male version of this timeless bracelet comes in inverted colors, and is made more massive to better fit a strong mans arm!

LinkRez tool

Ahhhh, the bad, bad L-word...

Some people think using tools like the fantastic LinkRez script made by Ged Larsen automatically disqualyfies a jeweler. I beg your pardon: noone would be able to pay jewelry in RL if jewelers didnt use automated tools (machines) to support their work.

Whenever i have to use necklaces or similar structures i can concentrate on designing the centerpieces and beads, programming the design and manually correct the results i get from Ged's "machine".

It really helps a lot to save time for me to create new designs instead of having to align bead by bead manually.

Another big advantage is that i can use this machine to create perfectly fitting jewelry by measuring the clients neck.


If anyone thinks (s)he can make better creations than mine by just buying Ged's tool and pushing a button: sure, go ahead! Show me your creations!


To be honest: i think no good jeweler will lose profit just due to the existence of these tools, but maybe one or the other might even create more wonderful things if (s)he got more time by using them...

If you want the ready made product look more "natural" you can always adjust the beads a little after creating the necklace ;-)

best regards,
ChrisAlex Sands

CA logo

My "CA" logo was born on September 10th:

Infinity bicolor, my first attempt in creating jewelry

Just around the beginning of September 2007 i stumbled over an infinity sign while i was torturing some prims. Adding some rings in different sizes and colours i made my first set, the Infinity bicolor set:

In the beginning...

Once upon a time there was a girl (or was it a man?) called ChrisAlex Sands.
(S)he lived in the fabulous world of Second Life where (s)he became, after trying several other professions ;-)... a jeweler.

This blog is about the life and the creations of ChrisAlex, my avatar(s) in second life.

(Where i actually i started as a woman, nowadays i switch between both, just as neccessary to fit the jewelry i am creating or have to show to someone...)

Behind the keyboard i am a man, happily married and unfortunately not able to create such nice jewelry as i can inside second life (SL).

When i started in SL i soon realized there where thousands of necklaces, earrings, bracelets and whatever made for every taste, but: many of them really hurt my eyes!

All this "bling, bling" (made by particle emitting scripts inside the jewelry), many "fake" items using just a board textured with a picture of some diamonds to create a "crown"...

Then i stumbled over the wonderful creations made by Random Calliope.

From now on i knew that there where different ways to create fine jewelry in SL and my desire to do this myself grew.

Someday i started by analysing some of the pieces i was able to get, tried to recreate close copies of what i saw:
hmm, maybe if i use a cylinder, cut it here... no... a tube then, maybe... no, not either... maybe then if i twist this and cut here.... bingo!

Of course i will never give out any of the items i "recreated" that way, for i respect and admire the original designers work to much!

But that way i learned how to create and use what is called "micro prims" in second life.

I use them to assemble any design that comes to my mind (or to create whatever a customer may want).

I will try to document my creations here to make them visible to people outside the world of second life too....

Have fun, whatever you do,
ChrisAlex Sands