Mangula is one of those stores that specializes in sexy, skin-baring outfits. (Hey, if you have the perfect body in Second Life, why not show it off?)
Mangula has recently implemented a L$100 subscriber join fee (it used to be free, and lucky are those of you who joined the subscriber group when it was!). This group does not take up one of your precious group slots, either. To join, just right-click and pay the subscriber group panel located behind the front desk:
They also ripped out all the lucky boards, and in their place, they have put up subscriber gift panels. In total, there are no less than 32 subscriber gifts to pick up, and many of them are complete outfits with many options and components, even footwear is included! So you actually get quite a lot for your L$100.
Let me show you a couple of examples.
This is the most recent subscriber group gift that I have seen other bloggers post: this so-called Summer Party outfit comes in a complete fatpack of 32 colours, including the ass-kicking boots, three heights of fishnet stockings, the see-through dress, even a bodysuit option to wear underneath instead of the included, separate top and panties you see here! This is truly a mix-and-match outfit!
The downside to this outfit is that it is going to cost you dearly in Avatar Rendering Complexity—a whopping 326,644 for this particular outfit combination! You may look good, but trust me, you’re going to appear as a coloured “jelly doll” to pretty much everybody else in Second Life. So keep that in mind (it’s all the fishnet and the see-through minidress that brings it up to such an eye-watering figure).
However, there are many, many more outfits that will actually be visible to other SL avatars, such as another subscriber gift, the slinky laced-up-the-back Violet minidress with the high-heeled sandals included! This dress comes in a short version, a longer bodycon version, and just as a top! There are separate, optional sleeves. The fatpack HUD gives you 20 different colour choices for each part of the dress, top, and shoes.
And there are 30 other outfits you can pick up for your L$100. Not all of them are fatpacks, but as you can see, you are truly getting your money’s worth here! Considering that you could easily drop L$300 or more on just a single outfit in Second Life, this is a real deal.
Well, Catwa has officially entered the thick of the battle of what in what I used to call the Bento Head Wars, but which I am now officially dubbing The Great Bento War of 2020. Never can I remember a time in Second Life when so many great Bento mesh heads and bodies are being made available for free or next to free!
Catwa has just released a free group gift of a Bento mesh head, called Freya! Please note that despite the name, this Bento mesh head is intended to be unisex, usable for all genders of avatars. Like all Bento mesh heads, you should be able to use the sliders to get as masculine or feminine (or non-binary gendered) a look as you desire.
To pick up this group gift, you must join either the Catwa store group (^;^CaTwA^;^) or the CATWA HEAD Friends group. Both groups are free to join.
To pick up your free group gift, you then must teleport over to the Catwa store, and click on the black circle with the name of the corresponding group:
Once you unpack it, here is what you receive:
The Freya head comes with two recommended starter shapes (“boy” male, or female) an eyebrow shaper, some talking animations, a face light, and three HUDs: a master HUD, an animations HUD, and an eyes HUD (the package comes with rigged mesh eyes).
The “BOM Skin A Makeup Alpha Pack”, when unpacked, contains a complete set of alphas in various combinations (head, eyes, body, full avatar), plus a huge set of Bakes-on-Mesh blush, brows, eyeliner, freckles, hairbases, lipstick, and neck and ear tattoos. The folder includes a complete set of Bakes-on-Mesh skins from TheSkinnery (in a range of eleven skin tones, with and without eyebrows) and a couple of skins from Deetalez (again, with and without brows).
Note that there are no male skins included in this package; if you want a male look, you’ll have to go do a little shopping around! However, if you want a female avatar, you should be able to use these included skins with any Bakes-on-Mesh compatible mesh body (such as the still-available dollarbie Classic body from Meshbody) to get a good look without having to buy anything else!
The “HD Lips Pack Freya” package includes high-definition lips and a lips HUD.
Here is what the Freya head looks like straight out of the box, with the included default female body shape and eyebrow shaper, default skin and eyes:
After applying my favourite Daria skin applier for Catwa heads from TheSkinnery, and adding the HUDs, here’s what we’ve got:
The HUDs on the Freya are the full-blown versions you would expect to find on the full-price Catwa heads. The eyes HUD gives you twelve different colours (here, I picked one of the brown ones). The Catwa HUDs are quite complicated, with many features, and I would strongly urge anybody who is new to them to read through the comprehensive user documentation available on their official Catwa website. There’s even a “crash course” video on Catwa Bento mesh heads by former mesh body über-blogger Strawberry Singh, now better known as Strawberry Linden since she got hired by Linden Lab!
