Tag: Amara Beauty

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Your Guide to Free Heads and Skins at the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas Event, Dec. 9th to 21st, 2023

The list of merchants participating in the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event

At 12 noon SLT (Second Life/Pacific Time) yesterday, December 9th, 2023, LeLutka and 78 other stores in Second Life launched the biggest-ever 12 Days of Christmas event! The notecard sent out to the LeLutka group states:

It’s a wonderful time of the year, and we want to express our gratitude to you, our loyal customers, by offering some amazing gifts for the December festivities. We are excited to announce that 79 stores are joining us for this event, making it even more spectacular.

As per tradition, Lelutka is offering one female and one male head as a gift from today until the 21st of December. After this date, the heads will return to their regular pricing. To access these special gifts, please ensure that you are wearing your LeLutka group tag, as this will enable you to teleport to the designated gift regions and claim your presents.

To get your LeLUTKA gift heads, you need to visit two special Holiday Gift sims. Gifts ARE NOT located in the main store, so please use the landmarks below to get there:

…

PLEASE NOTE that you have 10 minutes to visit before you will be teleported home.

We hope you have a joyful and festive season.

Best regards,
Your Lelutka Team

You can get a complete listing of all the participating stores (with SLURLs) in three different ways:

  1. A notecard titled 12 Days of Christmas List, posted to the LeLutka store group, and also available if you click on the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas sign posted at each participating store, near that store’s gift (the sign looks like the image at the top of this blog post);
  2. the LeLutka website; and
  3. SeraphimSL’s LeLutka’s 12 Days of Christmas list, which very helpfully includes pictures of all the gifts!

Now, before I learned about the Seraphim list, I had actually enlisted my main female avatar, Vanity Fair, and my main male avatar Heath Homewood, to visit almost every store on the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas list, and now I am going to show you some of my favourite gifts.

Now, I must forewarn you that I am going to be laser-focused this year! I do NOT have time to drag each one of my small army of alts through seventy-nine stores!! Therefore, I will focus on the LeLutka heads, and those head skins which either come with body skins, or match Velour skin tones (of which most of my alts already own at least a few skin tones). That means that I will not be showing you cosmetics, tattoos, hair, accessories such as earrings and other jewelry, and any skin where I have to buy matching body skins! Please use the other lists posted above to find those items.

PRO TIP: Please also note that you must join the store group in order to pick up each store’s gift. However, all the stores participating in the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event have set their store groups to be free to join for the duration of the event. So join those groups, as many as you can juggle, and STAY JOINED throughout the year if you can! Many of these groups, particularly skin and cosmetic groups, will charge a join fee again after December 21st, 2023. (The LeLutka, Velour, and Leronso store groups are usually free to join year-round, so you won’t need to stay in them. Ives Beauty is an example of a group that will charge after this event, so join now if you like their skins, and you will be able to pick up all the group gifts for free!)

And that reminds me to remind you: look carefully around each store to see what other group gifts are available! For example, Tres Beau has at least one more female skin fat pack, plus several other gifts on their gift wall, located behind the wall at the front counter of their store. And Traditional Face has six group gifts in additional to the event gift, three of them being women’s skin fatpacks!

LeLutka Heads

LeLutka has what I believe to be two brand-new Evolution X (EvoX) Bento mesh heads available for free, the Noel female head and the Kris male head. Both heads include head and ear skins in four skin tones. Here’s what the Noel head looks like in the Rose Kiss skin tone, using the included eyebrow shape and body shape:

I paired the Noel head with my new LaraX body, using the Snow skin tone, to show you what the default body shape looks like (obviously, this is just a starting point, from which you will make adjustments to the head and body sliders to get your preferred look):

Here’s what the LeLutka Kris head looks like (skin tone 6, included in the package). He’s quite the handsome fellow!

I paired this head with the new Senra 1.0 male body (Senra skin tone 3), using the default eyebrow shape and body shape included in the Kris package. Note that the included skins have a neck fade, which makes them easier to match whatever body skins you have in your inventory! Again, this is a starter shape, and you’re going to have to hit the sliders to adjust that super-long giraffe neck 😂, and probably tweak a few other aspects to your liking.

