Hair Flairs Color Rub - What to do when you're a commitment-phobe but 'just need' a change

So, back in September I moved to London to go to University. My home town is fairly small and contained, despite having an oddly large population. Throughout my educational career I've been with the same people - I went to sixth form with people I've known from pre-school. University is partly about breaking free from this kind of thing, meeting fascinating, new people from different backgrounds and circumstances. Broadening horizons and all that. I feel like - although I am not the most objective person to ask - that living in London multiplies this experience tenfold - and then some. I love it. Period. However, this is a double edged blade. Because in my home town I felt like an individual, I felt different, and despite having Tyler Durden's words rolling round in my head - 'You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake' - I felt like one. Boy, does living in London - or any city, for that matter - knock that out of you quick. I was one amongst many. Syndrome's sentiment from 'The Incredibles' stands true, when everyone's special, no one is.

So I go to Goldsmiths University. It's an Arts and Humanities Uni, the closest course it does to the sciences is Computing. We're all incredible artistic, and we're all distinct individuals. Stereotypes don't always hold true, but let your imagination run free in regard to the students at Goldsmiths. Everyone's also incredibly fashionable, which meant I had to pick up my fashion game, like, a lot. This included the obligatory Vintage stores and Thrift shops. It also meant my hair game needed to be bettered too, no messy buns for me any more.

My hair is frizzy, thick and not quite curly enough to look nice if I just leave it. I mercilessly dye and heat style my hair. Just straightening my hair is my lazy option now. Whilst my hair horizons have been widened, it still wasn't exactly individual. There is a girl on my course whose hair is half blue, half magenta. It looks incredible. I'm just gonna sit here in a corner with my straight ombre hair with the layers grown out and weep.

So, to finally get to the point. Back home my ombre was cool, creative and - here's that word again - individual. In london every second woman you see has blonde ends, and likely done professionally, whereas mine is out of the box and woefully inferior. I'd been promising myself to dye my hair a silly colour when I got to University, but I just couldn't commit. So I did some research and decided to pick up some hair chalk. This was a risk so I put the low to high price filter on amazon so if I hated it I hadn't sunk £15 of food money down the drain. I found the Hair Flairs, where the postage and packaging was more expensive than the product, but was still cheap when added up - it came to under £10. Score. I got blue and green, because I've always wanted to be a mermaid.

The reviews on amazon were less than happy, people said they were messy, got used up too quickly and weren't that pigmented when you got down to it. I'm gonna level with you - this is all true. But it did not stop me from loving this product.

So, they're messy. OH YEAH. So messy. BUT, this is easily contained and washed off, there are even instructions on the back of the product. No carpets and no white clothing. This is fair enough. I did this in my bathroom with a towel around my shoulders. I had dry, straightened hair. I made sure to hang my hair over the sink as the powder is more easily cleaned off the ceramic than my bathroom tiles. After watching many tutorials on YouTube, I had my technique down. I divided my hair over both shoulders for convenience sake, I then smothered my ends in hair spray. I'm talking full on asphyxiation levels of hair spray. Mainly so all the strands are covered, otherwise the colour will go on more unevenly. I took the pot - I initially used the green - and started rubbing it on my blonde ends. I held the back with my thumb and used my index and middle finger to push the hair into the colour. Your hands will turn green; the instructions advise wearing gloves, I had no gloves so made do - it washed off fine. I did this until all the blonde was covered, using my stained hands to blend the colour upwards in a more pleasant way. I then blitzed it with another round of hair spray. I decided to be creative and throw some blue in there too, focusing on the ends to create a sort of gradient effect. More hair spray. I cleaned up, threw the towel in the wash and was sorted.

I still had quite a bit left of the colours (photo below of what the pots looked like after), and still do after using them both a couple more times. They'll not last you forever, especially if you want to do your whole head, but If you're just doing your ends I'd say they're cost effective. I'd be happy to buy them again.

As for the pigmentation, it's great if you don't brush it, and even if you do it still looks very stylish - and I liked it better that way anyway.

The colour washed out of my hair very easily, but the product states it make take two-three washes for heavily bleached hair.

It looked amazing but felt horrible. This is a warning, you can feel it in your hair. If you're doing this for a one time event you can just leave it and wash it off afterwards. I, however, needed to sleep on this for the next day consisting of college followed by a night out. So I decided to brush it. The colour gets muted and unfortunately the blue blended into the green, but it still looked nice - I honestly preferred it. The process of brushing seemed to bond the colour better with the hair, making it look less like chalk on the hair and more like simply coloured hair. Follow this with more hair spray. I went to bed and woke up with awesome hair and, thankfully, still clean sheets. The colour didn't transfer, but you might still want to be careful. I brushed through again in the morning and it still looked cool. I got quite a few compliments and, most importantly, felt like I held my own in the individuality contest. Sorted.

 Below is the final result in the form of an awkward mirror selfie. I'm a happy camper.

Enjoying the Summer Weather (Face of the Day)

The weather's actually been good in England recently. Summer might actually rear its pretty little head this year. Which would be surprising.

Whenever the sun shines I crack out my more colourful Sleek palettes. This time I chose the Curacao palette which is BEAUTIFUL. It pretty much hands every bright colour to you on a well designed plate.

Sleek always gets me because they constantly release limited edition palettes. Even if I probably have doubles of the colours I'll buy it. But this palette is pretty individual. It's also pretty great that the eye shadows are named after cocktails. And that's what I had in mind when creating this look, I wanted the colours of a Tequila Sunrise. I then remembered how pretty the rest of the shadows were and decided to use as many as possible.

I started with using Nyx Jumbo Eye Pencil in 'Yellow' as a base. Matte colours sort of always need a base, especially a yellow. I then patted on 'Screwdriver' on the first half of my lid and 'Bloody Mary' on the other half, blending them together with 'Tequila Sunrise'.

I then used 'Cork' by Mac in the crease, to tie things together a bit. I darkened the outer corner with 'Purple Haze' and softened the inner corner of the crease with 'Blue Hawaiian'. I finished it off with 'Green Iguana' on the lower lash line and Martini in the inner corner and beneath the brow.

I have the Max Factor lipfinity lasting lip tint in 07 on my lips.

Getting Started

I've been meaning to do something like this for a long while and creating this seemed like the perfect kind of procrastination from revision.
I've loved makeup ever since watching a rainbow eyes makeup tutorial on YouTube many years ago. From then I knew I had to be at least good at it. I've always had that thing where I'll see something and say "I need to be able to do that".
I  started by buying some colourful eye shadows and a set of cheap makeup brushes. Needless to say my first attempts weren't what anyone would classify as good, but I was young (-ish) so it was excusable. Or that's what I tell myself at least. But I kept at it, miraculously, I'd had quite a few 'hobbies' by this point. I like to think my skills are at least acceptable now.
So here I am, talking at empty space about makeup. I imagine I'll start chatting about other things though, but lets see how this goes.