According to the group notice that was sent out, this is a limited-time offer, so I would try to get down to the Catwa store as soon as possible! Here are the SLURLs provided in the original group notice:
Catwa Clip sim(BUT PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW)
As you might expect, the Catwa sims are absolutely jam-packed with avatars picking up the Freya head, so I would advise you to either wait a while for the crowds to die down a bit, or use a tool like the handy free Teleport Hammer to fight your way in. (Also remember that Premium accounts get priority access to sims that are full.) Good luck!
P.S. I forgot to mention that, if you are looking for some free skin appliers to use with the Freya head, there are currently generous group gifts available at both Amara Beauty and at Essences for skin appliers for Catwa Bento mesh heads. Happy freebie shopping!
IMPORTANT UPDATE May 4th, 2020: Due to extremely high demand, the Catwa store has sent out the following announcement:
CATWA GIFT UNISEX HEAD Freya [LIMITED OFFER 3rd to 24th MAY 2020] The gift is is NO LONGER at CATWA mainstore! Activate any of the CATWA groups before going. Detach meshes so you can rez quicker. Please give chance to other by leaving the sim after getting the gift. Gift locations:
Also, I spent some time playing around with the Freya head and the dollarbie Classic mesh body from Meshbody. I found that, once I was able to match the included skin tones between the Catwa Freya head and the Classic mesh body as best I could, I was able to use the included neckfades in the Classic Meshbody package to achieve some pleasing results without any noticeable neck seam (and there are clear, step-by-step instructions on how to apply the Classic neckfades to Catwa heads).
She is looking fabulous at Frank’s Jazz Club tonight! This avatar is wearing:
Mesh Head: Freya Bento mesh head by Catwa (free group gift; group is free to join)
Lipstick: HD Lips Pack Freya (included in the Catwa Freya head package)
Hair: Gigi hair by Yomi (free group gift; group is free to join)
Dress: Kay dress in blue and gold by Tiffany Designs (free gift at The Free Dove; you must join The Free Dove group for free to pick up gifts there)
Shoes: Scarlett shoes in gold by Nala Design (free gift at the excellent freebie store at Ajuda SL Brasil; the shoes are meant for Slink feet and I had to adjust them a bit to fit the Classic feet on this avatar, but they worked)
Animation Override: Lessie AO by GoldSquare (free group gift; group is free to join). The ankle lock, an essential add-on, is a free gift from Baby Monkey (just grab the blue bag at the reception desk).
TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: Only L$1! (for the Classic Meshbody)
UPDATE May 6th, 2020: I have been tinkering around with the Freya gift head over the past couple of days, and I must say that I am impressed at just how versatile this head is! Here’s a couple of completely different looks I put together.
This princess look consists of the Freya head paired with a Maitreya Lara body, using the starter female eyebrow shaper and female shape that came with the Freya package, and the Madelyn skin applier in olive from Amara Beauty (a free gift!):
And this completely androgynous drag queen look uses the Freya head with the Altamura Romeo mesh body, with the high-definition Freya lips and some makeup from Dotty’s Secret! The male eyebrow shaper and male shape for the Freya head were a free, full-perms gift from the NoYourOtherLeft gift pickup spot listed above (just look for a large box opposite the row of kiosks).
And finally, here is a male avatar I created using the free Freya head with the dollarbie Classic male body from Meshbody. I used the same male eyebrow shaper and male shape for the Freya head from NoYourOtherLeft as my starting point, only making the jaw a little more square, and using one of the Bakes on Mesh male skins from Digital Nude Art (DNA) that I picked up here (a store which, unfortunately, appears to have now closed):
So, as you can see, you can pretty much take this free gift head and go in any creative direction you want with it! Be sure to pick up the Freya gift head before this offer expires in May 24th, 2020. In addition to the three pickup spots I listed above, you can now also buy the Freya gift head, for free, from the SL Marketplace!
Teen roleplay is a big market in Second Life, and although I must confess I have never once felt the desire to relive my exceedingly awkward teenage years in SL, many Second Life users like to do so.
