Mellow Yellow

Yellow. It’s a hard colour to match, and a hard colour to wear. The danger of looking like a bumblebee is ever-present!

However, the Peppermint Blue Free Store has a few yellow outfits, and Mar was up for a challenge. Mixed with black, yellow can work well, so here’s what she did with them.

The first outfit is Assistance Pack #081121. This contains a black coat, yellow leggings, bag, limited-edition spectacles (purple lenses, which I re-tinted yellow, to match the outfit), black boots (which I’m not wearing here; see in a moment for credits for those) and the usual plethora of shapes and skins.

Mar has teamed it with the Neo Boots from House of Curios. These cost 40L$ and have a myriad of colour change options, so you can match them to just about any outfit you want. Here, Mar opted for black, to complete the outfit. Find them in-world (here) and on XstreetSL (here).

The second Peppermint Blue pack is #081107. This one comes with the usual skins and shapes, and this yellow coat outfit (long and short coat skirts included), skirt, socks, boots (not worn), bag and lingerie. I’ve teamed this set with the 1L$ Lilith Lime shoes, from Ilayda (here, on XstreetSL).

The hair in both pics is from Waka & Yuki’s free and discount stall, upstairs at the Peppermint Blue Free Store. When you’ve taken the teleporter upstairs, turn right and head for the first market stall. Mar chose the Free5 hair, because it had gold stars in it that matched the outfit.

Poses are by VPoses.

Clearly Minty

I’m showcasing another lovely free ‘Newbie Assistance Pack’ from Peppermint Blue today. These are available to everyone, so don’t think because you’re not a newbie you can’t get them!

They can all be found at the Peppermint Blue Re:) Free Store (remember to take the blue TP pads up to the store). The one I’m showcasing here is the 090703 pack, and it’s a lovely summery outfit in pale blue:

The hair in the above pics is from House of Heart‘s new release gift for July 3rd. You can find it on an easel in the long hair section of the store.

Poses are from Striking Poses: Monica Bellucci dollarbie (right) and Gisele Bundchen #10 (left).

There’s a lot more in the Peppermint Blue pack than I’m showing here, including skins and shapes. Hop behind the cut for a screenshot of the enormous amount of items you’ll get.

Blue, blue, Peppermint Blue

Saving the best for last today. Many of you have heard of Peppermint Blue, the great ‘Assistance Set’ place that offers limited time complete avatar kits for free. Well, they’ve re-opened after a remodel, and they have set out more than 130 kits on two floors of their new store.

You’ll land here, so take one of those blue teleporters to the store:

Many of these are complete avatar kits, for both males and females. You’ll get shapes, skins, eyes, shoes, hair, clothing, and all for free!

Guys, there’s a big section of great stuff for you, too:

Here’s Mar in just one of the many full avatar kits available there. Many of them come with multiple skin options and avatar sizes/shapes, as well as multiple eye options, and other useful gadgets like height meters. They really are excellent full starter kits for newbies (and anyone else!)

Sn@tch City

I hope you’ve all had a chance to visit Ivey’s fabulous new mainstore in the new Sn@tch City sim. If not, then why not? Take that limo (OK, it’s more of a scuzzy old cab, actually *g*) and look around the huge new store. And make sure you wander around the whole sim. There are tons of great vendors there, and the build is awesome. Don’t forget to throw away all your old Sn@tch landmarks and just keep the new one!

This is Ivey’s weekly freebie, which you can find in the pink bag on the front desk of the Sn@tch store:

The flame detailing on the bottom of the pants comes in seven colours.

Now, if you wander to the back of the store, in the main corridor, you’ll find an elevator. If it’s upstairs, just click the call button to bring it down. Sit down on the seat and click the ‘2’ button to ride upstairs. Guys, this is where you’ll find the Menswear department now, and cheapie-hunters, this is also the location of the new Freebies and Cheapies area. (Note: If you’re a newbie, less than 30 days old, you can pick up the Sn@tch newbie avatar kit there, too.)

Hop behind the cut for pics of just a few of the cheap and free things I found there.

Mar’s Ladies’ Starter Kit – Monochrome

Ladies, this is something that I have wanted to do for a looooong time: a series of starter kits especially for you!

I’ve begun with the classic colours we all need in our wardrobes: black, grey and white. Staple colours and great basics.

The starter kit has everything to get you kitted out quickly: a shape, skins (the full set of Eloh ones), hair, shoes, tops, pants, dresses, underwear, a walk override, radar HUD, flight feather, posing stand, helpful notecards, and landmarks (contained in one of the notecards).

It’s only available at my store in Baileya at the moment (I set up the sales board in the store, but forgot to put it in my XStreetSL box too!). Hop behind the cut for pictures of the contents :)

Heaven’s Gate freebies for the girls

NOTE: This post does not contain inventory-sorting tips, purely because there’s so much stuff here it needed a separate post! Your inventory-sorting tips for this post can be found here: Why inventory-sorting is so flipping important!

Location: Heaven’s Gate, SGLand2

What’s there: Four complete female avatar packs, free female shapes, skins and hair, camping for other full female avatar packs (30 mins each), money tree. (Other freebies for the guys, too, which I’ve already covered here.)

