#lolita tutorials

First: you will need the following tools and materials to craft one choker

♡ a ruler and/or measuring tape (probably both would be good) ♡ scissors ♡ a poking tool, I’m not sure what they’re called but they come with jewelry tool kits ♡ 10 jump rings OR 4 jump rings and a pre-made necklace extender. ♡ a lobster claw clasp (not pictured because I’m out) ♡ jewelry pliers 2 pair ♡ hot glue gun and hot glue ♡ decorations, for this tutorial I am showing you a basic choker with a dangle pendant. ♡ ribbon, you can use plain ribbon, but this frilled elastic ribbon works amazing and can be found at any craft store. 

♡Step 1: measure your neck with a measuring tape, then measure your ribbon. You want to give a little space for your chain and clasp but also make extra for your seams. So if your neck is 13″, I cut the ribbon at 12″.

♡Step 2: finish off your ends. I tri-fold my ribbon to make it really small on the ends and feed it through a jump ring about 1/2″. Then apply hot glue to the end and fold it over. Do this to each end.

the one on the left is already completed, the one on the right shows what you should have before you fold it down and glue it. 

♡Step 3: add you findings. take the left side (I’m right handed so its easier for me to put on a necklace this way, maybe left handed people will want to reverse this) and attach 6 jump rings. You can use you 2 sets of jewelry pliers to gently pull open the rings and loop them together (as shown in the step 2 photo) to make a chain. OR you can use a pre-made necklace extender chain, I didn’t have any so I just did this. If your choker is too small you can add more jump rings as needed.  On the right side add 1 jump ring and your lobster clasp. When you’re done, it should look like this. 

So now the base of your choker is done. Make sure to try it on for size, and add more jump rings if necessary. 

♡Step 4: decorate. To add a dangle charm, you are going to need that poking tool. Use your ruler to determine the center of the choker, now towards the bottom of the ribbons width poke your hole, and feed 1 jump ring through it like so. ** if your charm does not already come with a jump ring, you may need to add one to make sure it lays the right way when worn.

once you have that done, you can attach your preferred charm.

♡Step 5: You can leave your choker as is and call it done, but I like to add a little extra embellishment to mine. So for the final step, add a decoration to the ribbon right above your dangle pendant, For this example I chose a rosette. All you have to do is hot glue right down to the ribbon, easy! now you’re done! and you should have something like this:

now you can try your own designs, I’ve made chokers (pictured at the top) with no dangle, with multiple dangles, with multiple decorations and with only one. Try out your ideas, just remember to use a ruler to keep things evenly spaced if you’re planning to work with more than one decoration!

this is... pretty overwhelming, right? google translate can automatically translate text, not anything in a picture, so it still ends up half-translated. phew. get your bearings a moment, though, and soldier on!

tonight i’ve decided that i could really use some cute hankies to go with a strawberry-themed outfit i’m planning. so, tab over to our english to simplified chinese...

now copy those chinese characters into the search bar on taobao...

it will give you some further suggestions - but let’s keep it pretty general for now. hit ‘submit’, and let’s see what we have.

looks like we’ve lucked out - there are tons of choices!

to get you acquainted with this page, the column on the right is where recommended advertised items show up. these can largely be disregarded. the main block of items will be underneath all of these options at the top.

as you can see we have a lot of different choices we could look into, if we wanted to narrow it down. however, this grey bar is where we have the important stuff.

we can hit the price button to sort things. scroll over it, and we’ll get more options.

since all i got is like three fiddy and some pocket lint - plus i’d rather have a cheaper cotton hankie that i won’t feel guilty about perhaps blowing my nose on - i usually sort price from low to high, so cheapest items are first.

that’s more like it! (7 yuan right now is about a dollar.) now we can browse for what catches our eye. you’ll also see, next to the price, how many people have bought it. under that is the translated name of the product, then the name of the storefront.

i like the looks of this one - properly frilly and fancy! right-click and open it in a new tab so we can keep organized. (that way there’s no getting frustrated if it’s a ‘bust’.)

now we’re on the product’s page in the seller’s store. we can look quickly off to the side for some information about the seller.

this guy’s apparently been selling on taobao for 6 years. the shop is rated out of 5 points in three areas - how accurate the description of their products is, how good their service is, and logistics (which probably covers things like how quickly they ship the products and how well they wrap them up, etc). this guy’s got a 4.8 rating that is rising.

that means we can probably buy from him with some confidence. if you see a store that hasn’t been open for very long, that would be a red flag. same if you have a store with low ratings, or absolutely perfect ratings. if it’s 5.0 across the board, it’s a little too good to be true sometimes! one red flag may not be worth it to stop you in your tracks, but be on the lookout for them, just like you would with any online seller.

and don’t worry about see all baby. google translate likes to think all items on taobao are babies... (it’s a mystery to all of us.)

wading past the translation, it looks like this shop sells a lot of linen goods, especially for the european market.

a really cute tea party vibe, right? :D

this is where we could browse this store more - it’s very cute, after all - but i’d like to maybe make the coordinate a little more specific and cohesive. let’s see if we have any better luck with a more specific search!