The big news today is that Genesis Lab is letting you join their store group for free, and with that free group join, you can pick up their brand new Teen model of Bento mesh head for only L$55, a 99% discount. You can also pick up Olivia Bakes on Mesh skin in six skin tones for only L$3 per tone, for use with that head (although the Teen Head already comes with Bakes on Mesh skin in six skin colours).
So I decided to have Vanity Fair revisit her gawky, surly teenage years, and had her visit the Genesis Lab store, join the group for free, and pick up the Teen Head and one shade of the Olivia skin (total outlay: L$58).
First, let’s look at the basic head without any hair, using the default brows and shape that come with the Teen Head (the mesh eyes come in four different colours and are included). Remember that this is a Bento mesh head, and you should be able to adjust it as you like:
Then Vanity popped over to the Meshbody sim to pick up the dollarbie Classic female body (which remains one of the best deals on the grid for a fully-featured mesh body). The Meshbody Classic already supports Bakes on Mesh skins, you just have to turn that feature on using the included HUD.
Here is the result, with some free hair, a freebie outfit for The Mesh Project (TMP) Classic mesh body I picked up sometime last year, and the free group gift of Jumpov TMP sneakers by Versov which I already had in my inventory. (Just remember that when you are shopping around for clothes to fit the dollarbie Meshbody Classic body, most vendors will still refer to it using the old name of The Mesh Project or TMP.)
Not a bad look overall, for a total cost of only 59 Linden dollars!
All I need is a cellphone and I’m all set to go hang out at the mall!
Those of us who pursue retail therapy to chase away the blues are a sad bunch in this perilous pandemic season. In much of the world, retail shopping has been deemed a non-essential service, and therefore, real-world shoe stores around the globe have closed their doors, for who knows how long. It’s depressing.
So why not indulge in some shoe shopping in Second Life? I can assure you, the dopamine rush that hits your brain from landing that perfect pair of shoes is the same, whether it is in real life or Second Life! Trust Auntie Ryan on this, my dear 😉
Remember that one of Ryan’s eight rules for freebie hunting is to watch for free group join periods. Once or twice a year, many store groups will promote themselves by letting you join their store group for free (usually just before Advent calendar season). In fact, it was just before Advent that I joined the Essenz shoe store group for free 2 years ago, and what a bargain that has turned out to be! I have gotten oodles of well-crafted shoes in the two years since I joined the Essenz group!
In addition to an Advent calendar every December with a lovely gift of women’s footwear each day, Essenz also has a free group gift available on the front counter of their store, a new and different group gift each month. And April’s group gift is so wonderful, that even if you have to pay the L$350 to join the Essenz group, it’s totally worth it!
Let Auntie Ryan explain… 🙂
The April group gift from Essenz is the Wales fatpack of pumps:
Now, you might think that L$350 for a single fatpack of pumps isn’t that great a bargain; after all, you can probably find a better deal on pumps elsewhere on the grid. (KC Couture sells fatpacks of pumps for L$75, for example.)
But these Wales pumps (which come with a HUD with 26 different colours for the shoe and four different colours each for the sole and the metal trim) actually come in four different styles!
There are the regular pumps with a thin heel:
Regular pumps with a thick, chunky heel:
Platform pumps with a thin heel:
And platform pumps with a thick heel!
That means that you get 26 shoe colours times 4 sole colours times 4 metal colours times 4 shoe styles, which works out to 1,664 different shoes! So even if you aren’t already a member of the Essenz group and getting this fatpack of versatile pumps for free, the L$350 group join fee works out to L$0.20 per shoe! Now, if that’s not a deal, I don’t know what is!
By the way, the Wales pumps come in sizes to fit Maitreya, Belleza and Legacy feet. The Altamura avatar I used in these pictures had Slink-compatible feet, and I found that the Belleza shoes fit them well.
But wait…there’s more!
Every month, Essenz gives out a free promo code in their group. Check the group notices for that code, and use that promo code to save L$175 on any purchase in their store! Just right click on the item you wish to purchase, select Menu from the pie menu that pops up, then on the blue pop-up menu that appears in the upper right-hand corner of your SL viewer, click the Buy button. On the next menu that appears, click on the Promo Code button, then enter that month’s special code in the box provided. The L$175 will be deducted from the price you pay! How great is that?