Hope behind the cut for pics.

Heaven’s Gate freebies for the guys

Note: This blogpost contains inventory-sorting tips! (No, guys, you’re not exempt from messy inventories! Get sorting before it gets out of control!)

Location: Heaven’s Gate, SGLand2

What’s there: Two complete male newbie avatar packs, free male shapes and skins, camping for other full male avatar sets (30 mins each), money tree. (Lots of other freebies for the girls, too, which I’ll cover in a separate post.)

Hope behind the cut for pics, and some inventory sorting tips that might surprise you.

Forum Freebies

I lurk a bit on the official Second Life forums, and have been watching a thread where several store owners have been helping each other out, visiting each other’s stores, giving feedback on layout, ads, location and all kinds of things. It’s a great, positive thread that shows what can happen when people get together and help each other out, so I thought I’d do my bit by posting here about some of the freebies in their stores. Luckily for me, one of the posters has put together a list of everyone’s stores with handy TP links, so it’s easy for me to shuttle around the grid and take a look at everything.

My inventory is heaving and still in need of sorting, so I’ve just taken snapshots of the items in the stores. I hope the store owners don’t mind this, but I’m holding off grabbing any freebies for a bit while I’m unable to get in-world very much at the moment.

There were also more stores than I’ve featured on the list, but I’ve only mentioned the ones that had freebies and/or cheapies, as that’s the whole ethos of this blog.

Having said all that, hop behind the cut for a selection of forum freebies!

Workin’ my butt off

I’ve been workin’ my butt off all day, putting together a newbie kit of my own. I’ve hoiked around some of the cheapest full-perm stores (Chromex is the best I’ve found) and snagged a ton of stuff very cheaply. One thing I’ve found, though:

Resell and full-perm stores are a heaven for blingtards. Seriously, WHY does every damn pair of boots and shoes there have to look like an explosion in a De Beers store? If it ain’t that, then they have eight-inch whore heels and are made from plastic, latex, or other fetish materials. I’ve found great everything-else, from jeans to dresses, eyes to skins and shapes. There are fewer nice tops around, but some of the tops of dresses (the ones with not-so-great skirts) will serve pretty well. But shoes? Gah. Bling, whore, bling, whore… Oh, and don’t even get me started on the clip-clop shoes that announce one’s arrival as though one is a bloody carthorse…

And yeah, I’ve had my eye on the guy’s stuff, and believe me that’s even worse. If you don’t aspire to be P. Diddy (or whatever it is he calls himself these days) you might as well forget it when it comes to resell/full perm. ‘Playa’ blingy belt buckles, Gangsta AOs, huge white fur jackets with Ming the Merciless collars, and knuckleduster rings with more sovereigns and diamond-encrusted words on them than the average male has knuckles. Mind you, the kind of guy that would wear that godawful stuff probably needs that many diamonds (nice, hard stones, those) on his knuckleduster rings, because all that dragging on the floor would erode any other material.

Okay, okay. Bitch mode off. *sigh*

There *is* a lot of great stuff out there for free. Hell, I blog about it here almost every day. But the thing about a newbie kit is that it’s designed to be opened there and then, everything tried on, and the n00b looks banished before you go whizzing around the grid. And while I can fill a notecard with LMs and advice to go to TESLA for their great Elise 2 shoes, or to Maitreya for their fab slinky stillettoes, the point is: the newbie wants to stop looking like a newbie as soon as possible!

Oh well, notecards and LMs it is. I have two good freebie shoes for the girls: the ones you see in almost every starter kit, plus some fun stuff like workboots and clogs. For the rest, I will put in a notecard with LMs and instructions on where to get the good freebies around the grid.

And there won’t be any bling in sight…

Newbie Kit Review: Sn@tch

Since Mar’s been in-world, I’ve noticed (and picked up) a fair few newbie kits: boxes filled with everything a newbie might need to get themselves looking less like a n00b. They usually contain at least one shape, one skin, one set of hair, one pair of eyes, one AO of sorts, one pair of shoes/boots, and a few items of clothing. Some contain a lot more than that, and some are better than others, or geared more toward one style than others.

Today I’m going to review the Raven Noobie Kit, from Sn@tch.

I love Sn@tch’s clothing line: lots of punky, grungy, trashy items, and owner Ivey Deschanel is insanely fun. Her Subscribe-O-Matic notecards always have me giggling. What else can you do but cackle when you read something like:

DJ Angelus is playing hot slinky smex music for you and I’m in the basement as usual peeking up your skirts. So leave the glitch pants at HOME!

The Raven Noobie Kit can be found, together with a load of other great freebies, at Sn@tch, in Pulse. The Noobie Kit is on the ground floor, near to the customer service desk, along with a few other free items (no, you don’t get a TV with the TV Freebie of the Week, but you do get some… interesting items *g*) and a lucky chair that’s generously set to change every 5 minutes and also includes the beloved ‘?’ for those whose letter never seems to come up. The rest of the freebie stuff (including an insanely massive 1000-item clearout box) is on the second floor.

Getcher Goth on, and follow me behind the cut…