PRO TIP: Always work from the starter shape that came with your new mesh head, like this Kris head—there are a lot fewer sliders to adjust under the Body, Torso, and Legs tabs, then there are under all the various head tabs!

If I am trying to duplicate a body shape which I used before, I write down the slider values in order for each of the Body, Torso, and Legs tabs, in order from top to bottom, then made the necesary adjustments to the body sliders while wearing the new head and the starter eyebrow shape and body shape that came with the head. Then, once you have the body to your liking, fiddle with the head sliders.

Male Body Skins

I’m going to cover the male body skins first. In this section only, I will mention if there are non-Velour body skins required (the two most common ones are by Not Found and Stray Dog). If a store has both male and female head skin gifts, I will mention both in this section.

ALT3

Mei female skins (3 packs, matches ALT3 body skin, ALT3 fantasy body skin, and Velour body skin, all sold separately) and Park male skin (2 packs, matches ALT3 body skin and ALT3 fantasy body skin, also sold separately)

Avarosa

Kris male skin (matches Not Found and Velour body skins) and Noel female skin (matches Velour body skins)

Avi-Glam

PLEASE NOTE: The Amara Beauty/Avi-Glam region is currently overloaded, and the vendors do not work. Please come back later when things are less crazy! I was unable to pick up these gifts. UPDATE 12:25 p.m.: the problems with lag on the region are so horrible, that they have moved the Kris male skin gift and Carol (unisex) eyes gift here, to a completely different region. UPDATE 7:09 p.m.: Even on the new sim, the Avi-Glam vendor still isn’t working properly. It’s clear at this point that these vendors were woefully unprepared for the onslaught of freebie hunters! Right now there are 80 avatars waiting for their items. Please note that you have to pay the vendor L$1, and it is supposed to be automatically refunded, then you get your item. That isn’t happening, and rather than have you fight the lag and keep feeding Linden dollars into a black hole, I would just advise you wait until they get their act together. UPDATE 7:15 p.m.: I finally got my Carol (unisex) eyes, but this is, by far, the worst vendor experience of the entire LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event, and I would advise you to steer clear unless you have infinite patience. UPDATE Dec. 14th: The chaos has died down, so now would be a good time to go pick up these gifts.

Kris male skin (matches Not Found body skins), and Carol unisex eyes fatpack

Brabos

Kris male skin (matches Not Found and Velour body skins)

Clef de Peau

Maghia female skin and Darius male skin (matches Velour body skins)

Fuoey

Yuri male skin fatpack (matches Not Found body skin tones)

Hype

Noel female skin and Ramon male skin (matches Hype body skins, sold separately)

Ives Beauty

Kaden male skin (Not Found, Stray Dog, and Veloue skin tones) and Noelle female skin (matches Velour skin tones)

MetaHumano

Talita female and Pablo male skins (1 skin tone each; matches Velour body skins)

Mister Razzor

Gabriel hairbases, skin and shape (matches Not Found body skins)

Not Found

UPDATE Dec. 14th: I don’t know whether I missed this gift the first time around, or they added it later, but there is now, in addition to the Kris male skin and the Noel hairbase, a female head skin, called Noella:

The Noella female head skin matches Not Found body skin tones, of which you will have some if you purchased an Inithium Khara, Kupra, or Kupra Kups mesh body, so check your body package!

Also, if you missed them last year, you can pick up last December’s LeLutka event gifts from Not Found on a nearby wall (the male Jack and female Faye skins, and a long, long, looong ponytail with a hairbase).

Just join the Not Found group for free, and you can pick up these four gifts from last year’s LeLutka December event, as well as this years.

Here are this year’s other gifts from Not Found, a male skin and a hairbase to go with a ponytail attachment you can pick up as a gift at L’Etre/Doux. Note that all of the male and female head skins from Not Found match Not Found body skin tones, but if you bought any Inithium mesh bodies (Kario, Khara, Kupra, or Kupra Kups), the package will include some Not Found body skin tones, so you’ll probably find that you won’t need to purchase Not Found body skins after all!

