Brooch bouquet update 2
Told you, the next update would come very soon, as I keep receiving brooches via mails and also did a bit of physical shopping to take advantage of the Christmas and New Year sale.
These first two brooches were bought from lightinthebox.com. In general, brooches here are not that much different from those cheap ones on eBay since lightinthebox is a Chinese online retailing website so their stuff is pretty much from the same sources as eBay stuff. But shopping here is more convenient and less risky because you only deal with one single merchant, as opposed to having to muddle through the same items hundreds of times, only sold by different vendors, to find the thing you need on eBay. Sometimes the styles and prices are a little different between two sites too, so it’s a good idea to browse both of them if you want to get the best deals for your bouquet. When I shopped for these they were having a Christmas sale so I got them for pretty cheap, the only thing is there was some problem when they arrived.
This is the first one, it’s in good condition and looks like how it is described.
However, the other one was a failure. On the website it was described with dimensions of 9.5 and 6.5cm, I knew there must be something wrong because first, this brooch is round, and second, 9.5cm is huge. But I purchased it anyway because it was cheap and I thought at least one of the dimensions must be true (so silly!), it would be good enough if it’s only 6.5 x 6.5cm. That’s the problem with lightinthebox, sometimes the items have very few photos to support them, some don’t even have much description and you buy only out of mere hope that they would turn out good. When this brooch arrived it was a total disappointment, it is so small, only about 2cm in diameter. I wasn’t looking for a brooch that small, and I wouldn’t have bought it if I had known the actual size, so I filed a complaint to the site about their incorrect description. The thing is, although I know that the quality of Chinese goods bought online can be satisfactory only about 50% of the time, I have no doubt in their willingness to go great length to preserve their credibility, because when you offer low-quality products, price and credibility are all you have to compete with others. Indeed, the staff at lightinthebox replied me the next day, offering me either a full refund of the brooch’s cost or credit to spend on their website of a greater value, either way I can still keep the wrongly-described brooch. The goods did disappoint me, but as usual, the service was excellent. Of course I chose to have credit to keep shopping there.
The next two were bought from a Bijou Brigitte store in Helsinki. Bijou Brigitte is German jewellery chain very popular in Europe, like Diva in Asia-Pacific. The first Bijou Brigitte item I bought was a headband from a store in Berlin, but I never went to a store in Helsinki because they are very expensive and hardly have any sale. Luckily, they had a sale for the holiday and I got this brooch and this ring, because my bouquet needs more purple.
These earings which were also on sale are from another jewellery store in Helsinki. Not dirt-cheap like those Chinese ones that you can buy online but I thought for two flowers it was a reasonable deal.
The below fabric flower is a hair clip from H&M. It was sold in a pair so I thought I’d use one and give one to my bouquet.
Next are the things I got from lightinthebox with the credit I was compensated with. First one is a beautiful brooch, nothing to complain about, second one is a necklace which I used a plier to disassemble and got 7 different items out of.
Finally, the most exciting bit: the whole collection up to now. I’m not sure if I can take another whole collection shot next time because I like to keep them in their packages and the process of taking them out for photo and put them back again was just a pain in the a**, you know.
