The Fifty Linden Fridays shopping event, one of the longest-running in Second Life, is celebrating its 12th birthday with a special birthday bash on a dedicated sim, where almost every vendor booth has a free birthday gift for you! Simply join the Fifty Linden Fridays group for free to vacuum up all the freebies!
Here are a sampling of some of the gifts which caught my eye. First up is a hairstyle from Exile Called Erin, which comes in a fatpack of no less than 200 different textures! The lovely Blossom tank top from Flora comes in six different colours.
This Dylan hairstyle is one of three different women’s hair fatpacks available from the Elikatira booth at the FLF Birthday Bash! Moesha is also wearing the gift from Cynful, this purple tube top:
Here’s another one of the Elikatira group gifts, the Penny hairstyle, shown with the present from the Blueberry booth, a fatpack of crop tops with an optional bra underneath:
Now Moesha models the gift from Pixicat, this animal-print River minidress, plus the Happy Glasses from Balaclava!, which come in three different colours.
You can pick up a complete fatpack of these Shelbie platform pumps from Phedora:
The gift from Valentina E. is this green plaid dress called Gigi:
The present from the Luas booth is this tie-dyed yellow bikini:
Finally, the gift from Salem is this beautiful Artemis circlet, which comes with a HUD with 28 different gemstones and eight different metal textures:
If you’re interested in the history of this popular shopping event, Wagner James Au interviews the founder of Fifty Linden Fridays on his blog here.
Here’s your taxi to the Fifty Linden Fridays Birthday Bash sim! As you can imagine, the sim is jam-packed, so you might want to wait a week or two before you try to get in (the event runs until September 3rd, 2021, so you’ve got lots of time to pick up all the birthday presents). Happy freebie shopping!
UPDATE August 21st, 2021: Here’s a handy video showing you all the gifts you can pick up at the FLF Birthday Bash!
Ladies and gentlemen (and those who resist being categorized), Second Life gacha madness is truly upon us! Most SL stores are having 50% sales on their gacha merchandize before Linden Lab bans gachas after August 31st, 2021.
Even I, who normally stays far away from gacha machines, have been tempted to play a few! And, as the uncrowned Freebie Queen of Second Life, I’ve even managed to find a few free and L$5 gachas for you! Rejoice, freebie fashionistas!!!
In addition to the following lists of gacha sale locations…
…there is now also a handy HUD from Epiphany. Just join The Epiphany group for free and check the notices to obtain the HUD. Wear it, and it guides you to a large number of stores which are offering L$25 gachas (they also have a full list on their website).
Using the Epiphany HUD, I arrived at the Pixicat store, where I was very lucky! On only the third pull, I was able to snag this romantic black ombre ballgown, with its twinking, gently rotating stars! This gorgeous gown is one of two rares from the Pixicat Soirée gacha (the other rare is the same ballgown in white):
While most gachas have been marked down to L$25 a pull, I did find one location that has six gachas at only L$5 per try! It is a store called Sugar Pink Café (here’s the exact SLURL to take you there).
The gachas at Suger Pink Café are only L$5 a pull!!
But UNA goes one better! The UNA store group is free to join, and you can pick up nine free older gacha fatpacks (Maitreya Lara size only), plus 26 other group gifts! Here’s your taxi to take you to UNA.
Most of these fatpacks have a Middle Eastern or Oriental flair. Here’s a sample of one of the outfits you can pull together, the Kaori gown, jacket, and corset, each of which includes a HUD with numerous colour combinations possible:
(The only drawback to the UNA gacha fatpacks is that each item is individually boxed, which means it takes longer to unpack everything. But hey, free is free!)
The Second Life Winter Shop & Hop event opened today, and runs until January 3rd, 2021. Almost all of the 180 participating merchants in the nine-sim shopping mall have a free gift for their customers, and today I blitzed through the entire mall from one end to the other, to bring you my picks for the most fabulous freebies from the event!
Please note that there are a lot more home and garden vendors than in previous years, which I will not be covering here. Today, I will be focusing on women’s apparel and footwear gifts. (If I have time, I may make a second run and focus on the non-apparel items you can pick up for your virtual homestead in Second Life.)
All SLURLs in this blogpost should take you directly to the location of the freebie in the Shop & Hop mall, so let’s just jump in, shall we?
