Love: Fabulous in February

The wonderful lady behind A Working Mom’s Closet has posted a challenge… to say three positive things about yourself every Monday in Feburary. The goal is to hold off winter blues and get a little positivity and self love happening around the blogosphere. At first this may not sound like a challenge at all, but most of us grew up in a culture where it’s not nice to say nice things about yourself. So, at the risk of sounding like an egomaniac, and defying culture norms, here are my first three things:

1. I love that I’m tall

I can see over people and things, my students never complain that they can’t see me when I interpret, and I can reach the top shelf of stores all by myself. I get comments pretty much every week about why tall girls shouldn’t wear heels (“aren’t you tall enough??”) but heels make me feel sexy and while my height might be a problem for other people, it’s never been for me.

2. I love my hair

I’ve put my hair through the wringer (and the bleacher, the flat ironer, and the hairdryer) and it still loves me back and behaves well. It’s been every color of the rainbow and changes nearly as often as my moods, but in a world where plain black clothes are the norm, hair is my little indulgence in self-expression.

3. I love my eyes

My eyes look just like my dad’s, the same dark brown and the same long lashes (and those lashes got me a modeling gig with Sebastian Trucco when I was younger!). For years, Brown Eyed Girl has been my favorite song, and while I played around with colored contacts for a bit, I just don’t feel right when brown eyes aren’t looking back at me in the mirror.

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So that’s it, there are my three positive things put out into the universe. Post your own at A Working Mom’s Closet!

Lose: Celebrity Blonde Gone Wrong

If you’ve been reading Lust, Love, Lose for awhile, you know a good blonde is hard to come by. Wither it’s roots, brassiness, or just a distinct lack of toner, there’s a thousand ways to gone wrong and so very few to get it right. So I can almost forgive these celebrities for their peroxide atrocities, until I realize they have well paid stylists who let them out of the house like this. Gathered just for you, a list of the top 7 celebrity blonde fails of all time.

Donatella Versace

 

Emma Stone

Drew Barrymore

Amy Winehouse

Kim Kardashian

Lindsay Lohan

Kimora Simmons

The moral of the story? All the money in the world can’t buy you the underlying skin tone, facial features, or secret something it takes to turn Norma Jeane into Marilyn.

What do you think? What are your rules for pushing the boundaries of your genetic makeup for the sake of fashion? And how do you know when (if?) you’ve gone too far?

Lust: Bleach London

I have a penchant for crazy hair, probably because (due to my professional job) I can’t have it, so when I ran across Bleach Hair Salon at Wah Nails I spent hours combing through the pages, drooling over the dye candy. Dip dyes, bleach outs, every color of the rainbow: this salon has influences runways and fashion magazines around the world and made an underground phenomenon explode. Don’t believe me? Take a look…

 

Love: Products for Blonde Hair that Really Work

In case you can’t tell by now, one of my biggest fashion pet peeves is stringy, nasty, over-processed blonde hair – mostly because there’s just no need for it! A few amazing products will keep your blonde hair gorgeous and feeling great no matter how much 20 volume bleach your hairstylist says you need. Even better, not a single one of these products retails for over $10!

Without a doubt, the GOD of bleach blonde products is Clairol Shimmer Lights ($7). It’s not expensive, smells amazing, and works wonders at keeping brassy orange tones at bay. Use it once a week in place of regular shampoo (rinse, lather, repeat and let the second wash sit 3-5 minutes) and you’ll see the difference as soon as you step out of the shower. Fair warning though: it does create a purple murder scene in your bathtub.

Garnier Fructis 3-Minute Undo ($6) is a miracle for dry hair – I use it once a week when I do my Shimmer Lights and let it sit 3-5 minutes (can you tell it’s my longest shower of the week?). If you’ve got a serious case of the dries, you can wet your head, slather it on, wrap your head in saran wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes before rinsing. You can also snag those great little bottles of conditioner that come with box dye from your friends, because you would never box dye blonde, right? Right??

When it comes to an everyday purple shampoo, I’m not entirely convinced that all products aren’t created equal, but I’ve had good luck with John Frieda Sheer Blonde Color Renew Tone-Restoring Shampoo and Conditioner ($8/each). I pick it up whenever Ulta has a sale and use it between Shimmer Lights and Garnier treatments. If you’re using Shimmer Lights once a week, you can probably get away with about any shampoo in between as long as it doesn’t have a red or yellow dye in it (some do to make the shampoo pretty, ex: Bath and Body Works in Sweet Pea).

That’s really about it, everything I use to keep my blonde hair in shape between bleaches. Inexpensive, easy to use, and leaving no excuse for nasty burn-out blonde ever again.

Looking at going blonde? Check out this post for details!

Lust: Maggie Matich’s Lavender Hair

When I stumbled across Maggie Matich’s photos on Lookbook, I knew I had to interview her about my ever-ongoing fascination with lavender hair (don’t know what I’m talking about? See Kelly Osbourne and these models). She’s the first real live girl I’ve seen pull it off brilliantly, so of course I had to find out the when and how and why, read on…

How long did you have lavender hair?

