Saturday, November 3, 2012

How to Order from Taobao using Bhiner.com (Part 1: First Payment)


Recently, I've discovered the wonders of Taobao. I found tons of cute items that I wanted to buy, so I researched how to order from Taobao. First of all, you need a shopping service since most shops don't ship overseas. These shopping services are third party companies that will order all your items for you (which can be from different Taobao shops), combine them, and ship them in one package to you for a small service fee--usually 10% of the item price (including shipping costs). When you use a shopping service, there are 2 stages of payments. The first one is the total cost of the items + domestic shipping + shopping service fee, and the second is the international shipping fee.


I searched for reliable shopping services and came across many of them, but the one that stuck out to me the most was bhiner.com. I chose this shopping service because it's really organized and user-friendly, and the service fee is only 5%. Most of the shopping services require you to email the company, but this service has a unique system that makes ordering easier without the hassle of emailing! I will explain MY personal ordering process in the following sections.

The first thing you have to do is register for an account. You can do this by clicking on the Register Now! at the top right side of the page. Once you have an account, log in to start ordering.

Finding Items:
Finding items on taobao.com may be difficult since it's in Chinese. If you can't read Chinese, there are sites that can translate for you. I personally use baoseek.com, and the search bar on the top left of bhiner.com. The bhiner search bar is nice, but sometimes things don't show up, so I use baoseek to look for stuff. Once I find the thing on baoseek, I right click "click to taobao" and copy the taobao link. Then, I paste the url to the bhiner search bar, and the item pops up on bhiner. Then I pick the size, and color of the item and press "add to basket" as shown below (The example does not have options because it only has one size and color).



(edit: The search bar for Bhiner has been updated, so it should more useful now.)

Quote Processing:
Once you add items to your cart, click the cart button at the top of the website. You will be brought to a page that has 3 categories (labeled Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3). Phase 1 is basically the items you have added in your cart. When you are sure of the items, check the boxes of the items you want and click"confirm quotes."

Under Phase 2 are the quotes you are waiting to be processed. This just means that the employees at bhiner will calculate the first payment costs (item cost + domestic shipping fees). When they have calculated costs, the items will show up under Phase 3 "confirmed quotes."

Once they are under Phase 3, you may now proceed to the checkout phase.



Checkout:
Once you check the boxes of the items you want to purchase and click "checkout," you will be brought to another page where you are supposed to pay the 1st payment. The first section of this page "Bhiner Account's Value" is what you use to pay. If there is no balance in your account, click "Charge my Bhiner account." You will then be sent to Paypal to add money to your Bhiner account which you can use to purchase your items. There is a Paypal service fee from because you are transferring money to a merchant. This is nice because if you don't receive your items, you may open a Paypal dispute.

Under the Bhiner Account's Value section are 5 other sections:
1) Shipping Options: This is where you enter the address, recipient, and other shipping info. This is also where you can select which shipping provider to use. There is also an "eco friendly" option, which is nice because it sort of lessens the weight (negligible, but still sort of useful).
2) Basket Contents: Shows what items you a checking out.
3) Payment Method: Shows the total item cost (domestic shipping included) + the 5% agent service fee.
4) Order Remarks: Write any special requests you have.
5) Member's Agreement: Terms and conditions of Bhiner.




Once you are done filling everything out, you are done with the first stage!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is only part 1 of MY ordering process. I will update my blog and post part 2 after my exams. There is a tutorial on Bhiner.com on how the order and use the site. Feel free to check it out~

Also, just to make things clear, I'm writing this out of my own accord. I am not affiliated with Bhiner. I'm just a customer who was extremely pleased with their service and their website, and decided to post about this to help other people.

♡ Rennie

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Relacing My Sneakers ♡

My bf laces his white Supras lattice style, and I thought it looked cool so I decided to relace my pink and black Swimmer sneakers lattice style since the original lacing looks really ugly...


We used this site for instructions on how to do different styles of lacing. Here's how the lattice style ended up:



The bow/knot is inside the shoe because my bf showed me how it looks better that way instead of it just dangling in the front.

I looked at other styles of lacing and found the pentagram lacing~ I thought it would be really cute and fun to do for my other set of Swimmer sneakers (the bunny watermelon one) and here's how it came out:


I had difficulty pushing it through since you have to insert the lace two times in one hole. -.- It was a pain, but I think it was worth the effort since my shoes look even more interesting.

I think both my shoes look better now. Only downside is I can't tighten them, but that's not that big of a deal because I don't really tighten my shoes anyway.

♡ Rennie

Friday, September 7, 2012

Meitu Xiu Xiu Tutorial (Part 2: Tools)


This tutorial will focus on the tools on the first tab that I didn't mention in the first part of the tutorial. When you click each of these tools, you will be brought to a pop-up window where you can make edits/changes to the image.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

LA County Fair (9/1/12)

Last Saturday I went to the LA County Fair with my bf and friends. It was opening weekend so it was only $1 to get in from 10am - 1pm. It was extremely hot so we just went into the shopping center buildings to look at random things when we got there. At 1 we watched the Chinese Circus of Beijing and it was pretty entertaining watching the acrobats jump around, juggle, and balance things. The main event was this guy who stacked chairs (the first chair's legs were balancing on 4 wine bottles) about 2 stories high and did handstands on them. Everyone watching was like "WTF, more chairs?" every time a chair was brought out for him to place on the stack.

