Writer|Photographer: Teresa Firelight
Create Landscape Beauty For Your Home
I would like to talk about how to convert a home at a “mundane” location into a thing of beauty. For this article, I choose a 1024 Newbooke in a neighborhood that did not have any of the classic “desirable” landscaping… no ponds, lakes or streams. No community pools or parks. This is a neighborhood of house after house, without much nature separating them. (This article talks about the Newbrooke, but you can do something similar with just about any linden home in any neighborhood.)
(Click on images to enlarge)
Make Your Home Beautiful
I selected the Bradbury model because it had a lot of windows to allow me to see the beautiful exterior I planned to make.
I intended to put most of my emphasis on the exterior, so I planned for a low LI interior. (This is not to say a plain or unattractive interior – there are ways to make it lovely without using a lot of LI. I will cover that in my next article.) The interior took 75 LI. I wanted to leave a buffer of 50 LI for things like kittycats, short term rezzes, etc. That left me an allowance of 226 LI for my exterior (351 – 75 – 50). As it turned out, I did not need quite that many.
Before
After
I chose to use a pond for a front yard. You could do the same exact style but use grass or ground cover where I put the water. But for me, I love water. Since there was no lakes or streams or even small ponds in my view, I made my own.
With yard instead of a pond
There are three keystones to making my beautiful exterior/yard:
1. The Needful Prims Bradbury Exterior Paint Shell, created by Christhiana Resident (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chinati/235/47/22). This shell is low LI, and it fits perfectly without flickering. It positions itself automatically, and locks into place. I unlocked it, then re-textured it using a nice brick texture. (The Newbrooke Homes come with a lot of exterior textures, but I wanted something different and unique but still in theme.) I used the Bradbery shell, but Needful Prims makes excellent exterior shells for pretty much all of the themes and house models.
Front Pond (close up)
2. The Skye water System 1.2.1, which I purchased from the marketplace (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Skye-Water-System-Natural-Water-Materials-Enabled/7483345). It seemed a little expensive (L$ 899) when I bought it, but it has been WELL worth the price. It allows you to make very realistic looking water in a variety of sizes and shapes. I made the pond’s frame from simple prims, which I textured from the Newbrooke’s content creation pack. I built it where I wanted the water to go, and put a lower concrete layer (a very thin flat prim) under it so that the grass would not peep through. Then I added the water on top, selecting the size closest to my frame size from the kit. Then I resized it to fit perfectly. Of course, I made the water phantom so that your feet sink into it if you should happen to step into the water. I added a few water lilies, lotus flowers and koi fish to the pond to complete the effect.
Front Steps
3. The Newbrooke Home’s Content Creation Pack. This comes free with the house. This creation pack has a lot of nice low LI stuff to decorate with – all of which looks very professional and is very easy to work with. Most of my build was either pieces from the kit or prims textured from the kit. Let me explain how I used this in a little more detail.
I resized a planter to 3.34 x 0.9 x 0.36 and loaded it with two “Hydrangea A – white” and one “PeaceLily1 – Purple,” then linked the pieces together into a single easy-to-work-with piece. Then I pretty much alternated 2 planters with 1 potted HedgeBush – making a sort of perimeter around the house/pond/deck. I used double potted plants in a few places, like on either side of the main entrance. Framing the parcel with flowers and bushes is a great technique to make a home look lovely.
Back Pond
I wanted to isolate my house from the houses behind and beside it, so I used the High 6M fence from the Content Creation Pack. I filled in the areas that did not already have mole fencing. There was one tiny place where I had to use an off-parcel extender (e.g, rez a cube and texture it transparent, then link the fence piece to the cube. Leave the cube on your parcel and edit-linked to slide the fence piece out about a meter to line up with the existing Linden fence.) You have to be careful when doing that because it is against covenant to block off public areas for your own use. But this was a case where it was only a meter and lined up with an existing fence and was in an area where I doubt anyone would want to walk.
Since I had water, I needed some sort of steps to get from the sidewalk to the front door. I made them out of two prims. One was hollow and was textured with the “Newbrooke – Exterior Metal Diffuse” texture. (I had to tint a bit to get a perfect match with the metal on the house). The other prim was just a solid prim sized to fit in the hole of the first. I textured that one with “Newbrooke – Concrete – Diffuse.”
Back Patio
I also used this technique to make the little platforms for the trees and art. Some of the platforms went into the water and others were placed on the deck. Because the steps and platforms were textured from the content creation pack, they matched perfectly and looked like part of the original build.
There are a couple of other items that might be worth mentioning. The Art I used came from two places. The pond statue is from Akina Creations (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Metal-Coil-3-revised-base/9046678) and the wall art is from Petrichor (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/P-Fatpack-Leava-Wallpanels/13637436). The Water Lilies and Lotus flowers in the pond came from Botanical (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Botanical-Waterlily-Clusters/7849030) and Fantasy China (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/18022/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bcategory_id%5D=&search%5Bmaturity_level%5D=GMA&search%5Bkeywords%5D=lotus)
BBQ Area
The deck chair set is the PacificSetChair from Kazza (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/KAZZA/128/128/22) and the barbecue is the Palisades BBQ Grill Set from What Next (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hodgepodge/113/98/31).
I hope this article will inspire you with ideas on how to create your own beauty in whatever Bellisseria parcel you land in.
Newly added Listings. Week of June 12th. 2022
For the week of June 12th. 2022, we have 3 new listings this week to share with you.
| NEW LISTINGS | WEEK OF 12.06.22 |
| ::mystic:: belle Cozy hideaway. Rez a leaf sailboat and explore the mystical seas. Under Resident Owned Places of Interest Listings. |
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| Uchi No Ichika Teahouse A Relaxing Teahouse Retreat Under Resident Owned Places of Interest Listings. |
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| The Submissve Refuge A refuge for submissives Under Resident Owned Places of Interest Listings. |
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