Kris male skin (matches Not Found body skins, of which you would have received some if you bought an Inithium Kario mesh body, so check the body package), and the Noel hairbase (to go with the ponytail attachment gift from L’Etre/Doux)
The ponytail attachment for the Not Found hairbase can be picked up as a free gift at L’Etre/Doux, located at the spawn point of the store region.

Stray Dog

Kris male skin (uses Stray Dog body skins, sold separately)

Soul

UPDATE Dec. 11th: It took me a couple of days to figure out how to get these gifts! You don’t click on the signs; you click on the skin tone boxes marked with the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas stamp (see the red arrows in the diagrams below). Please note that the other skin tone boxes cost L$350 each!

You have to pay L$1 (which is automatically refunded) to get one skin tone for female heads, which matches the Velour Icy body skin tone) and one skin tone for male heads, which matches the Velour Fair body skin tone.
Kris male skin and Noel female skin (matches Velour body skins)

Vendetta

The Kris skin matches Vendetta’s own body skin tones, which are sold separately

Female Skins

This list is much longer than the list of male skins. I will not be including any female skins that I already mentioned in the previous male skin list. And again, it will be a selective list, including only those skins which either come with body skins, or match with Velour body skin tones. Please use the 3 lists I linked at the top of this blog post to find other skin gifts; the Seraphim list includes pictures to save you the trouble of teleporting from place to place.

Amara Beauty

Like I said before, the Amara Beauty/Avi-Glam region is currently overloaded, and the vendors are not working properly. Come back later! UPDATE 12:25 p.m.: the problems with lag on the sim are so bad, that they have moved the Karol skin gift here.

Amara Beauty offers the Karol female skin (matches 3 Velour body skin tones)

Bold and Beauty

Holly female skin (2 fatpacks, 1 with Velour skin tones)

Cosmetize

Nao female skin (matches Velour body skins)

DeeTaleZ

Aurelia female skin (uses DeeTaleZ skin tones, but there’s a chart in store and in the package to explain how they match Velour body skin tones)

Guapa

Noela female skin (matches Velour skin tones, including some fantasy skin tones)

Heaux

Noel skin (matches Velour body skins)

Lueur

Sidney female skin (matches Velour body skin tones)

Moccino

Bia female skin (matches Velour body skins; please note: the gift is located OUTSIDE the store, and you have to click on the gift boxes, not the sign! See the red arrow in the image above.

NonNative

Tracie and Kira female skins (matches Velour body skins)

Nuve

Holly female skin (3 packs; 1 in Nuve skin tones which includes the body skins, one matching Velour regular skin tones, and one matching Velour fantasy skin tones)

Purple

Neolia mature woman’s skin (matches Velour skin tones)

Traditional Face

Noelly female skin (marches Velour body skin tones); don’t forget to pick up the six group gifts in addition to this gift once you join the store group, three of them are female skin fatpacks!

Tres Beau

Aspen female skin (includes a notecard explaining how to match the skins to various skin tones, including Velour). Don’t forget to pick up all of the group gifts in the store, which include 2 more female skin fatpacks!

Happy holidays, and happy freebie shopping! Remember that some of these regions where the gifts are located are currently very busy, so you might want to wait until later to pick up these and other gifts. But don’t wait too long, this event ends on December 21st, 2023 (which, based on my past years’ experience with some stores, means midnight Second Life Time/Pacific Time on December 20th, 2023)!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Skin and Eyes for the LeLutka Lilly Head

My annual Advent calendar odyssey in Second Life is now winding down, and (with a few exceptions), I plan to take a bit of a break from blogging until the new year. This year, so many SL storeowners have been extremely generous with their gifts! I have spent many an enjoyable hour over the past three weeks, ransacking the various Advent calendars and 12 Days of Christmas calendars across the grid, and my small army of alts now have many fabulous and fashionable freebies sitting in their inventories!

Yesterday, I spent an entertaining couple of hours trying out the dozens and dozens of facial animations and static facial poses included in the HUD of what I think was the best Christmas gift I picked up this year, the LeLutka Lilly Bento mesh head! The animations and poses on this head truly put the competition to shame with their variety.

