Tag: Second Life Shoes

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Essenz Shoes

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?

Happy shopping!

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Two Free L$1,000 Gift Cards!

Even though the Christmas/Advent season is now over, there are still a couple of stores that are being very generous with their group gifts to customers! Did you know that there are two stores in Second Life, where you can pick up a L$1,000 gift card as a free group gift—and that you can join their store groups for free? That’s free money, people!

The first store is one where I routinely ransacked their Advent calendar over the holidays, called Le Fashion Whore. Join the Le Fashion Whore group for free (there are 4 white group join panels shown in the picture below) and simply click on the gift-wrapped box on the small table indicated below with the red arrow, to get your free gift card:

The L$1,000 gift card attaches to the lower-right hand corner of your screen, and works with any store vendor. (If you wish, you can rezz the gift card to the ground on any land with rezz rights, and then it becomes transferable to another avatar!)

The gift card for Le Fashion Whore should enable you to pick up four regular-priced women’s outfits. It’s a super deal you should not pass up!

The second store to offer a L$1,000 gift card is Blossom, a store conveniently located right next door, which sells mostly women’s footwear and a few outfits.

I found it difficult to find the store group searching under Groups in Search (it’s spelled .::* BloSSoM *::., and I just hate it when stores do that), but luckily there is also a black-bordered, light-blue group join panel attached to the side of the reception desk (see below)!

Join the Blossom group (but make sure it’s the right one, there appear to be several called “Blossom”!) and then click on the opened gift box on the reception desk as shown by the red arrow:

The Blossom gift card should be enough for you to get at least four pair of regular-priced shoes (and even more, if you happen to pick some more inexpensively-priced items, as I did). And I assume that you can also rezz that gift card to make it transferable, as well.

Oh, and apparently both these gift cards are available until January 31st, 2020, so you’ve got the rest of this month to pick them up. The gift cards are not time limited, so you can use them anytime you like.

Happy shopping!

UPDATE Jan. 11th, 2020: I wanted to show you what you can get for your gift cards, putting together this delightful retro 1950s outfit!

The Betty dress from Le Fashion Whore comes with a HUD with twelve different patterns for both the top and skirt, plus twelve coordinating colours for the belt—very versatile! And the Minnie pumps from Blossom come in six different colours as shown. This entire outfit was free, using the two L$1,000 gift cards, and there’s much more to see and buy in both stores.

The Le Fashion Whore gift card is only available until Jan. 31st, 2020, and I assume the same is true for the Blossom one, so hurry down!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Christmas Gifts from the Cosmopolitan Event (and Advent Gifts for December 17th)

Another December event which offers lots of gifts for freebie fashionistas is the current round of the biweekly Cosmopolitan shopping event, which runs from the 16th to the 28th of December. It’s only two weeks long, shorter than other events, so be sure not to miss it!

Just inside the entrance to the event is a huge Christmas tree, with stockings you click on to receive the presents. (You do have to join the Cosmopolitan group for free to pick up these gifts.)

Participating vendors are adding stockings to the tree every day between now and Christmas, so I would advise dropping by on Christmas Day and picking up everything at once.

If you insist on visiting every day, the layout of the stockings around the tree can be somewhat confusing compared to traditional Advent calendars, and you might land up collecting the same gifts multiple times. You might want to use this tip provided by SL blogger Chic Aeon: once you have clicked on a stocking and received its gift, right click on it, Select More from the pie menu, select More again, then select Derender, then Blacklist. You will no longer be able to see that stocking on return visits! (These are the instructions for the Firestorm viewer; I do not know what the equivalent is for the standard Second Life viewer.) This is a genius tip! Thanks, Chic!

Cat Pink SL has already posted a YouTube video with a look at a few of the early gifts from the Cosmopolitan Christmas tree, so I am not going to bother posting pictures of the presents here:

Today Vanity Fair is wearing two Advent calendar gifts for Dec. 17th:

  • The lovely Nola dress which comes with a separate black bolero jacket, from Virtue. The calendar requires you to join the Virtue group, which is free to join.
  • The Osaka shoes in riverside blue from Essenz. The shoes comes with a HUD to change the colour of the sole (4 colours), the metals (4 textures), and the flowers (26 colour options!). The calendar requires that you join the Essenz group for L$350, but I believe there is an option for non-group members to purchase each day’s gift for L$50.

Vanity Fair is also wearing:

Happy freebie hunting!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Gifts from the ACCESS Event

Yet another Second Life shopping event that offers dozens of free gifts is the December round of the ACCESS Event (SLURL), where just about every single booth has a blue-wrapped present for you!

There’s lots of gifts for men here, but today I am just going to show you some of the women’s presents (check out Cat Pink’s video at the end of this blogpost to see some of the men’s gifts). You will need to join the ACCESS Updates group for free to be able to pick up all the gifts.

Let’s start off with a fun one: these green Grinch socks from Rosary! They come in sizes to fit both flat and high feet:

Looking for a versatile Santa hat? LOB has you covered, with versions to fit both male and female heads. The included HUD gives you five different colours, including two different shades of red:

This pictures shows you three gifts: the Ilsa hair from Analog Dog (which comes in a fatpack as shown), the ApiBlossom Vancouver red silk top (which could double as a minidress), and the Dahlia set of jewelry by Supernatural:

Here’s a closer look at the Supernatural Dahlia earrings and two separate necklaces, which come in three metals: gold, silver, and rose gold. The set comes with two different HUDs to change the colour of the jewels:

Asteria offers the Maya top in a fatpack of ten colours:

The gift from Oushk is this ice-blue Imogen latex minidress:

Here Vanity models the cheerful Holiday Gift dress and the separate Holiday Gift waist bag, both presents from RINKA & AMPRENTA:

This is the Donna dress by Betrayal, daringly low-cut!

And here Vanity is wearing the shoulder-baring Holiday Gift sweater from Spirit:

Scandalize’s gift is the Bloom top and skirt, which come in plain as shown, and also in a satin version:

Seniha gives you the lace-trimmed Kristy dress in red, which comes in both a plain version as shown, and a patterned version:

The ACCESS gift from Black Opium is this Elise outfit in strawberry red (both the top and the skirt come in plain and patterned versions). The versatile red Loca Love Bag by Ryvolter comes in versions for your elbow (as shown), your shoulder, your hand—and even hanging from your index finger!

Now let’s look at shoes. First up are the Jordana leopard mules from Ohema:

Next are the Amanda golden peeptoe slingbacks by Gos (for some reason the texture on these took forever to rezz):

And finally we have the fun, chunky red Carmen heels by Enchanté:

The ACCESS Event runs from December 12th, 2019, to January 8th, 2020, so there’s plenty of time to come down and vacuum up all the freebies!

Cat Pink SL has just released a video showing you most of the male and female gifts, as well as a few free dances you can pick up at ACCESS: