July 2013 Taobao Haul (+ 1 Qoo10 Haul!)

Let me tell you... I went a little bit crazy. In my defence, they were all very very cheap and I think I spent less than S$90 (excluding shipping) for all of them. SO YAY! 

I got myself these gorgeous leggings that I hope they come as opaque as the photo looks. 

I have been lemming this tanktop for a while now. Finally decided to get it!!

This was a omg-it's-an-oversized-tee-must-buy purchase. I don't really have to dress formally for work (unless I'm out meeting clients) so oversized shirts like these are good enough for work! :D

Pretty skirt eh? I hope the sizing is forgiving. Sometimes a size L can be ridiculously small!

I saw this and I had to get it because of the elephants haha.

One more baggy dress for this crazy weather!

I'm quite worried for this purchase. I hope the inner tank is not too tight! :S

Mesh outerwear with cross prints. Confirm must get.

I got the below mesh floral shirt in black. I wanted to get the coral one but figured it was way too obnoxious.

A couple of ZARA-inspired pieces! I'm excited for them to come! Definitely meet-client appropriate!

This was the sneaky Qoo10 order. It was on timed sale so might as well right?

A couple pair of heeled boots/sandals. I really enjoy wearing black sandals or boots with chunky heels. I think they make your calves look smaller!

OMG CAN'T WAIT FOR ALL OF THEM TO COME!!! :D So excited. HEEHEE.

Review: CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher in 05

Finally, I have reached the end of my CANMAKE reviews. The CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher in 05 is the last CANMAKE product that I bought from Japan and writing this post makes me a little little bit melancholic. Call me drama-mama, but if you know how much more CANMAKE products retail for in Singapore, you will understand my grief. I want to buy more, but I can't. :( 

GETTING BACK TO THIS REVIEW, the CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher in 05 retails for 680yen (before tax), ~S$7.50. I don't even know how much one costs in Singapore, but I'm pretty sure it's so much more. MEH. 

I chose 05 (Peach Petal) because I thought the soft coral and pastel peach colour will go so well together in creating that summer-appropriate cheeks! 

There are 4 other shades:

1. 01 Candy Flower - girlish orange + soft pink
2. 06 Antique Rose - sugar pink + coral pink
3. 07 Orange Bouquet - faintly coral-tinged orange + hot orange
4. 08 Love Trap Flower - blood orange + lovely pink

Do visit the website for more information: http://www.canmake.com/en/ebase/item_base030.html 

Packaging: I really really adore CANMAKE's product packaging. This blusher looks like a gem from far! It's so simple, but it shines gloriously!!

Claims - true or not?

1. Apparently, this blusher can create the illusion of a smaller face. There are two ways in which you can achieve this illusion and they are clearly illustrated at the back of the packaging.
2. This blusher has squalane, jojoba oil, hyaluronic acid and ectoine in its repertoire of ingredients to make your skin supple, healthy and moist. 

Personally, I can't be bothered to apply the CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher as instructed. Takes too much time! If anyone has tried the blusher as instructed, please tell me if it works or not! 

Regarding the many many beneficial ingredients, it doesn't hurt to have these ingredients right? Unless you are allergic to them! The CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher gives you healthy-looking cheeks and also moisturises - win-win situation! 

Brush: Wow. Simply WOW. It's a drugstore product with a stellar brush. It's not spiky at all and the synthetic brush feels unbelievably soft and smooth. Great work there, CANMAKE! I have been using this quite religiously for the past two weeks and I'm happy to announce that there has been no shedding. None. ZERO!

Formulation: I really appreciate the hint of shimmer. I hate it when blushers have TOO MUCH glitters/shimmers because they are really unforgiving on oily skin! Give it a couple of hours and you look like you have been dipped in oil. NOT GOOD. Hence, I prefer matte blushers or those that give a little bit of shine. The CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher is a perfect example of my ideal blusher and I really love it!

Pigmentation: It's not majorly pigmented, but to me, that's a good thing. Some blushers (*cough* Sleek cosmetics *cough*) are so pigmented that applying them gets me really nervous. I once had to remove my face makeup and start from scratch because I applied way too much blusher. Of course, you can say that that's because I'm not skillful enough, but come on, we all need user-friendly products and not one that only the pros can use! The CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher has beautiful, average pigmentation that ensures you have total control when applying. You want more, then apply more layers!

Application: Smooth and hassle-free application. It seems like the CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher can do no wrong!

Longevity: This blusher lasts a crazy long period of time. By crazy long, I mean over 12 hours. CUCKOO RIGHT?! I applied it before work at 8am, then checked it when I reached home at 930pm, AND THE COLOUR IS STILL ON MY CHEEKS. I don't get it, but I love it! The blusher actually withstands the horrifyingly humid (and hazy) weather!

