Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The LeLutka Holiday Special, Running Dec. 20th to 30th, 2022!

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.