Free Gifts of Women’s Apparel and Footwear
First up we have two gifts that don’t quite match, but what the hell…as soon as I found these items, I immediately put them on and wore them on the rest of my perambulations through the Winter Shop & Hop mall! The frilly magenta Fondle dress is the gift from Toksik, and the strappy red shoes are a present from the Enchanté store:
Vanity Fair models this truly sexy black lace Raelin slip dress from Baiastice (the black panties are included), which comes in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Perky, and Petite, Meshbody Legacy, Belleza Freya, and Slink Hourglass female mesh bodies:
Next we have this warm, wearable red blanket from Belle Epoque (you will need to alpha out your arms and hands!), plus these wonderful powder blue women’s patrol boots with a snowflake pattern, the gift from Lapointe and Bastchild’s brand SWEAR:
The detail on the patrol boots is amazing! These are keepers for sure! I may even design a whole winter outfit around them…
Here, Vanity Fair is wearing a green top and matching skirt, the gift from Entice, plus a pair of Storyteller glasses, the present from BONDI (which come with a HUD to change the colour of the frames and the tint of the lenses):
This tartan December minidress from Faida comes in sizes to fit Meshbody Legacy, and three versions of the Maitreya Lara body: regular, petite, and flat-chested.
The gift from Pixicat is this red-and-black Aspen cardigan, shown here with the Christmas ball earrings from Aleutia, which come in silver and gold versions in a full fatpack of colours, to match any seasonal outfit!
The Adita Santa dress from Luas comes in a fatpack of colours, shown here with the Aster boots from Eudora, which come in your choice of brown or red leather:
This year, several stores are offering more than one gift! AlaFolie has four gifts for you to unpack, including this Christine sweater and skirt outfit (which comes with a HUD with six different colours and patterns), and the knitted woolen Bonnet hat:
From Flower Dreams comes this bold, floral mesh dress called Kim, which comes with a five-colour HUD as shown. In addition, there are four other free gifts for women, all of which are applier/system/Bakes on Mesh outfits, some including wraps or shawls for various versions of female mesh bodies!
And Neve is giving you ELEVEN gifts in total this year: this year’s gift of the Lumos scarf with tiny Christmas lights (which includes a HUD with four options for both the colour of the scarf and the Christmas lights), plus ten gifts from previous years, all in one package! Below, Vanity Fair wears the Lumos scarf with one of those ten gifts, this festive sweater outfit from 2016, which comes with a HUD to change the colour of the top, skirt, sweater and belt separately to make numerous combinations!
Another festive outfit is this cropped sweater and skirt from 2019, each of which comes with a four-colour HUD, so you can mix and match:
And there are still eight more gifts from Neve to unpack! Hands down, Neve is the most generous vendor this Christmas at the Shop and Hop! Even if you have picked up one or two of these gifts in your earlier visits to SL, it is so thoughtful of Neve to make all of them available in one package!
Free Store Credit or Gift Cards
This year, quite a few stores are offering the gift of free store credit or gift cards (once again, all links are SLURLs to take you directly to the store locations in the Shop & Hop mall where you can slap the boards to obtain these offers):
Bumblebee‘s gift is L$500 gift card, to spend as you wish in their store;
EscalateD Hair is also offering L$500 free store credit;
Glitzz is giving away L$500 in free store credit, too;
Salt & Pepper is giving you L$250 in free store credit, plus a rather funny outfit;
Tachinni Clothing is offering L$150 in free store credit to everybody, and an additional L$350 store credit if you join their group (the group join fee is L$15);
and ViSion is giving away a fatpack of women’s leggings, plus L$500 in store credit to anyone who joins the ViSion group (the group join fee is only L$18).
And that’s it for me today! Happy freebie shopping! Remember that you have until January 3rd to scoop up all of these items, plus many more fabulous freebies.
UPDATE Dec. 15th, 2020: I forgot to mention yet another free gift card offer at the 2020 Winter Shop and Hop! The Annex womenswear store is giving away a L$500 if you join their free group here:
As promised, here are a selection of some of the wonderful freebies you can pick up as part of the Second Life 17th Birthday celebrations (more details here), which run until now until July 12th, 2020.
First, a pro tip: before you visit the Shop and Hop event, visit the SL17B Gift Boardwalk first. Why? Because many of the Shop and Hop vendors have also wisely made their gifts available here, as well as their booths at the Shop and Hop event. Trust me, you will find it much easier to get into these two sims than try to pry your way into the crowded, laggy Shop and Hop mall sims, which seem to be limited to 45 avatars each at a time, maximum. (Then again, so do the Second Life 17th Birthday sims where the Boardwalk is located.)
The SL17B Gift Boardwalk: Start Here
UPDATE June 20th, 2020: You should also know that there are a lot of gifts here at the Gift Boardwalk that are only available here, such as this striking, geometric design gown by Blue Rose Creations:
In this blogpost, I will be providing exact SLURLs to the locations at the Shop and Hop mall sims (not the SL17B Gift Boardwalk). Like I said, start at the Boardwalk first, and then, only if you cannot find it there, try to get into the Shop and Hop sims (I would strongly urge you to wait until July. The gifts aren’t going anywhere.)