I had lavender hair for about 1 month. I had had a jet black bob for about 5 years and I got scouted to model for Vidal Sassoon and they took me from black to copper to blonde. It was white blonde but because my hair had had so much dark colour put on it, it started to go yellow. The girl who coloured my hair said that a good way to counteract the yellow tones was to go an ashy purple (lavender) and I said go for it.

What process did you go through to get the color and what products did you use?

They used sassoon colour but she also used crazy colour and when I wanted to go a more vibrant purple, I used Directions hair colour which was very good as it wasn’t damaging to my hair (it was very brittle after all the bleaching).

What did you do to keep it up? Any special shampoos or products?

Sassoon gave me a lot of Kerastase shampoos and conditioners which were very good in keeping my hair healthy. I found the leave in Thermique condition by Kerastase was very good.

What reactions did people have most often? Any memorable ones?

I got told I looked like a cup cake. Weirdly, I liked that very much. My Mum hated it but I have never listened to my Mum. Oops!

What was your favorite thing about lavender hair? Your least favorite?

My favourite thing was just the colour. I love all shades of purple and so I was very happy I had it on my head. My least favourite was that when it was a deeper purple, it was hard to wear some of my clothes in that it became a bit of a colour overload and sometimes blue didn’t look very good. It was very short aswell so I looked a bit like a fairy or a pixie which is good in some ways but a little weird in others. Haha.

What tips do you have for someone thinking of rocking this trend?

Don’t be shy with the clothes you wear, it is a really all or nothing look. I found rather than over thinking the colours I wore and what prints I matched, it was better to go all out and completely miss-match colours and prints and I think it worked. I hope. But all black is also a wicked look with Lilac hair.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Nope, That’s all.

Want to know more? See Maggie’s blogspot, tumblr and lookbook accounts!

How To: Dye a Leather Bag

If you haven’t realized it by now, I’m a huge HUGE fan of affordable fashion. One of the ways I’ve gotten some of my best pieces is by buying them in pretty iffy condition and restoring them to their original splendor on my own.

I bought this Marc Jacobs bag on Bonanza back when it was Bonanzle, but I didn’t love the destressed look it had. I’ve since found out this is exactly how the bag was supposed to look, it does make it look dated and just isn’t my cup of tea. I’m slowly but surely turning it into the bag I want it to be with the help of a saddle supply shop and a trial and error system of leather dying 😛

If you want to play too, here’s the supplies you’ll need:

• Leather handbag (make sure it’s actually leather or you’ll just make a mess)
• Leather Deglazer
• Leather Dye
• Bag Kote
• Soft clothes
• Rubber gloves
• Blue painters’ tape (not pictured)
• About 1million Q-tips (not pictured)

Step 1: Apply leather deglazer to the bag using a soft cloth.

Use rubber gloves to protect your hands! Don’t be stingy when it comes to the amount of deglazer or the force it takes to rub like crazy, especially if the bag is a few years old. The deglazer will not only remove the coating that keeps the original leather dye in place, it will also get rid of any dirt or oil that’s been left on the bag overtime and get the bag ready to accept the new dye you want to apply. WARNING: leather deglazer stinks to high heaven, so you may want to do this outside or in a garage.

Step 2: Use the painters’ tape to cover anything you don’t want to dye.

Make sure you protect the inside lining of the bag, any metal pieces, or any leather you don’t want to change the color of (if you deglazed this leather, you’ll want to reglaze it at the end following step 5).

Step 3: Apply your first coat of dye

This is when you’ll need the rubber gloves again unless you want to have leather colored fingers for weeks! The dye comes with a tool that looks like a cotton ball on a wire handle, use this for the big areas, dipping the tool in the dye and working in a sweeping motion. After each area, wipe down the surface with a soft cloth to remove excess dye, then use Q-tips to work the dye into any corners or areas you couldn’t cover with the dying tool. Continue until your entire bag has been dyed with one coat. Don’t worry if this isn’t the exact color you want, the color will become deeper and richer with the second coat.

Step 4: Let dry, then repeat step 3

Set the bag so none of the wet part is touching a surface. Your best bet may be to hang it over a chair rail or from a hanger. When you do the second coat, pay careful attention to the corners and small details so you get an even finish, if after a second coat you’re still not liking the color, let it dry and apply a third coat using the same apply, wipe, dry method.

Step 5: Apply Bag Kote

I haven’t made it to this step yet, so for now the best I can tell you is to follow the steps on the package. The process looks relatively simple and my test patch came out really well. Everything I’ve read suggests you only need one coat of this to keep your dye in place.

Step 6: Comment

Okay, okay, it’s cheesy I know, but if you’re in the process of redoing any bags, I’d love to hear about how you’re doing it, any tips and tricks you’ve found or if anything in this post helped you out 🙂

Lust: Update on Colored Hair

While I was blog browsing yesterday over at Make the World a Prettier Place (while I should have been doing grad homework, don’t judge me) I noticed these great pictures of a model with a muted pinky lavender hair color similar to what I was lusting after in the Kelly Osbourne post.

I’m loving this idea of crazy non-natural hair colors but in a subtle, classy way. Is this a slowly starting trend? If you find more examples, shoot me a comment and let me know! I’d love to see more of it, maybe get some inspiration for the summer O:)

via Make the World a Prettier Place