How to shop from Taobao ft. ezbuy

Hey guys! Do you want to know my secret to ‘shopping affordably’? If yes, then please continue reading because this is yet another post that will save you loads of money and hassle!

Being a full time student with 0 fixed income has taught me many things over the years. One of them was shopping affordably online – specifically from a China site called “Taobao”. However, shopping from Taobao wasn’t exactly an easy task back then, even now actually so here’s my little not-so-new discovery to help you guys out! 6 years ago I’ve jumped from agent to agent for my Taobao orders, some were unreliable and some were just too costly with their rates. Thankfully when the agent I was using previously decided to quit, I’ve managed to stumble across this website called 65 Daigou which has also recently rebranded itself to ezbuy.

Long story short, ezbuy is like my saviour and my bank account’s BFF. Earlier I mentioned that shopping from Taobao directly is quite troublesome and that ezbuy saved me a lot of unnecessary troubles right? Now let me explain to you my “taobao nightmares” and how ezbuy solved them! 

01.   Language barrier

From personal experience I’ve noticed that one of the main reasons most of my friends find shopping on Taobao difficult is because of the website’s language. Taobao’s website is all in mandarin meaning when you’re searching for a specific item, you have to search it in mandarin too. Personally my mandarin isn’t all that well either so it’s great how ezbuy is able to help me quite a bit when I’m facing difficulties in figuring out what I want in mandarin.

02.   Payment method

One of the reasons why I have always relied on shopping services was because I couldn’t sign up for an Alipay account. Alipay is like your little ‘online taobao wallet’ something that got me so confused and frustrated when trying to sign up for it then in the end I gave up. ezbuy on the other hand was very easy to sign up, I fill up the registration form, wait for my SMS account verification code and viola I’m done. Also with ezbuy, I can pay for my shopping via E-banking, Manual Internet Banking Transfers, Credit card, and also ATM bank transfers. 

03.   Limited customer service & after sales services

Another thing with shopping from Taobao that we have to consider would be liaising with the sellers. From personal experiences, Taobao sellers ALWAYS has a tendency to either send me the wrong items or simply just lose my parcel. To the point where I’ve lost track of the number of times ezbuy has been my saviour thanks to their ‘item inspection’ service that comes inclusive with their ‘Buy-For-Me’ service. Often times taobao sellers would also take a long time to dispatch my orders and when that happens ezbuy would first help me to check with the seller numerous times then when no response was given, ezbuy would refund me my money. During ‘item inspection’ process, if the taobao seller sends the wrong item to me or sends me items with defects, ezbuy would also help me liaise with the seller for an exchange or a refund.  ^^ As you can see, I’ve been using their services since 2013 until today!

  04. Delivery Services

Actually by now I think you guys already know how spoilt I am with ezbuy right? Let me tell you one last reason I use ezbuy ok? Affordable shipping fees and sensitive air shipping availability. Sometimes when you want to ship items that falls under the ‘sensitive air’ category, Taobao won’t be able to ship it for you. Also, there are times where you’d encounter unreliable forwarders. Previously I’ve bought makeup or crafting materials that falls under this category so ezbuy came in handy because they offer a variety of delivery services catered to each of our needs! Plus, who doesn’t love low shipping rates right? :D 

Not too long ago, ezbuy has also launched this new feature called ezbuy ‘Prime’! This is the best thing ever if you’re looking to purchase bulky HUGE items. ezbuy has a section called ‘Prime’ in which you can purchase a variety of goods and have everything shipped to you from that section for only RM8.80! I mean poslaju send a small parcel also plus minus RM6 already right? Can you imagine buying a sofa and having it shipped to you for RM8.80 ONLY??

 Here’s what others has bought using ezbuy Prime!

Don’t wait any further, the fact that I’ve been using this gem for almost 4 years now should be the best reason for you to join in the fun.

Top + Skirt are from ezbuy! 

Register here and get RM15 ezbuy voucher. Now for some extra love for you guys! Use the code - ezsp15 for 15% off your shipping fee. Happy shopping! 

Metallic Birthday Red Lips : Colourpop Ultra Metallic Lip Mugshot review

A month ago, a kid with an online journal has just turned 19. While she was busy doing her makeup for her birthday-turned-surprise dinner, the final touch to complete her makeup look was selecting the perfect lipstick shade. Therefore, she has decided to play with something she has never ventured into before - Metallic Liquid Lipsticks. That night, she wore a brand she had been eager to try for years. That night, she wore an Ultra Metallic Lip from Colourpop Cosmetics in the shade - Mugshot.

In case you don't already know, Colourpop is a fairly affordable brand from the United States with their products ranging from 5$ to 8$ depending on the category. I've been hearing so much about them throughout the years from all the makeup gurus from the States but only got to try the brand out recently. Back then Colourpop didn't offer international shipping so it's been pretty difficult to get hold of their products. For me, I was pretty lucky to get my Colourpop products stocked during my mom's recent trip to the United States.

