SL for Nowt – Page 13 – Living a digital life with (almost!) empty pockets

Take that as gospel!

June 5, 2012 Mar

Ladies, there is the most insanely gorgeous pair of mesh ankle boots waiting for you out there, and they’re absolutely FREE!

Gospel Voom, of GoS, has put this fabulous pair of pink Desire mesh ankle boots out as the store’s gift for the Mesh Around Hunt. The prize includes five rigged mesh sizes (for the newbies here, rigged mesh cannot be resized, hence you get several sizes in the pack, but they are directly attached to your avatar’s skeleton, so they move more realistically when you move) plus a bonus unrigged pair (which can be resized).

The Mesh Around Hunt blog is here, complete with all the SLurls you need, plus hints to prize locations. The hunt runs until June 15th :)

Weekend treats!

June 2, 2012 Mar

Hi peeps!

I’ve been wandering around the Grid today, and found some gorgeous stuff. This all comes from just three stores (four, if you count the prop in the teaser pic) and everything is less than L$75, with one item completely free for this weekend only.

Hop behind the cut!

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Oh, oh, retro!

May 28, 2012 Mar

If you follow Mar on twitter you’ll have seen her squealing about the awesome stuff available at the Retro Swap Meet on The Wash sim. Prices are as low as L$10 or less, and there’s tons of stuff, from 1920s glamourpusses to 50s and 60s vixens and 70s foxy chicks. Guys, there’s some nice retro pieces available for you, too!

Mar’s put together a great summery look from three pieces bought at the Retro Swap Meet (L$10 per item, so a total of L$30) plus two group gifts.

The hair is a fabulous subscribe-o-matic gift from Truth Hair. Battle your way through the crowds (the store is always packed) and – if you’re not already in the subscribe-o, give it a click and wait until you’re registered. Once you see that you’ve been added to the database you (and anyone already in the group) can click again, choose ‘history’ from the menu and navigate to the most recent notice, dated May 26th. Click the relevant number and wait until you’re sent the gift. Inside you’ll find a full fatpack of the gorgeous Jessie mesh hair.

Mar’s Micha Top (tropical) is from the Artilleri stall at the Retro Swap Meet. You’ll get a pack of three tops for L$10 there. Her shoes and jewellery are from the Ear Candy stall, here. Her capris are from the free Aqua Halter and White Capris set from Moulliez, here on Marketplace. And, finally, her (hilariously-named!) Studious Tart glasses are from a humungous fatpack sent out to members of the Nomine subscribe-o-matic.

The Retro Swap Meet finishes on June 6th, so you have another week to check it all out :)

This weekend only: Two free pairs of eyes at IKON

May 5, 2012 Mar

UPDATE: This offer is now over.

Hi peeps! The IKON group gift freebies for May have gone out in-store, and they’re gorgeous! You get two pairs this month: the Sunrise Eyes in ‘summer’ (a lovely green-gold shade) and the Utopia Eyes in ‘light silver and blue’. You’ll need to join the IKON group (it’s free-to-join, just paste this link into chat and click it, then make sure you’re wearing the tag when you click the boxes).

Note: These freebies will, as the picture shows, only be available this weekend. So hurry up!

Inventory-maintenance: Those extra mesh sizes!

April 14, 2012 Mar

Hi peeps!

Here’s a quick inventory-sorting post (I’m not logged in right now, so there are no screencaps, but this is pretty straightforward anyway). If you’re using a mesh-enabled viewer and you’re buying and wearing mesh clothing and accessories, then there’s a new inventory-bloater that you need to think about:

The extra sizes of mesh clothing included in your folders!

Anyone who has bought mesh clothing will know what I’m talking about. Usually, the folders will contain several sizes (anything from three to half a dozen) of clothing. You try them on (together with the alpha layer included) until you find the one that works best for your avatar. And then… what do you do? Memorise that size so you know you can always wear the ‘mediums’ from Store A and the ‘larges’ from Store B?

What do you do with the sizes you don’t wear?

