Blogposts about the best bargains and freebies in the virtual world of Second Life! Posts about steals, deals, and free items, including hunt prizes and lucky chairs.
If your female avatar likes to wear pink, then do I have a bargain for you! Every October, the Beauty Factory womenswear store has an event to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this year, they are giving away a big pink box stuffed to overflowing with pink outfits. Baby pink, hot pink, and every shade of pink in between! Just teleport to the Beauty Factory store, join their group for only L$98, and click on the big pink box in the centre lobby to pick up your copy (see black arrow):
Find a spot with build rights, and unpack the big pink box. Inside are five more boxes, and inside those five boxes are a total of two hundred and seventy-four items of clothing! You’ll have to unpack each item separately, which might take you a little while, but it is so worth it!
Dresses, gowns, jumpsuits, rompers, tops, pants, leggings, fishnet, you name it—if it’s pink, it’s in there!! All items fit Maitreya Lara and Lara-compatible mesh bodies (e.g. LucyBody Atenea and Kalhene Analexa). Most items also come in a size to fit the Meshbody Legacy body, and a few come in sizes to fit Belleza Freya and INITHIUM Kupra.
Second Life supermodel Vanity Fair models just a few of these outfits (please click on each image in the gallery below to see it in a bigger size):
Emma dressDeby top and shortsBeatriz dressLux top, Adore leggingsAshe jumpsuit
If you were not already a member of the Beauty Factory store group, your L$98 join fee nets you 274 gifts from the big pink box, PLUS another 22 group gifts from their spacious Gift Room, on the opposite side of the wall where you picked up the big pink box (exact SLURL). That’s a total of 296 items for only L$98, which works out to L$0.33 per item—a deal by any measure!
The catch is, you need to act quickly, because this bargain only runs until noon (Second Life Time/Pacific Time) of Friday, October 21st, 2022. So hurry down!
The Hallowe’en 2020 Shop and Hop event is back, with 16 sims groaning with free gifts for you! Every booth has at least one free gift, and a few of them offer more than one! This popular shopping event runs from Oct. 6th to Nov. 1st, 2022. Here’s a handy alphabetical list of all the vendors participating.
As before, I am NOT going to cover the Shop and Hop event in detail here on the blog. Instead, I have compiled a notecard of my picks for the best and most fabulous freebies, free store credit offers, and gift cards, and posted it to the Second Life group I maintain, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (the group costs L$50 to join; more information here). My notecard includes the exact SLURL for each freebie, for you to pop in, pick up your gift, and move on to the next score, for the most efficient freebie shopping experience! (Note that SL’s list of stores in the paragraph above has several SLURLs which stick you behind store walls!)
As always, there are many offers of free store credit and gift cards; here are my picks:
Addams – L$300 (group join fee L$5)
Blackstone – L$300
GGVG – L$500
Luna Chelsea – L$500
MALified – L$400
Mirage (home decor) – L$500
Nuve – L$300 (expires Oct. 31st, 2022)
Poison Rouge – L$350
Paper Sparrow – L$500 (join group for free; credit expires on Dec. 1st, 2022)
PRO TIP: Grab that L$500 gift card for Luna Chelsea and head over to the footwear section in their main store (exact SLURL), where you can pick up five L$99 fatpacks (over 70 colours!) of a wide variety of women’s shoes and boots, like these Destiny classic leather pumps (which also come in patent leather and suede versions):
Stock up on shoes using the L$500 gift card at Luna Chelsea, and you may never need to buy shoes for your avatar again! (Haha, just kidding, of course you will…)
Here’s a completely free vampire outfit I was able to pull together, using a combination of free gifts and free store credit, and taking advantage of discounted prices at the Hallowe’en Shop and Hop:
the Blood Vamp outfit is the gift from the Be Bold booth, and it includes the boots (there’s also a L$250 gift card if you join the Be Bold store group for L$50);
the red-lined black high-collared Bento animated cape I purchased on sale using the free credits from the MALified booth; and
the perfect finishing touch of the Sweet Death Crown, which I bought on sale using the free credits from the Poison Rouge booth.
Happy freebie shopping! Obviously, most of the gifts this round are Halloween-themed, with ghosts, bats, witches, and pumpkins galore. Boo!
Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny, Hot cross buns! If you have no daughters, Give them to your sons One ha’ penny, Two ha’ penny, Hot Cross Buns!
English Nursery Rhyme, 1700s
I haven’t been blogging as much as I like lately, mainly because of how busy I am at my full-time paying job as a university librarian, and I know that there are lots of news and events happening out there in the metaverse which I am not reporting on!
Lately when I come home from work, I am exhausted, and my favourite means of relaxing and unwinding is, of course, Second Life, where I continue to scour the grid for fabulous freebies. (Remember that most of them I do not blog about here, but I do post notices to my in-world group, the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group!)
I am currently working on a special project with my fellow freebie fashionistas of the Freebie Queens Discord server, where we are drawing up a comprehensive listing of SL stores with free gifts. And it was while I was checking through a first draft of this list that I came across a wonderful freebie: a fatpack of hair buns! These buns come in a wide variety of high-quality hair textures, and have a natural, relaxed (some would say, messy) look to them. I think they’re perfect, and best of all, they’re completely FREE!