At around 2-3 pm we went to get food. My bf and I bought stuff from Pink's. I forgot what it's called but I ordered fries with chili, bacon, jalapenos, cheese, and some other things (I can't even tell what they were). x_x About half way through, I felt like a fatty. >.< I ate about 3/4 of it before giving up on eating it completely. We just sat around and took pictures because we were waiting for 4pm to come so we could play carnival games for cheaper. Here are some pictures we took:



Even with my overalls + blue sleeveless shirt + boater hat, it was still pretty hot. I probably got 1 or 2 shades darker. :/

Finally, 4pm came so the carnival games were cheaper. They were $2 instead of $5+. We took advantage of this and mostly played the water gun game since my friends knew the trick to winning. My bf and I split off the group after that to find a bathroom and we never went back because I wanted time alone with him. >.> The 1st of each month is our monthsary, so it was kind of a date... 

We tried the ring toss, ball and bucket toss, fish bowl toss, and balloon and darts (except they replaced the darts with those small plush balls). We won 4 prizes in total. A huge Tuxedo Sam plush (from the water gun game), a really soft cow plush (which I proudly got in 1 try from the ball and bucket toss), a duck plush (from the fish bowl toss), and a Despicable Me minion (from the balloon and darts game). It took a couple of tries for my bf to win the Tuxedo Sam plush, and the guy at the booth (who had this really cute Aussie accent) already knew him because he sat there for several rounds. You need to win 2 times before you win the large prize, and my bf won on his first try but he didn't win after that for a few rounds. :x When he finally won, the guy at the booth was messing with my bf and said he didn't want to give the prize to him. xD

We went back to the group, and took some pictures before leaving.


My bf and I agreed that we should give the duck plush to a random kid because we didn't really want it and we both wanted to make some kid's day. On the way out, I saw this little girl and I tapped her mom's shoulder and said, "Could you give this to your daughter? I don't really want it, so she can have it." After saying that, I scampered away embarrassed while the lady was telling her daughter to say thanks to me. (/ω\) My bf looked at me and smiled at me because he thought it was cute that I was shy. 

After that, we left the fair and went to Genki Living to get some crepes, and headed home.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Meitu Xiu Xiu Tutorial (Part 1: Basics)


I've decided to make a tutorial for my favorite editing program Meitu Xiu Xiu. *(*´∀`*)☆ It's user-friendly even though it's in Chinese, but I want to help people understand the program. You can download it here. Just click this button on the page:

For this part of the tutorial, I'm going to talk about the basic functions and basic image editing (idk what to call it. I'll be talking basically about the first pink tab. Here are the basic functions you need to know:
  1. Zoom In/Out: Self-explanatory... Drag circle to right to zoom in, or drag to the left to zoom out.
  2. Actual Size: Clicking this button will show the image's actual size in the window.
  3. Undo/Redo: Clicking the arrows allows you to undo or redo changes you've made to the image.
  4. Original: Clicking the circle brings you back to the original unedited image.
  5. Flip/Rotate: Clicking this will open a pop-up window where you can flip or rotate the image.
  6. Crop: Allows you to crop or remove parts of the image.
  7. Image Size: Clicking this will open a pop-up window where you can resize the image. The default option is in pixels, but there is a drop down menu where you can select cm instead (I don't really do that since pixels are easier).
  8. Image Info: Shows image information. It shows the image size by default, but if you click the EXIF ^, it will give you more info about the image, such as image name and file size.
  9. Image Comparison: Shows you the original image and the edited image in the same window. There is an option where you can place the images side by side, or top and bottom. Here's a sample:
  10. Image preview: This option brings you to a pop-up window where you can view the final product and save the image
  11. Open Image: Click this to open an image file.
  12. New Image: Click this to create a new image.
  13. Save Image: Click this to save the image.

Now that you understand the basic functions, I'm going to explain the basic image editing options. Under the first pink tab, there are 3 white tabs:

The first tab shows you basic image adjustments. In the picture above, I labeled the functions. (`・ω・´)”.


The second tab allows you to adjust the exposure by dragging the circle to the right. The above image shows a comparison of the original image and the image with adjusted exposure~

The third tab allows you to adjust the color balance. This image shows a comparison of the original image and me fidgeting randomly with the colors. Basically I just made a diagonal with the circles. (⌒_⌒;)

Last thing I wanted to talk about is filters~ The tabs I boxed are all filters. Some of the filters have an option of controlling the opacity. A small pop-up will appear, similar to the one shown above and you can drag the circle and control the % opacity of the filter.

So that's basically part 1 of the tutorial~ If you guys noticed, I left out the part under the 3 tabs. I'll be talking about them later on in the next part of this tutorial. 

☆ミ(o*・ω・)ノ Rennie 

First Post~ ヾ(^∇^)

I decided to make a blogger account so I could write tutorials, reviews, and posts about things I like. (☆^ー^☆) I love tumblr, but I feel like blogger is more suitable for long posts. Hopefully I can keep this updated~  φ(・ω・` )