Uh-huh. You need to either ditch those or archive them. If you’re the kind of person who never changes their avatar shape, then junk the spares, but if you anything like me (or most other inventory-sorters that I’ve spoken to!) you’ll want to archive them, just in case. SL has so many packrats! XD

Rez a prim and start archiving those unwanted sizes. Either do one prim per outfit (call it Archive: Un-used sizes, or something like that) and put it in that outfit’s folder or – to bring down the number of prims in your inventory even further – do one prim per store, and keep a separate ‘un-used mesh sizes’ folder going somewhere. And keep on top of it!

Remember: if your archive prim is copiable, when you rez it out to add new unwanted sizes, a copy will remain in your inventory. Once you’ve taken the new, edited prim into your inventory, delete the old one.

Mar’s Guide to: Making a little hideaway for yourself

April 7, 2012 Mar

If there’s one thing a lot of us want in SL, it’s a little place to call our own. Previously, I’ve given you a tutorial to make a very simple little 10m skybox to get changed in (and live in, if you want!) but that method doesn’t give you much leeway for decorating the walls; it’s more of a one-texture-all-over kind of thing.

To that end, here is a slightly more detailed tutorial for building a small skybox home of your own. This one is adaptable to any size, although I’ve only worked with a 10m box. It allows much greater texture customisation of the walls, and I’ve included a really nifty little hint about how to save prims, which is something we all want to do when we own land. Every land parcel only allows you so many prims, so every few you can shave off here and there gives you more to put towards something else, like furniture :)

Today’s guide will show you how to make a bright spring hideaway, full of gorgeous colour. I’m also going to show you a few cheap (and free) decor items that go nicely with this spring hideaway, and over the next few months I hope to be able to re-use this hideaway, re-texturing and re-furnishing it to show you different ideas.

Hop behind the cut, and let’s get stuck in to building!

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Monkey Blue!

April 7, 2012 Mar

UPDATE: The Baby Monkey group is no longer free-to-join.

Hi peeps! Here’s a quick freebie fix, all from one location: Baby Monkey!

The sweater is from the group gift wall (the group is free to join – paste this link into chat and click on it to bring up the join window, then with your tag enabled click the items on the gift wall), the boots are from the lucky boards in the main room, and the mesh skirt is from the Midnight Mania board upstairs in the Mesh Room. (Remember, you need to be using a mesh-enabled viewer such as the official Second Life viewer, or Firestorm etc, to be able to see mesh items.)

Edit: Sorry, peeps. Getting comment-spammed to hell on these latest three posts, so I’m disabling comments on them.

Closing-down sales: Exodi, Kalnins, and MerikenCo

March 31, 2012 Mar

I always feel sad when I blog about closing down sales, because any creator going out of business is a Not Good Thing. But when three large businesses announce closure, practically within a week of each other? That’s not just bad news for customers of those stores; it’s bad news for SL itself.

Ladies, today is your LAST CHANCE to buy from Exodi. The store closes tonight (Saturday March 31st). There’s still a group gift on top of the fireplace, to your left as you walk in, so activate your group tag and get that. It’ll be the last gift you get from Ryker Beck, as Exodi.

Oh, and while you’re at it, PLEASE don’t do what these thoughtless women did:

Those women couldn’t have given an uglier, ruder ‘goodbye’ to Ryker Beck if they’d tried. Unpacking the FREE gift she gave and leaving all their crap to litter her store? Selfish. Just utterly selfish. And you know what? I haven’t named and shamed on this blog in a long time, but I’m going to do it right now; I am so disgusted at this selfish attitude. Ryker has been one of SL’s most generous creators, with regular group gifts of full skin fatpacks, setting out three gorgeous free newbie avatars for women, and I couldn’t believe what I saw when I walked into the store. In all honesty I thought Ryker had set out all of her previous group gifts, as one final huzzah to her group members, until I realised the boxes all had different ‘owner’ names.

So, congratulations to sinala.hoover, priscila.viper, rosa121, naillah, gogogirl.popstar, sharon.tate, kit.littlething, sem.muhindra, nese.thespian, barbiepinkstyle, jasmin.donaldo, nushua.allardyce, ellendixie, evva.camel, and ashira.torok for getting their names mentioned. Perhaps in future you might think a little about what kind of message you’re giving to the creators who, y’know, don’t have to give out free gifts, but do anyway.

Hmf. Enough of that. Two other stores have announced closure. Hop behind the cut for more info (especially the menfolk reading, as these places are menswear heaven!)

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