It’s part of a collection of previous group gifts offered by L’Etre/Doux. All you have to do is teleport into their store (SLURL), join the L’Etre group for free, and then click on the image of the gift box shown below to receive the package:
The gift box contains many items—earrings, chokers, eyeshadow, face glitter, even a witch’s hat!—but I want to focus on the set of unrigged hair buns by Doux. These hair buns come with 7 different HUDs, each with 18 different textures:
blacks and whites;
blondes;
brunettes;
fades;
naturals;
pastels and ombres; and
reds.
Please note that the hairbases are not included, but you usually already have several sets with the Bento mesh heads you purchase or get as gifts, such as this lovely Lilly head, a previous Christmastime group gift from LeLutka:
And because they are adjustable (unfortunately, not resizable), you can easily use them with hats and caps, as I did with this Catwa HDPRO mesh head (again, another previous gift):
Of course, these buns are unisex, so you can rock a manbun as you gallivant around the grid if you so desire! This avatar is wearing a Catwa head with a classic Bakes on Mesh female hairbase I pulled from the LeLutka Lilly gift head:
If you are looking for free hairbases to use with these buns, the No Match hair store in SL has you covered! Just visit the store and look for two gift boxes on the ground (exact SLURL):
These boxes are free, and you do not need to join a group to purchase them. One box contains classic hairbases for a full range of hair colours, plus appliers for Catwa heads and LeLutka classic heads, plus Omega appliers; the other box contains hairbases for LeLutka Evo X and Akeruka ADVX mesh heads.
So what are you waiting for? Move your buns and get these buns! 😉
If you want even more news about fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than what I write about in this blog, may I recommend the Second Life group I maintain, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group? The group costs only L$50 to join; more information here.
If you have a LeLutka Evo X or an Akeruka ADVX female mesh head on your avatar, then do I have a sweet deal for you! Join the Nuve group (it’s currently free, for a limited time), and slap the vendor panels under the VIP Gifts sign to pick up a fatpack of Hailey skin, plus a fatpack of Hailey eyebrows, and a fatpack of lipsticks!
Nuve skins include both the head and body skin, in 15 different skintones, each in versions with and without the eyebrows (there’s also a box in the folder to unpack to get the matching ear skins). The Hailey eyebrow fatpack includes tintable eyebrows in six colours (white, blonde, ginger, red, brown, and black) to use with the browless version of the Hailey skin. The Hailey lip tint fatpack includes 16 shades of pink and red, plus two shades of grey, which you can tint any colour you wish!
But wait, there’s more! MUCH more! On the wall behind the front counter of the Nuve store are all the previous group gifts, which include human and fantasy skins for Catwa HDPRO, Genus, LeLutka Evolution classic, and LeLutka Evo X heads, plus eyebrows, eye shadows, eyeliners, and lipsticks. Among these gifts is the Amanda skin, which like the Hailey skin is a complete fatpack with 15 different skintones!
Please note that, according to the Nuve group notices, there is a notice dated Sept. 10th, 2022:
Our VIP group will be free for 3 days only. So if you have friends on a budget, spread the word.
So, hurry down, join the Nuve group while it is still free, and snap up the fabulous freebies! Also, in an earlier group notice, I learned that the store is giving away free weekly store credit:
Y’all keep forgetting to click the reward terminal! So, this is just a reminder. Reward terminal is at the reception desk (tablet on the desk). You can receive L$75 of store credit every week. Terminal resets every Monday.
Store credit accumulates, you won’t lose it. It can be used on every product at [the] mainstore, except products released exclusively in weekend sales.
Here’s where you can find that VIP reward terminal in the store, right next to an assortment of free gifts for everybody who drops by (no group join is required; they are mostly skin tints and Windlight/EEP settings):
This is what the Hailey skin looks like (this avatar is wearing the ivory skin tone, with the blonde Hailey eyebrows and one of the redder Hailey lip tints).
Looking this stunning for zero Linden dollars? Sign me up, honey!
Body: She is also wearing the LUCYBODY Atenea mesh body, which is a free Midnight Madness gift (you will have to pick up a L$250 Bakes on Mesh applier kit to use BoM skins like Hailey with it, however). The Atenea body is completely compatible with clothing designed for Maitreya Lara, except for footwear; the feet are Slink-compatible. You do not need to shell out for a L$2,750 Maitreya Lara body to wear Maitreya Lara clothing!
Outfit: This Cleo top and skirt were a free group gift from the Luna Chelsea store, but I just checked, and it is unfortunately no longer available. The Luna Chelsea group is free to join, and there are several other group gifts of female clothing available, though, as well as many Lucky Chairs and Midnight Madness boards (exact SLURL).
TOTAL COST FOR THIS ENTIRE AVATAR LOOK: Only L$250 (for the Atenea Bakes on Mesh kit, but I’m pretty sure I bought it for L$197 back in the day).
So, as you can see, joining the Nuve store group is a no-brainer! The proprietor is very smart to find a way to get potential customers coming into her store every week. And I will definitely join store groups where they give out free credit to group members every week or every month!