I do apologize to you for using a pose stand for many of the following pictures. It just made going through all the gifts (well over 200!) a much less tedious process. I also tended to rely heavily on vendor photos of the gifts in the mall to decide what I wanted to unpack, wear, and show you in this blogpost.
Store Credits
First, pick up the two store credit offers available at the Shop and Hop event, which mean you can pick up whatever you want from the store later!
(UPDATE June 20th, 2020: I mistakenly had written that Blueberry was among the stores offering a store credit at the Shop and Hop, but that was back in March for their birthday, and I had even blogged about it then. Please accept my apologies for the mistake, and a thank you to Brinlea for pointing this error out to me in the comments!)
Bumblebee is offering a L$300 store credit here (just attach the HUD and click on it), and Addams is giving away L$500 in store credit here (just click on the sign at their booth).
My Favourite Clothes, Shoes, Jewelry, Hair, and Eyes
I don’t usually blog about eyes, but I will make an exception for these absolutely gorgeous Sahara eyes by Avi-Glam, available at their booth here. They come in both classic system and mesh versions (Catwa, Genus, LeLutka, and Omega). I just may be wearing this pair for a little while!
Blueberry is, once again, being extremely generous with her gifts! She is giving away a fatpack of lace-trimmed tops, plus a fatpack of bow slippers! Christmas came early, kids. (Speaking of Christmas, the pink leggings are an applier from Baby Monkey and were an Advent calendar gift from last December.)
AlaFolie‘s free gift is the Floralie Happy dress, trimmed along the bottom in black lace, which comes with a HUD with four different patterns (and you can also change the texture on the black top part of the dress to match the rest). You can pick it up here (and there are another four patterns of this dress available if you join the AlaFolie store group, which is not free). Here I have paired it with the long, wavy hair that Sintiklia is already well-known for! This is the Ruby hairstyle, which comes in 17 different colours and includes a styling HUD to wear each side forward or back as you desire (get it here).
There are some rather nice hair gifts available at the Shop and Hop mall, and this is another one: a neat and tidy, top-bun hairstyle called Kristen from Ade (here), which comes in a full fatpack of colours. The slate-blue floral tied shirt is the gift from Pixicat (here).
Lybra is offering two gifts that can be worn together as shown or separately: the top comes with two HUDs with solid colours and floral patterns, and the micro-miniskirt in matching colours and patterns (which thankfully includes panties to preserve your modesty!). You can get it here.
The hair shown below is yet another SL17B Shop and Hop freebie, the Candice hairstyle by Doux (here), which also comes in a fatpack of colours.
Bella Moda‘s genrous gift is this entire outfit: a gold and red party dress, shoes, and jewelry! This is the Celebrazione Crimson dress (available here), and all the little details on each of the pieces are examples of some truly lovely craftsmanship:
Here’s a closer look at the top of the Celebrazione dress, the necklace and the earrings:
Next up is yet another hairstyle fatpack, this one by Love, called (of course!) Lovely hair (available at their booth here), along with a sexy minidress from Pulse, which features a cutout at the back (not shown here).
The dress is sized for Maitreya Lara only, but it comes in no less than eight different colours: red as shown below, plus army, black, blue, blush, plum, white, and wine! The chain belt you see is optional and comes in four choices of metal: gold, silver, rose gold and onyx. You’re all set for the nightclub in this outfit! You can snap it up here!
(I know for a fact you can also pick up this dress and this hair at the Gift Boardwalk.)
Finally, we have the Be Mine floral headband and a moon collar from Tentacio (available here; please note that the creator has mistakenly switched the labels on the included HUD for the collar—Metal should be Leather and vice versa!):
This headband is completely adjustable in various dimensions (a feature I wish more accessories creators offered), and it comes in four different versions, with pink, red, white, and blue roses.
There are literally dozens of other gifts at both the Gift Boardwalk and the Shop and Hop mall; this is just a sampling of things which I particularly liked. There are also many home decor freebies available this time around, and tons of shoes, which I have not covered here except for the Blueberry and Bella Moda gifts.
Here’s a list of all the Shop and Hop sims. Again, I would caution you to wait a week or two until the crowd dies down and you can browse and wander in peace. The 200 participating vendors are also offering discounts on a selection of their merchandise, plus a few special items only during the SL17B celebrations!
Happy freebie shopping!
O.K., back to my vacation from the blog… 😉
UPDATE June 20th, 2020: I forgot to mention one more fabulous freebie, this beautiful deep purple and brown medieval/fantasy gown by Silvan Moon Designs! This is the Iona Destiny Elven gown in amethyst:
The set comes with a separate brown leather jerkin and arm-guards, which are one piece, in case you suddenly need to ride off to battle! The detail, as always, is delightful.
Now, I regret that I did not remember to save the SLURL for this last gift, but it is on the Gilded sim. Just look for a small suitcase on a fireplace mantel inside the store, to the right from the entrance.
