Bringing out the good stuff in Second Life®: fashion, hot spots, freebies, etc.

Following the closing of Cicada, Reda Bertolucci and Emilie Freund are finally releasing some of the sumptuous custom builds that they’d made for it as prefabs. My personal favourite wasn’t part of the houses that were selected for retail, which numbers three (the one I liked most among them being ‘Tanja’). Each model can be bought furnished or unfurnished and is very prim-savvy ! The houses’ rez-faux comes in the shape of a moving truck, that disappears after you’re done setting up your new home, which made me quite smile. Demos are here.

Each texture is unique and baked with shadows, giving a lot of realism without having to run actual live shadows in your client.

I love the luscious pouty lips in this new series of makeups from Leafy*.

Credits. Hair: Kik (as001 Littlething), Skin: Leafy (Kaethe Dyrssen), Glasses: Epoque (Vintage McMillan), Earrings: GW (paku Kidd), Scarf: Cockles: Xerras Azalee, Necklace: Whippet & Buck (Dakota Buck), Turtleneck & Pumps: Maitreya (Onyx LeShelle), 50L Friday dress: &bean (Keiko Morigi), Belt: Argrace (AIR Winx), Tights: Glanz (Tsuru Shan), Bag: Kloka (Shizuku Halcali).

This week’s 50L Friday is bringing some amazing bargains, not least this barn by Turnip Sorbet that you can have for 50L only ! It is copyable and comes with a fence and props to put inside, though the props are sold separately, consisting of hay stacks, crates, and even a hay table, with a lace cloth (which I loved). Just the fence would be a steal at 50L, but all this ?! Turnip made the build to give her bunnies a home and is practically giving it away for a day, just to share ! It might be available only today. Grab it here.

Another 50L Friday bargain is this cute chandelier from Kyoot, and it is mod/copy.

Also cheap buys, this spice rack and teapot were made by Shizuku Halcali, and can be found at Kloka. 50L and 100L, copyable only.

One of Chronokit’s most recent releases, this table comes also in a smaller, square version and has several wood textures included.

I just overheard the news on Plurk, via FineThanks, that Metaversatility was very soon closing down their sim, Emvee Cuba. It’s one of the most beautifully built sims on SL, see photos here. For one week or so, it’ll be up for grabs on eBay; buyer will be given full ownership of an amazing build, and the opportunity to give the place a new lease on life. If not, well, it’ll go. Save Emvee Cuba !

(Also, see Fine’s post about this new anti-copybotter system put on the market today by Insilico owner, Skills Hak. Though I cannot personally vouch for it as it is really new, shop owners may be interested in checking it out !)

Finally something to add to the avatars section ! Kyrsten Jigsaw’s tiny avatar is like a chocolate leather inflatable owl. You can have it for 345L at rcbg.

If you know of other places with awesome, well-made avatars I haven’t featured here, do consider dropping me a note to let me know about it, using the contact form.

I was vaguely pruning my objects folder when I unpacked the Valentine’s Day gift from New Trails and thought it was really so cute. Love shrooms ! It was sent by their subscrib-o-matic which should be somewhere at the shop.

Also, while cutting out my pictures, I kept wondering why I was doing my collage that way which is not how I usually do it, when I remembered once I’d finished that I’d seen this earlier. ❤

As of today, everyone with a Premium SL account gets to pick their own free Linden Home, on specially designated sims, along with an allotment of 117 prims, not counting the ones from the house. Both a nice gesture and a smart move on the part of Linden Labs, this both adds value to Premium packages and should help bolster the growing home owning business in SL, both for land barons and interior designers, by giving more people a taste at playing house.

There are a few colour themes, and some structure variations on them, to pick from.  The houses are not modifiable and you cannot get more than 117 prims. All parcels are huddled close together. All these limitations are to encourage you to seek your dream land once you have outgrown your Linden Home, I suppose. And it’s really mostly free if you pay for your membership yearly, since you get the amount of your subscription back in the form of a weekly stipend (of 300L/week).

What I’m liking most about the houses being all so close is the sense of community that is going to come from living here, once more people have settled in. I have personally never had a Premium account, so I guess I will only come over to one of these as a visitor, but I can see this growing into something nice in general to have around !

There are so many private residential sims on SL, but I’ve always shunned from ever getting land on them because they can look so random altogether, you never know what your neighbour is going to put up, and you tend to put up “barriers” around yourself, either by living in a skybox or restricting access, generally ignoring everyone else on the sim. Now these Linden Home sims may be really uniform, but I can imagine people who reside there will likely be interacting more, with more neighbourly stuff going on. That could be nice.

More details here on the Linden Labs blog, and TP to one of the sims here.

Update. I just noticed there are 3 more types of houses, depending on which sim you visit: Japanese, Lord of the ring, and mountain cabins. I would describe the quality of the builds as “adequate”. Also, I have to say that after an hour, you may begin to experience a slight feeling of claustrophobia, as I did.

There’s a delightfully fun and silly AO set at Kuso, by daiz Papp, and it’s free ! There until the 19th, I believe, it’s called “Ninja Man”. Here I shot a quick little machinima of the stands only, but it is complete with walks, a typing overrider and everything. For it, I put on the new Whippet & Buck playsuit which came in handy for all that exercise !

If you’ve not been to Kuso before, they have tons of fun, whimsical animation overriders for very cheap, from about 4 to 16L, with full sets at 300L. And it’s constantly updating with awesome new stuff.

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