when you get more specific with your searches, it means there’s often a lot less items - for example, there’s only one page of search results instead of 15+. but i think we’ve found something that’s perfect!

cute, right? looking at it closer, though, it’s not embroidered, and it’s more of a terrycloth or towel texture. those are two things i’m not really sure about - this is why we open our finds in a new tab.

it does give me a chance to talk about this one thing, though -

sometimes the final price of an item will be hidden unless you’re a ‘VIP’. you can login and make a taobao account if you like - it requires a cell phone with texting, but international cell phones are okay. however, i usually just shrug and go “well, we know it’s somewhere under 9 yuan”.

whatever taobao agent you use will usually be able to get the VIP price for you.

another trick is that if you find an item that you go ‘oh, that’s close, but not quite....’ about, hover over its picture in the search results. you will then get two choices - find the same or find similar. the first option finds the exact same thing, but at other retailers. find similar, well, finds things that are variations on that same thing.

this hankie looks perfect! so... let’s actually buy it!

since taobao sellers largely only ship to people in china, and i’m in america, i can’t just hit that buy now button. this means i need to use an agent - and there are a lot of different choices out there.

i’ve used two so far, largely for ordering BJD stuff and home goods (and some accessories) (largely necklaces... what can i say... i read the words one yuan sale and my eyes light up). taobaospree is a professional outfit that you contact via email. they definitely give you the ‘white glove treatment’. their prices are very fair, and their staff very helpful. if you’re making really big important purchases, or purchases you’re worried about, i’d recommend them.

however, yoybuy is also really good for if you want to park the car yourself and walk instead of handing the keys to the valet, so to speak. i’ve also had really good experiences with them.

for taobaospree, they ask that you just email them a list of what you want with some details - they have a template you can use on their website. but since we’re just buying hankies, let’s use yoybuy.

first things first, we’ll need to sign in. yoybuy offers deals every so often like ten dollars of credit if you register with them, so it’s worth looking out for if you’re about to place an order. (every little bit helps, right?)

once you’ve signed in/signed up, take the url from the item you want...

and copy it into the search box at the top of yoybuy’s website, then click buy now.

yoybuy’s website will then load up all of the item’s information, like this.

now we can just shop as normal! it give you the converted rates of how much each item is, plus the domestic shipping, or how much the shipping will be from the seller to yoybuy. (yoybuy will help calculate the shipping from yoybuy to you later.)

so i’d like 6 total, and i can select the options. just to make things clear, i’ve also said as much in the ‘comments’ box. if something is a little unclear, you can add your comments there to make sure they get the right option.

as you can see this is totally meant for a much wider screen than mine, but it gives you an updating total of what is in your shopping cart.

on the black bar you also have some options like being able to ask for a live chat with someone if you get very confused.

when you’re ready, click ‘buy’. you’ll have a chance to do an overview of all your items before clicking the ‘pay’ button.

as you can see, there’s a couple of options here.

you can pay via a regular visa or mastercard, paypal, or use some other services i’m not familiar with. you can also send money via money transfer (like western union) and have it waiting there in your account.

there’s a service charge which is usually around 4% here. yoybuy themselves charge a fee of 10% for acting as your agent. they don’t ask for all of this up front. you pay in two parts - one is the items and domestic shipping that’s been calculated. they then bundle up all your items and figure out the best way to ship them to you, and you pay the 10% fee to them then.

if you’re initially doing a large order, your bank may balk a bit - so be prepared. for me, it took a text message of them going “uh hey, was this you? because random chinese company charging your credit card 200 dollars looks real sketchy.” and me going “lol it’s ok guys”.

however, in this case, handkerchiefs get!

you will now get an overview page of your order. 

each item will have its own line, and you can track how things are going.

the agent will purchase the item for you, then await shipment of it. you can click the chat bubble at any time to chat with the agent to ask them about the state of the item. this is where they’ll also inform you if something is out of stock or if there are any difficulties. you can also ask for them to take a picture to show you, if you want to make sure something is ok before they send it on to you.

as your items come in, you can click the checkbox and get an estimated parcel weight. that will help you figure out how much the shipping from yoybuy to you will be - and they even estimate how much they’ll have to spend on shipping materials.

once your items all arrive at yoybuy and they ship them on over to you, you can look at the options on the left to find a record of all your packages.

redacted information ahoy, folks, but let’s take a look-see at the package i already got from them -

the parcel number is what you click to open up an information page, showing all the items that are in the box they sent. the tracking number will be what you can check to track your package. they offer a variety of different carriers to use, and iirc, all of them come with tracking numbers. (you get yoybuy’s cut rate on shipping through all carriers, though!) if there are any problems, they’ll show up in the status - along with things like if it’s in an immigrations check.

if there are any problems, you can then report it to yoybuy and they’ll help you out - however, i’ve not had any problems with them. all my items came safe and sound!

so there you have it, a short guide - ah, well, at this point, just a guide - on how to, step-by-step, order stuff off taobao via yoybuy.