Tag: Clef de Peau

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: The LeLutka Holiday Special, Running Dec. 20th to 30th, 2022!

Looking for the 2023 edition? Click here.

Once again this year, the popular Bento head creator LeLutka has teamed up with over 50 other Second Life stores to offer you a bounty of Christmas gifts! This year, the Holiday Special runs from December 20th to 30th, 2022. However, please note that last year, all the freebies were unavailable on the final day listed on the poster advertising the event, so I strongly recommend that you do NOT wait until Dec. 30th to pick up these wonderful presents for your avatar!

Here’s a list of stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special. Click on the store name in the list to teleport to the store, and look for a sign saying “54 Designers”, or the Holiday Special Christmas ornaments logo shown in the picture above.

Yesterday evening, I visited all 54 stores, and I have written up a notecard with a description of each gift, along with an exact SLURL for the location of the gift in the participating store. Please note that in some cases, a sim will have a forced central spawn point, but just save the SLURL from the notecard to your SL inventory, find it in your Landmarks folder and right click on it, then select “Show on Map” from the menu which appears (see image, right). Then, all you have to do is follow the red arrow to find your present!

I also added a few notes to alert you to things like which stores do not need a group join to pick up the gift, and which stores also have other (previous) group gifts which you might want to snap up once you have joined the store group for free. For example, you can pick up the Avi-Glam presents (a nice unisex fatpack of eyes and a male skin) without a group, but did you know that if you join the Avi-Glam group for free, you can pick up eleven free group gifts?

Oh, and did I mention? ALL the stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special have removed their usual group join fees (if they had any). Yes, that’s right, you can join all of these groups for absolutely FREE between December 20th and 30th! So, for example, if you join Ives Beauty now, the group join is free, you can pick up the Holiday Special gift plus all the other group gifts of skins and makeup, and after the promotion ends, THEN STAY IN THE GROUP, because it will cost you L$99 to rejoin it later if there are other group gifts announced by Ives Beauty during 2023. This is the time of year to join many of those store groups which you’ve had your eye on, but couldn’t afford to join!

PRO TIP: Did you know that you can turn off the crowd of avatars around you, so all you can see on screen is you and your friends? Just select “Show Friends Only” from the World menu in the Firestorm viewer (see image, left). Poof!! They’re gone! I do this all the time, rather than have my computer get bogged down trying to render all the surrounding avatars at busy shopping events and sales in Second Life.

Anyway, getting back to the list I compiled yesterday… I am doing something a little different from what I usually do (I hope that you will indulge me!).

I went and posted that detailed list of stores, notes, and SLURLs to my own Second Life group, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (just search for “ryanschultz”, all one word, under Groups in Search, and you will find it easily). More information on the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group can be found here. The group join fee is only L$50, and you will find it money well spent, as I often share many bargains and freebies throughout the year, which never make it to this blog!

Now let’s take a look at some of these generous gifts! The gifts from LeLutka and its sister skin store, LeLapeau, are available from one of four sims (please join the LeLutka group for free, and check the group notices for notecards with all the details). The gifts you can pick up here are:

  • the LeLutka Raven female head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLutka Quinn male head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLapeau Elsa women’s skin fatpack

Below, my SL supermodel, Moesha Heartsong, models the Raven LeLutka head, plus three of the Holiday Special gifts from other participating stores (please click on each image to see it in full size):

  • the Lacey head skin from Koonz, which comes in a full fatpack of skin tones which match Velour body skin (I chose Amber for these pictures);
  • the Venus muscular limited-edition body skin by Velour, also in Amber (which comes in both Meshbody Legacy and eBody Reborn versions; the Legacy version had some problems in the toes area on Moesha’s Maitreya Lara mesh body, but the Reborn version worked perfectly!);
  • the Gift hairstyle by Studio Exposure, which consists of a complete fatpack of hairbases, combined with a bun adorned with a large bow, which comes with a colour-change HUD.

And here, one of my male alts (who has the actual, honest-to-God, Second Life legacy name of That Guy 😉 ), is wearing the LeLutka Quinn head, plus two more Holiday Special gifts: the Andrej face skin and shape by Clef de Peau, and the Christian hairbase from Volkstone. (The body skin That Guy is wearing was a gift from last year’s LeLutka holiday event, the Eros Lite soft fit skin in the Moon skin tone, and I picked a version of the Andrej skin in the same Moon skin tone. Unfortunately, there is no male skin gift from Velour this year!) Again, please click on each image to view it in a larger size.

