Butterfly Beach – click any image for full size
Updated May 23rd: to include information on the donation box for the region.
Miro Collas dropped me a tweet suggesting Caitlyn and I take a look at Butterfly Beach, a Homestead region that recently opened to the public. The region has been designed by (the always delightfully named) Funky Banana (FunkyBananas) working with Lien Lowe. Funky was also responsible for Banana Bay, which we enjoyed visiting in the summer of 2017.
Butterfly Beach shares something of a common heritage with Banana Bay: both offer sunny, sandy beaches, a feeling of getting away from it all and an opportunity to relax and simply spend time in thought or with someone. From the air (or the Map) it’s clear how the island came by its name, and a visit starts on what might be considered the butterfly’s upper right wing (actually down towards the south-east corner of the region in terms of Map orientation).
First impressions on arriving is that this could be a small vacation island just off the coast of Italy or perhaps in the Aegean, available to those who want to escape the every day demands of life. A lone, single-story house sits towards the centre of the island, looking to the west and east. Tuscan in style, it shares the low-lying island with a scattering of outhouses: a small stone-built barn, a wooden boathouse and a small beach house, also built from wood.
A wooden deck extends eastward out over the sea a short distance from the house. The fencing around the house seems to lay claim to the deck such that it is easy to imagine wandering across the sand from the house to enjoy breakfast on the deck as the Sun eases its way higher over the eastern horizon.
As might be gathered from the name of the region, beaches are very much the feature of the island. However, rather than offering a single contiguous stretch of coastal sands running around the island, Funky and lien have carefully used small outcrops of rocks and runs of rough grass dotted with bushes to break the island’s sands into a number of discrete – and entirely natural looking – sandy headlands and small, curving coves.
Each of these little beaches has its own attraction, be it a simple blanket laid out on the sand or deck chairs under a parasol, through to a tent or makeshift shelter, all the way to the simply but cosily furnished beach house. Rowing boats and kayaks are drawn up on the sand or undergoing a repaint in the boat shed, swings hang from trees and wooden benches can be found amidst the grass. All of this gives the island an additional attraction and encourages time spent just wandering and appreciating, as well as in sitting and enjoying the setting.
Restful, set beneath an early morning’s summer sky and very photogenic, Butterfly Island is well worth a visit. If you do take photos, there is an open invitation to share them through the region’s Flickr group. A donations “box” in the form of a butterfly can be found near the landing point – so if you enjoy your visit,, do please consider making a donation towards the region’s continued upkeep.
Thanks again to Miro for the pointer, and to chericolette (see her comment below) for the pointer to the donation box, which I’d missed during my two visits to the region!
SLurl Details
- Butterfly Beach (Free Love, rated: Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
I know I’m going to regret this, but I do have to ask you, Inara, if you’re noticing a certain similarity about the places you blog?
What I think I’m seeing is the result of an ever decreasing number of sources of high quality landscaping products and buildings, with the result that there’s an ever increasing number of similar-looking high quality builds.
Or am I missing something?
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Actually, It’s something Caitlyn and I comment on frequently.
There does seem to be a pool of content – notably buildings, furnishings and transport, although landscaping items can also be in the mix – that pop up again and again in region designs. I’m always on the look-out for region designs that do offer something different (and which is accessible / liable to have an appeal among my readership, but the fact is, many individual regions do have certain similarities, one to another.
Many of the items we encounter in this regard are gacha items: “rare” houses and vehicles (the Tuscany designed that often pop-up being a case in point). To me, their constants use might be the result of two things: the fact they are of good (or at least reasonable) quality, and the fact that often, a lot of regions in Second Life tend to be remodelled with the seasons, and certain types of design most ideally suit the season being presented.
So, for example, this time of year we start seeing a lot of spring / summer region designs, many of which sway towards a Mediterranean look, and thus present what seems to be a preponderance of Tuscan style homes, etc. This also naturally leads to a lot of the same trees and other flora appearing across different regions. With winter, people tend to opt for snowy, often rugged / remote outdoors looks – the wilds of North America, Scandinavian scenes, and so on, and thus we get something of a similar thing happening there.
Obviously, certain themes of region can end up holding a lot of similar content simply because the pools of good specialist content for these themes is perhaps in limited supply. I’m thinking here of places like period oriental regions (which often mix a Sino-Japanese look as well).
And, being totally honest, sometimes things might look the same in these pages simply because, while I do try to cast a wide net – and encourage people to tap my about places they find and are impressed by, I am obviously at times biased by my own preferences for place; Asian / oriental regions being a case in point, along with places that offer plenty of wide open spaces and a strong balance of rural and urban. This can inevitably result in familiar items popping up in my blog illustrations, given it combined the points above.
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The ‘donation box’ is a butterfly on the post near the landing spot.
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Thank you! 🙂 I totally missed this – and after two visits at different times!
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