Pardon the duck face, this was NOT my intended pose okay. HAHAHA. 

I really love the CANMAKE Cheek & Cheek Blusher and I wish I can get more! Who's going to Japan?? Please help me get more CANMAKE blushers!!! :D 

How to purchase things from Taobao (using 65daigou agent)

This is a super highly requested post! Recently, I keep raving about how much money I can save by shopping on Taobao, and many readers have either commented, messaged me on facebook or emailed me on writing a how-to post! So here it is! :D

I normally shop on Taobao through 65daigou - a Taobao service agent based in Singapore. It's much easier and less troublesome! So I suggest if you really want to shop on Taobao, just get an account on 65daigou and start from there! I promise I'm not paid by 65daigou to write this post. Their service is simply stellar and therefore I'm willing to write about them!

Firstly, you will need to go to http://65daigou.com/ and create your account. You can even login using Facebook so yay easy peasy.

You'll notice that at the top of the website, there's an EZ-BUY section. This is where you paste the product URL from Taobao.

So for example, you are interested in this ZARA-inspired dress (It's retailing in ZARA for more than S$60, and I got it for less than S$10 nyahaha).

You just copy the product URL ...

... and paste it on the EZ-BUY section. SUPER EASY RIGHT?

Then 65daigou smart system will configure everything out for you and you just need to input your choice in sizing, color and other special requirements, and then decide on your shipping method.

Normally, if I'm buying a few items that don't weigh so much, I will opt for Economy Air shipping method. The items arrive faster!

If I'm buying in bulk/ buying heavy items (like shoes), then I will opt for Sea shipping. Items will arrive in about 2-3 weeks but you are paying less in terms of shipping (as compared to if you use Economy Air shipping).

The question now is how do you decide whether to ship from Guangzhou or Shanghai?? For beginners, I will suggest just sticking to one warehouse - if you're buying 10 items, then choose either Shanghai/Guangzhou warehouse for all 10 items.

As you shop more frequently on Taobao, you will start to appreciate the 2 different locations. Different Taobao sellers are located at different cities in China, so if a seller is based in a location nearer to Guangzhou, you can save on domestic shipping by opting for the Guangzhou warehouse. You don't really save a significant amount of money (usually not more than 20yuan or S$4+), but you still save some!

But if you don't bother about that, then just stick to one warehouse!

After you check out, they will prompt you to pay via your Prepay account. You can top up your Prepay account via ibanking or paypal. When the top-up is successful they will send you an sms! So thoughtful right (so you don't need to keep stalking the website)!

And then the 65daigou staff will help you order your items and it will be indicated as "order placed"!

It is then the start of the waiting game. If you buy a lot of items, then you need to wait for all of them to reach the chosen warehouse before all of them can be shipped to Singapore. You can choose to ship certain items first, but I suggest you wait for all of them to arrive so that you don't have to pay more shipping fee.

When all the items have been shipped, they will alert you on your parcel number! You will only need to pay for the additional shipping + agent fees after the parcel has arrived in Singapore.

Then, when all transactions are completed, you can choose your delivery method! You can choose methods like collecting your parcel from their warehouses, from the MRT pickup points, from the neighbourhood pickup points or home delivery. Home delivery requires an additional charge of S$5. I have shopped with 65daigou for quite some time, and they really have grown in terms of delivery methods! They have over 80 neighbourhood pickup points now!! CRAZYYY convenient! :D

Now, we have come to the more confusing part - HOW DO YOU SHOP ON TAOBAO?

It's definitely not a friendly site, especially for those who don't really read Chinese characters often. If I went to the website 6 years ago, I would see no difficulty in getting around the website and locating certain items, but now, after 6 years of not writing or reading Chinese characters, my competency level in Chinese language has deteriorated significantly. This was why I found it so freaking hard to shop using Taobao initially!!!

Of course, as with all things in life (generalising here haha), practice makes perfect, and yes after a few visits, I slowly got accustomed with the structure of the website and now searching for items is much easier!

Firstly, you need to visit www.taobao.com (duh!).

For beginners, it will be good to search for BRANDS instead of figure out what a clothing item is called in Chinese. I especially like to use "stylenanda", "ASOS", "ZARA" or "topshop" because you will find A LOT of cute stuff. Most of them you will find things that blogshops are selling and then you'll be so angry because the prices on Taobao are so much lower! MEH.

I like to limit my searches to a certain price point, usually no more than 50 yuan (or around S$10-S$11).