The final look is Lily Pond (yep, that’s her legacy name, too), who is modeling the LeLutka Raven head, plus the following :

  • The Raven shape from Holloway Beauty for the Raven LeLutka head and the Meshbody Legacy body (I used this shape as my starting point, tweaking the body sliders quite a bit, but the head shape is pretty much still the original from the Holloway Raven shape, I just made the eyes a little bigger);
  • the Raven head skin from Amara Beauty in the Chantilly skin tone (I used the matching Ipanema body skin from Velour, which was last year‘s LeLutka holiday event gift);
  • the beautiful Noel eyes from Amara Beauty (they come in a full fatpack);
  • the Christmas hairbase by Not Found, which goes with this long, long ponytail from Doux! Both are fatpacks, coming a variety of colours. You can pick up each part separately from the L’Etre/Doux and Not Found stores during the LeLutka Holiday Special event.

Please click on each picture int his gallery to see it in full size:

Happy holiday freebie shopping!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Elegant in Black

The only thing that the following three outfits have in common is that they are black, they are elegant, and they are free! Each is a free group gift, with a free group join.

First we have a lovely Lia black chemise with matching black pants, a free group gift from Clef de Peau. Perfect for the SL ladies who lunch! Simply join the Clef de Peau group for free, and click on the gift box on the ground at this SLURL:

The Lia outfit comes with a HUD to change the arm and leg cuffs to one of several different colours, including black (as I did with the pants this avatar is wearing in the picture above, to make them all one colour).

This is the beautiful Pelaides full-length ballgown; with materials enabled, it truly shimmers! Here I paired it with a white fur stole from Glitzz (one of their group gifts, the Glitzz group currently costs L$250 to join):

You can pick this up for free from the JR Wolf Creations store, just click the panel to join the group for free! The gown comes with a HUD with six different ombre tones, as shown, and let me tell you, it’s simply stunning (these still pictures simply do not do it justice!):

But I think I left the best for last! Here Vanity Fair models the sexy little black Kali dress, simple but elegant, perfectly paired with some chunky costume jewelry from JUMO (the Olivia earrings and necklace, a previous Advent gift):

(As an aside, the champagne glass with the Bento hand pose is my new favourite party prop! I bought it as part of the Celebration Champagne set, which includes two of these poses as well as champagne bottles and buckets, at Hive for only L$250. I just love it!)

The Kali dress is one of many free gifts you can pick up at the Apple Blossom & Seeds store, just click the black panel to join their group for free, and scoop up many lovely items of women’s clothing! Here’s the exact SLURL to find the group gifts wall, and the red arrow points to the Kali dress that Vanity Fair is wearing:

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATED: How You Can Get a Grant of US$1,000-25,000 for Your Avatar Project

Since I asked Facebook to delete all my data and I quit the social network at the end of 2018, I have been spending much more time on Reddit and Twitter. On Twitter, I have ruthlessly cut the number of people I’m following, focusing in on people in virtual reality and virtual worlds.

Twitter is where I found this Forbes article, which reported:

Virtual Beings Grants announced at Virtual Beings summit.

The grants range from $1,000 – $25,000 and are obtainable by any group building a virtual being. Virtual beings include digital humans, virtual influencers, virtual assistants, creative AIs, avatars, and tools for virtual beings. There are four grant categories: games, enterprise, social, and education. Applications are open through September 17th and winners will be announced October 15th.

If you are interested and want to find out more, you can visit the grants information page. This initiative is spearheaded by the first-ever Virtual Beings Summit, a recent conference held in San Francisco meant to encourage virtual beings projects. They say:

Virtual Beings Is A New Space. To Believe Today That A Virtual Being Might Be At The Heart Of Every Part Of Our Lives Is A Big, Crazy Leap Of Faith. We Invite Those Crazy Enough To Believe To Sign Up Here!

Hmmm, I wonder if I should apply for a grant to support my work informing Second Life users about how to style their avatar for as few Linden dollars as possible? *sigh* Probably not.

By the way, here’s my latest Second Life avatar styling accomplishment:

This avatar is wearing:

Mesh Head: Leila Bento mesh head by Altamura (free group gift from last Christmas)

Mesh Body: Lara Bento mesh body by Maitreya

Skin Applier: Diana by Clef de Peau (free group gift from last Christmas)

Kimono and Shoes: Tsuru women’s kimono outfit by Secrets of Gaia (free hunt gift in the current Medieval Fantasy Hunt XIX)

Choker: Daphne choker from Beloved Jewelry (free; a hunt gift from last year)

Hair: Haruka hair by aa*Hair (free gift from the 2018 Hair Fair)

Animation Override: Chubby Girl AO by [ImpEle] (free from the SL Marketplace). This is a nice, simple, calm, free AO with no crazy movements. To show off the sleeves on this wonderful kimono, I added the Shoulder Overrider by Ethik Nacon, which you can use to adjust the shoulder position of any pose or AO.

TOTAL COST OF THIS AVATAR: L$3,198 (L$2,075 for the Maitreya Lara body, L$299 for the Shoulder Overrider, L$50 to join the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars group, and L$99 for the Altamura Omega System Kit available at this exact SLURL.)

UPDATE July 29th: I just discovered this VentureBeat article reporting on the various presentations at the Virtual Beings Summit.