The skin used in these pictures is a new, free group gift from Amara Beauty, the beautiful Holly Bakes on Mesh skin, which comes in three skin tones and is specifically designed for LeLutka Evolution heads:

In fact, the only complaint I have had about the Lilly head is that the included, rigged mesh eyes looked a little bit cross-eyed to me, so I swapped them out with a free group gift from ARTE, this set of lovely deep brown eyes in three shades and three sizes (which includes both Catwa and Omega appliers, Bakes on Mesh/system eyes, and a pair of mesh eyes which can be adjusted and textured using a handy HUD).

Both the ARTE and Amara Beauty groups are free to join, so if you picked up the LeLutka Lilly head this season, be sure to pick up these fabulous freebies as well!

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATED: Version 4.0 of the Kalhene Anya and Alexa Bodies: A Great Second Life Bakes-on-Mesh Bento Head and Body Package Gets Even Better!

I have been following the progress of the Kalhene Bento, Bakes on Mesh bodies (the Anya female body and the Alexa transgender body) for some time now, and I am mightily impressed with how often the creator issues updates. We are now at version 4.0 of the Anya body, which I have found to be nearly 100% compatible with apparel and footwear designed for Maitreya Lara mesh bodies!

Pay a visit to the Kalhene store (located opposite the N-Core shoe store), and for only L$1,795, you get not only a Maitreya-Lara-compatible Bento mesh body, with a top-notch HUD, but you also get a Bento mesh head, plus pretty much everything else you need to get started—skins, eyes, hair, a starter wardrobe, even an AO to control the eyes, head, and hands! All you need to add is a body AO and you’re all set!

Let’s draw up a side-by-side comparison chart, showing you what you get for your money: column A is the Kalhene Anya version 4.0 head and body, and Column B is the Maitreya Lara version 5.3 mesh body with a Catwa brand of Bento mesh head (the most popular combination):

Kalhene Anya 4.0Maitreya Lara 5.3
Base Cost of Mesh BodyL$1,795L$2,750
Petite Breast OptionIncluded (all clothing in the package works with it) L$599 extra
Flat Chest OptionIncluded (all clothing in the package works with it) L$499 extra
Implant (Large) Breast OptionIncluded (all clothing in the package works with it)Not included (not sure what the extra cost would be!)
Bento Hands and Nails Included; Fingernails come in 36 colours and patterns, and 5 styles Included; Fingernails come in 19 colours and 5 styles
Mesh Feet 3 feet heights controlled by HUD (flat, medium, and high) 5 feet heights controlled by HUD (flat, kitten, medium, high, and point)
Bento Mesh HeadIncludedNot Included (Catwa heads cost L$5,000)
Starter SkinIncluded (5 skin tones in regular and flat-chested versions)Included (22 skin tones)
Starter WardrobeBikini (12 colours), dress (8 colours), shirt (4 colours), leggings (4 colours), flat shoes (5 colours, 2 styles), high-heeled shoes (5 colours, 3 styles), plus black and white pantyhose/stockings and finger rings. All apparel fits flat. petite, regular, and implant breast versions of the Anya body.Bra and Panties by Erratic (9 colours) and Zaara (black)
TOTAL COSTL$1,795L$8,848 (not including the cost of a starter wardrobe)
Comparison Chart: Kalhene Anya versus Maitreya Lara with a Catwa head

Also, because the included skin tones that come the Maitreya Lara body and your choice of Catwa head will not match, you will also have to shell out for skin appliers from your favourite skin store (or a Bakes on Mesh skin, since both Maitreya and Catwa now support BoM). You could easily spend well over L$10,000 before you’re done with the Maitreya/Catwa combination, whereas you could take that extra money and put it towards apparel, footwear, hairstyles, and Bakes on Mesh skins, cosmetics and tattoos if you opt for the Kalhene Anya mesh body.

Here’s a look at the HUD that comes with version 3.0 of the Anya body. Note that unlike earlier versions, there are now three feet heights, controllable by the HUD (instead of separate mesh bodies): flat feet, mid-height feet, and high heel feet.