Let's first talk about its colour and consistency. Mugshot is one of Colourpop's latest ultra metallic shades. It is more of a rustic-red colour with a very slight metallic sheen to it. The consistency felt pretty chunky when I pulled the applicator wand out but it applied smoothly across my lips. Under the camera's flash you could also spot a wash of pink across it.

 Here's how it's doe foot applicator wand looks like up close. The coverage it gave was pretty even. I also liked how I didn't have to do a double dip to get enough product for my lips. However in my opinion the applicator sorta pulled a little too much product to my liking. So what I do is, before pulling the wand out fully, I'll wipe off some excess product on the stopper.

 The metallic sheen picked up really well on flash. Personally I do love the colour just not that big of a fan on it's formula.

Here's a shot of how my lips looked like after dinner. I had 0 touch ups so from this we can conclude that this lippie is not long wearing at all.

Here's the look I did for my bday dinner :3 This photo was taken without flash. From what I've noticed, because this is a metallic lipstick, so depending on the presence of flash + it's intensity, the colour outcome does vary quite a bit. 

After my go with this metallic lipstick, I've came to conclude that metallic liquid lipsticks are really not my cup of tea. From the close up lip swatches, you can see how the fine lines on my lips are more noticeable, making it look even more dry than it already is. This liquid lip is barely transfer-proof as almost everything was gone just after one meal. It was kiss proof on my hand and tissue but it got everywhere when I was drinking water or eating. 

 I'd say if you simply just want a metallic liquid lipstick in your collection or if you think it'll look good on you, then go ahead, but for my dry lips babies, I wouldn't recommend it. From the metallic lip series in my Colourpop haul, I also got myself 3-Way. I have yet to try it out, so hopefully it'll be better than this! > < 

If you're wondering where I got my Colourpop from, I got them from their main website when my mom was in the States and had them shipped to the hotel she was staying at. Colourpop aside, I've also got my hands on a few Burt's Bees lipstick, will be doing a review on all of them soon! 

Stay tuned! 

xoxo

Althea Addiction: Korean masks

Hey everyone, remember my previous post on Althea's first anniversary? Ever since then, I think I've developed an addiction towards Korean beauty products. 2016 felt like a skin care breakthrough year for me. All this while I've only looked into makeup, makeup and makeup. I've never really bothered with skin care so I don't know what went wrong with me lately. All of a sudden I've been buying masks non-stop! From sheet masks, clay masks, gel masks, and peeling masks, I've bought em' all! It has gone to the point where I'm just telling myself to stop on the mask purchases because I think I have enough to last me for the rest of the year. 

I tagged along Aiko for my second Althea box purchase because I needed someone to hit the RM150 free shipping together with me. This box took about two weeks+ to deliver which was slightly on the longer side. During this purchase I got two face masks and one foot mask. 

The first product I got was Elizavecca's Pore Solution Super Elastic Mask Pack - RM5 ea. If you're up to date with 'weird korean beauty products' you must've heard of them. This is the brand that has introduced the highly raved Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask. Something I have yet to find the guts to try out haha.

What I got was this multi-care 3-step mask pack. This mask pack consists of skin benefiting ingredients like glacier milk, green tea extra, and bird's nest extract which helps in whitening, wrinkle improvement, as well as elasticity. I've only tried one pack so far and my face did feel slightly softer after using it. However if you were to ask me if I see any big results after one use I'll say no. I won't write it off as a useless product though cause I believe that with masks, you can't really see the results in one use unless your skin is in a really bad condition to begin with or the mask is really THAT good. So I won't dwell much into this until I've gathered enough packets to properly try em' out. 

This is Calmia's Silky Essential Foot Pack - RM9 each. Ever since I've tried out some random foot mask I got when I was at Sasa previously, I've instantly fell in love with them!! (The foot mask I got from Sasa looked like this one but I'm not sure if it was the same one) I actually got this because we were short of RM9 and this was ngam ngam RM9! No regrets on this because 

I LOVE THIS.

This is probably one of the only masks that will literally make you feel like you've got an instant skin surgery for the price of RM9. I have really dry feet, if you've ever seen my feet you'll know it la. So inside this pack you'll get a pair of disposable socks. Yes, socks. The sock is dry on the outside and filled with moisturizing ingredients on the inside. At first I was really skeptical when purchasing a foot mask, I was so worried of the thought that I won't be able to walk around so I waited til it was about bed time to try it out. Who knew I was actually able to walk around the house flaunting my disposable socks, dispose it after that and have baby smooth feet!! So this is definitely gonna be something I'll repurchase again soon!

Here's the last product I got during this Althea haul. This is the B&SOAP Apate Black Wash-Off Pack (130g) - RM45 ea. I've always wanted to try clay masks because of all the good things I've heard about em' This product was on sale for RM35 when I got it. Also, this was actually my main intention of ordering this box haha. I won't be talking much about this mask pack right now because I'm still in the middle of testing this out to see how well it works. 

That's all for my Althea haul #2! I'll be back with another blog post real soon so stay tuned! Oh and recently I was at Ipoh with my Multimedia kakis for a day trip. Filmed and uploaded a new vlog for it on my Youtube channel! Check it out here or watch the embed below ♡ 

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