And then, I like to filter the items according to popularity. You don't want to be buying lowly-priced items and then get low quality items. The trick is to pay little and get more out of an item. Hence, filtering searches by popularity makes sure that you find an item that fits your budget AND is of high quality.

I also like to read reviews on the product first before purchasing. If you buy shoes, it's super crucial to read the reviews first because some cuttings are really weird. Through reading the reviews, you will know whether to buy the usual size or a size (or two) up!

After the filtering, you will see something like this!! Look at the blue dress, it's selling for 27.80 yuan (+ 10 yuan domestic shipping). WTF RIGHT?! Blogshops in Singapore confirm plus chop sell a similar dress for over S$25!

Let's now focus on the blue dress.

Things to look out for:

1. Price (cheap cheap good good!)
2. Domestic shipping (sometimes you can get free domestic shipping, which is like cheap thrill haha)
3. Total number of transactions + total number of reviews (248 transactions and 237 reviews for the blue dress)
4. Location - the seller of the blue dress is located in Guangzhou, JUST NICE RIGHT? You can choose Guangzhou warehouse using 65daigou then! 
5. The seller's shop (indicated with the blue water droplet thingy)

I normally like to visit the seller's shop when I like a certain item. Buying more from the same seller actually saves money (only 1 domestic shipping fee) and saves time (instead of waiting for 5 items from different sellers to reach the warehouse in China, you wait for 5 items for one single seller to reach the warehouse, then things can get shipped to Singapore faster).

Some Taobao shops have really pretty websites, some are just basic. The below example is an example of a basic Taobao shop haha, but the prices are pretty low so yay!

The last thing you want to check before confirming on a link to be pasted on 65daigou is to make sure you have the best price. Every single time I like something, I will copy paste the product name and then search that on Taobao one more time to make sure that I have found the best price for the best quality. It takes a long time, but it's better to do that than receive crappy stuff right?

PHEW WHAT A LONG POST. I hope this post is useful for all you Taobao converts! :D

Yay! My latest Taobao purchase has just been shipped and I already can't wait to make my next order. HEEHEE. :)

Have a great weekend guys!!

VISUALS (Highlight: Spotted Gordon Ramsay at Maxwell!!! YAY!!)

Crazy how fast the weeks are passing when you're working! I'm now into my fifth week working at this company and so far everything's amazing!

 

Last week has been really exciting. Especially that moment when I met Gordon Ramsay at Maxwell Food Centre. Coincidence level 20000000! :D

 

Anyway, here's a visual shoe dictionary for a light-hearted form of education. :)

 

I heard so many good things about the Etude House AC Clinic Intense line and decided to purchase the essential items. After a week, my skin feels SO MUCH better and makeup applies more evenly. I'm very impressed. A review post on these babies is in the works!

Outfit for last Friday. I saw this particular dress selling everywhere online (Editor's Market also!) and it retails between S$25-S$40. CRAZY because I got it for S$9 from taobao. muahahaha.

The only bad thing about this dress is that it's so lightweight and flowy that a slight wind in the wrong direction will send the dress floating upwards. YIKES. Luckily I wore my mega high denier leggings, if not I would have shown the entire world everything, and that's not very nice for those poor people.

SEE HOW CLOSE I WAS TO GORDON RAMSAY? OMG FAN GIRL MOMENT!!! I wasn't even anticipating his arrival when I went to Maxwell!

I had a lunch date with gohchaychay and we decided to meet at Maxwell Food Centre. As I was walking towards the Food Centre, I saw this HUGE crowd gathering at the bubble tea stall, so in my mind I thought, wah confirm got celebrity!! And then a black van stopped in front of me and GORDON RAMSAY CAME OUT OF THE VAN OMG. I was so excited, I momentarily forgot about my perilously upward-floating dress and just snapped away. YAY GORDON RAMSAY! :)

He was at Maxwell to learn the tips and tricks in making a beautiful plate of Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice.

A slight diversion - I thought it was rather unfair for Ramsay during Hawker Heroes because it wasn't a blind taste test! It's a competition between Singaporean hawkers (Jumbo not hawker hor) and an angmoh chef, voted by mostly Singaporeans or Singapore residents. Confirm unfair right?! But then I gave it a deeper thought and realised the true purpose of this challenge was not to determine the real winner, but to give recognition to the amazing Singapore hawkers and to bring more awareness to the delicious Singapore hawker food! Also, if you give Ramsay 3 days and he can win one out of 3 challenges, what happens if you give him a longer period of time?!

Gordon Ramsay is a genius and I'm forever his fan girl. HEH. But, why no Masterchef USA episodes this week? URGH.