There’s a pretty complete set of alpha selections on the HUD, which compares quite favourably with those of the major mesh body brands, and of course you can also use the alphas that come with the clothing you buy. If you do need a set of alphas to use with clothing that does not come with them, you can pick up a free set from Little Black Dress at this SLURL (just click on the bag on the floor).

The separate clothing HUD allows you to change the colour and style of the included hairstyle (bangs/no bangs), as well as all of the included starter wardrobe items, including the metals and gemstones on the included set of rings, the ability to show or hide the rings on each finger, and the colour and style of two kinds of shoes, flat and high (including the flats shown here; other options include sandals and pumps). Black and white pantyhose and tights (in all three feet heights and four different transparency levels) are included in the package, too.

Here’s a look at a completely styled version of the Anya mesh avatar, showing you where on the body and clothing HUDs I made selections:

As you can see, you can create and style a complete avatar look using only the elements in the Anya package! However, I also wanted to show you how this body would look with a different head and skin (the Anya head and body are separate attachments, and of course you can mix and match them with other BoM-compatible heads and bodies as you wish).

This avatar is wearing:

  • Mesh Head: Strong Face gift Bento mesh head from The Genus Project (free group gift)
  • Mesh Body: Anya version 3.0 from Kalhene (L$1,695; Kalhene has a a small store located opposite the N-Core Design footwear store (here’s the SLURL)
  • Skin: Brielle by Amara Beauty (a former free group gift; group is free to join)
  • Hair: Beyoncé hair by enVOGUE (a L$1 gift from a previous year’s Hair Fair)
  • Gown: Azahara ballgown in red by Scandalize (which I picked up using the recent group gift of L$400 store credit; the Scandalize group costs L$100 to join, but if you hurry, you can join for free and pick up a second L$400 store credit offer! I believe today is the final day you can join the Scandalize group for free.)
  • Jewelry: I pulled this old set from my inventory; they came from a store that has long since left the grid!

TOTAL COST OF THIS AVATAR LOOK: L$1,696 (L$1,695 for the Kalhene Anya mesh body when I purchased it, and L$1 for the hair; the rest was free!)

UPDATE March 31st, 2021: I wanted to report that Kalhene has now released version 4.0 of the Anya mesh body! If you bought an earlier version of the Anya body, you can get a redelivery at their in-world store here; just click the large REDELIVERY sign on the wall as shown here:

Among the new features in this latest release are:

  • a new mesh head (version 2), with a stronger jawline, more arched eyebrows and some soft changes on the nose and lips;
  • three new different breast positions via deformer animations in the HUD (which works for all breast sizes: petite, regular, and implants), to give a more natural look to the breasts;
  • a neck fix for LeLutka mesh heads; and
  • new body oil materials (for the mesh body Bakes on Mesh only).

I have now been using the Anya mesh body with dozens and dozens of outfits that were designed for the Maitreya Lara body, without any issues, except for two minor ones:

  1. sometimes, on only a few very long-sleeved shirts, there is a problem with the wrist and hand area, where the hand pokes through the sleeve; and
  2. with a few pairs of jeans or pants, the waist of the pants is a bit wider than the waist of the body (see image, right), a problem which does not occur on the Maitrey Lara mesh body.

However, these problems are so uncommon (I have encountered them only 4 or 5 times in well over a year of testing!), that I can recommend the Anya 3.0 mesh body without hesitation if you want a Maitreya Lara-compatible mesh body at a bargain price!

Here is the version 4.0 the Anya body paired with the recent dollarbie group gift of the Catwa HFPRO Queen Bento mesh head, along with a look at the new HUD:

A look at the version 4.0 Anya body HUD (the alpha HUD is separate)

Note that the alpha sections HUD seen in the version 3.0 pictures earlier in this blogpost is still available; it’s in the box marked “BOXED -Kalhene- ANYA Mesh Body V4.0 (BoM + Alpha HUD)” in the version 4.0 package, which must be unpacked separately (the alpha sections HUD looks identical to the one pictured above). Please also note that you must use the bodies in that particular unpacked folder with the alpha sections HUD! For some strange reason, the alpha HUD didn’t work with the bodies from the main folder.

So, wait are you waiting for? Get shopping! 😉