Here's a cute Studio Ghibli film summary. My train of thought in this post is everywhere but this summary is really cute!!

Kengyang and I decided to have our lunch at Ambush (JEM outlet) last Saturday, and I was really pleasantly surprised by the quality of food that was served!

I expected the food to be mediocre and not worth our money at all, but I was very much mistaken.

We ordered the Swedish meatballs and fries to share and they were good. I dare say the meatballs are better than those served at local IKEAs!

My crispy chicken aglio olio was amazing. The garlic oil concoction was so fragrant and flavourful!

Kengyang's Oktoberfest Platter - a platter fit for meat lovers. I really enjoyed eating the sauerkraut and the mashed potatoes together! The pork knuckle slices were so so but the sausages were delicious! Definitely worth the S$17-S$18 price tag.

With that, let's hope for a fruitful and smooth-sailing work week/ school week for us all! Have a good one my awesome readers!! :))

Review: CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes in 04

Finally back on track with these posts! I've been back from Japan for over a month and I have yet to review all the beauty products that I got. I am a terrible blogger, I know. I procrastinate way too much. My normal routine is to upload all the photos onto blogger first and save the drafts. However, after that, it all boils down to my laziness. If I'm way too nua (which usually happens during weekends), I will just forget about blogging. GAH. I need to get rid of this horrible habit!! 

ANYWAY, 

This post will be all about the CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes in 04. CANMAKE is a cosmetic brand that I was exposed to at a very young age (together with FASIO). I love the brand and CANMAKE has some amazing products but they are way overpriced in Singapore. I know, I know, all the taxes and stuff make them expensive but halo, who wants overpriced products?? 

The CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes retails for 780yen (before tax), around S$8.50, in Japan, and in Singapore, one palette costs more than S$15 (!!!!). 

Packaging: Always pretty, always princess-like, always...pink. HAHA. I appreciate the compact transparent packaging and it's sturdy enough so I'm not complaining.

Colour: All the shades available (5 in total) are in the neutral colour zone. I guess the point was to provide a variety of neutral shades for different natural looks. Personally, I think the colour variety is disappointing. When I was choosing on one palette to purchase, I initially could not differentiate the 5 palettes. All of them looked roughly the same!! After scrutinising, I realised the biggest difference among all the palettes came from the top right shade, and so I chose 04 because the top right shade was a gorgeous coral. In all, I'm pleased with the colours provided in the palette because I can certainly create a beautiful natural look and then intensify it for a fun night out, but aiyoh, choosing one palette out of 5 can be a nightmare.

Brush: The double-ended brush included in the palette was of surprisingly great quality. The sponge tip applicator doesn't look filmsy and I'm deeply grateful for the superior quality. I prefer to apply eyeshadows using a sponge-tip applicator because it minimises the fall-outs. However, some of the "included" sponge-tip applicators tend to fall apart after a few usages and that PISSES ME OFF. The CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes palette scores major positive points for the great quality brush!

Swatch taken with natural light

Swatch taken with camera flash

Pigmentation: As with all Japanese eyeshadow palettes, pigmentation is not key. I treat this as a cosmetic cardinal rule - Japanese brand eyeshadows will have average pigmentations. The pigmentation of the CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes is not thaaaattt bad, but applying the lighter shades can be quite troublesome. The darker shades are easier to work with. The lighter shades, on the other hand, need more building up before you can actually see the colour on your eyelids.

Another cosmetic cardinal rule is Japanese brand eyeshadows usually have shitloads of shimmer or glitter. The CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes definitely live up to expectations then. This palette is definitely not for those who prefer matte shades and for those with sensitive eyes (because the shimmer will fall into your eyes no matter how little you apply. I personally experienced it and wahlao very painful!).

Application: I use the sponge-tip applicator to apply the eyeshadows and it was easy-peasy. Shimmer/glitter fall-outs are obviously going to happen so I'm not going to complain about that. One trick I usually use is to always apply eyeshadows first and dust some loose powder on the under-eye area. Then after application, I will brush away the loose powder and start on my face makeup! Works like a charm every single time! Also, I learnt this from The Tyra Banks Show. HAHAHA.

Longevity: The CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes eyeshadows didn't do very well in terms of longevity. The shimmers get everywhere (including IN your eyes) after a few hours. The darker colours performed better!

Will I buy it again? Maybe not. As lovely as it is, the CANMAKE Perfect Stylist Eyes eyeshadows irritate my sensitive eyes and I don't see a reason why I should purchase something that makes my eyes uncomfortable. Pity though because the colours are really really nice. Oh well, this means, more palettes to try!

Hope this post has been useful! Have a great weekend guys! :)