J.Cat Beauty Wonder Lip Paint

I was at Ulta yesterday afternoon and was bummed over not finding the NYX matte lip creams I really wanted and was just about to leave when I spotted these beauties. I've been really wanting to try out the OCC Lip Tars for the longest time but could never justify the price tag for what I considered a novelty lip product. I love the pigmentation an intensity of the swatches I've seen on other blogs but $18+ for a difficult to apply and not very forgiving lip product just seemed silly to me. 

Luckily these babies had a beautiful $4.99 price tag and all inhibitions were gone! I walked out with 3 gorgeous shades and have swatched them below. 

Shade: Much Mucher

Shade: 2nd Impossible Thing

Shade: Red Potion

Much Mucher, a very light orangy-peach-nude shade. It applied probably the best of the 3, was really opaque and I really loved how it looked. 

2nd Impossible Thing, in the tube and the swatch made it look like an electric red, but it ended up applying a bit less vibrant. It ended up on the lips as a slightly transparent berry red. Still beautiful, but not really true to the swatch. 

Red Potion is a super deep plum/berry shade that applied again a little more transparent than I was expecting, but still bold enough. It was a little patchy so I think it would do better on me if I'd exfoliated my lips first as they were a little dry. Overall I LOVE the color, but don't love the need for prepping my lips before applying it. 

While I can't compare them to the OCC Lip Tars, I can say that I really enjoyed them and was pleasantly surprised by how wearable they were. I still think they're more work than they're worth but for a night out or just for fun, they're awesome!

XOXOXO

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Red Ombre Hair Tutorial

I've been in desperate need of a hair change. I'm normally pretty impulsive when it comes to what I do with my hair, but I've been putting a real effort in to finally growing out my hair and keeping it looking relatively healthy. Much easier said than done when I get the urge to color/cut it about 5 times a month!

In the last 5 years, I've brought my hair to hell and back. I went from 100% all natural virgin hair, to every color under the sun (including winter white bleached, a la hair school). With all that color processing, I've had to chop chop chop it off constantly. I practically had a pixi cut at one point after coloring over my bleach blonde and dealing with the uneven tones it left behind.

Since hair school, I've settled on coloring my hair a little more conservatively and for the most part haven't touched it with bleach. I've gone back and forth from brown to auburn over the last 2 years, but that's about it. I've really come to love having red hair, but it can get a tad boring with no variation to it.

I grew my hair out to a very good length for my wedding, but I knew a good 4-5 inches of the ends were secretly trashed from my blonde days and after every shower I was still de-rattifying it and fighting against it's urge to poof out like cotton candy. So I made the decision to cut a ton off again, ending up with a bob just about chin length.

Since October, I haven't touched my hair with scissors and have only gone over it with my usual red color. It's now just past my shoulders (with the help of daily vitamins) and I've been really happy with it. Yet still, the urge to change things up was there, and I finally felt it was safe to get back in to the bleach.

I decided on doing an ombre-red look, keeping it all over red, but a brighter auburn at the ends and deeper from the roots. Here's how I did it, what I used, and the useful tips I came up with!

This is my hair before bleach...

Step 1:

Prepare to bleach!

My hair has been colored over time after time after time, so I knew my ends would be a bit troublesome to cut through. I originally went in with the ColorFix color remover to see if I'd have the same luck I had in my last lightening job, but was disappointed. Not unexpected, but it only lifted the ends barely half a level. I know if I used the color remover another 3-4 times, I'm sure I would have got a much more significant lift, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with that much stink (seriously, the stuff STINKS).

Instead, I caved and decided bleach was the way to go. I used to use the Wella brand blue bleach and absolutely LOVED it, but it's only available to licensed beauticians. I graduated, but never got licensed. Instead, I decided on the L'Oreal Super Blue Creme Oil Lightener. I'd never read a review for it, but after reading the box I figured it'd be okay. The box made it seem like it had everything you'd need to lighten your hair (aka the bleach AND the developer) but this apparently wasn't true...

After I got home, I realized the liquid lightener it came with was just like, an enhancer, but not the actual developer, a fact I was only made aware of after opening the box, taking everything out, and reading the directions on the INSIDE of the box... *mumblegrumble*

Normally I'd recommend going with a 20 volume developer for bleaching, to ensure you got even lift, but I didn't have 20 vol at home. All I had was 10 volume, which is what I used when I colored my hair. Crabby as hell, I decided to try a test strand with the 10 volume developer before getting in my freezing car and driving back to the beauty store. THANKFULLY, the 10 volume lifted my hair plenty, and in the end, isn't nearly as damaging as a higher developer.

Satisfied with the results of my test strand, I got to work on the rest of my hair. As seen in the tutorial, I focused most at the ends, feathering the bleach up the hair about 5-6 inches. I did this to my whole head, using up the entire box of bleach. My hair is very thick, so I was lucky I made it with the 1 box.

This is my hair ON bleach...

Step 2: 

Wash that #$&* out!

I chose not to shampoo/condition after the bleach because I knew I was coloring the same day. It's just my personal preference, because I sometimes feel like washing your hair affects the color processing all the way. Instead I thoroughly rinsed my hair for a good 10 minutes until I was sure all the bleach was gone.

After towel drying my hair, I sprayed the ends well with the Its a 10 Leave in Product spray to make brushing through it less traumatizing. I used a wide tooth comb and got through it all with minimal breakage.

I then dried it completely with a hair dryer on medium heat.

This is my hair AFTER bleach...

Step 3:

Once all my hair was dry, I got to work on the color.

The color I've been using for over a year now to keep my hair red is the Clairol Professional Liquicolor in 5RR - Lightest Intense Red. I mix it with equal parts of the 10 volume Clairol Professional Pure White Creme Developer.

After mixing it all up, I split my hair down the middle and clip 1 side up. It's smart to color the perimeter of your face first to ensure you get all the pesky baby hairs. Then I just go down one side, front to back making sure all the hair is equally covered in dye.

Do this to the whole head, clip it all back and wait another 20 minutes.

Step 4:

Wash that $*)# out!

Tip: before jumping in the shower, get as much of the color spills off your face as possible. There are a few ways to do this. The absolute easiest, is to just take a little leftover color on your finger, and rub it in to where there are spills on your face. The color actually cancels out the color on your face and it will wipe away clean. 

If you don't have left over color, I usually take a cotton pad with some makeup remover while the color on my face is still wet and wipe it with that. It's worked really well for me. I don't mind if there's still some left on my neck/arms/etc, but this method gets it off my face really well. 

Then hop in the shower!

This time I did use both shampoo and conditioner. I actually conditioned using the free sample hair mask that came with my Its a 10 spray. It really worked wonders... 

Fun fact, my bathtub drain decided to clog up right then and there, so once I hopped out of the shower, it looked like a murder scene. 

Again, after towel drying my hair, I sprayed in more It's a 10 spray to detangle and give it some much needed moisture. I then blow dried it on a medium setting. 

Then voila! Red ombre hair!

It turned out about exactly like I thought it would. Also to note, the color lightens up about another good level after another wash, that's why I included a few pictures from right after the coloring to a few days later. 

Overall I really like this look. A few things that you could do to get a slightly truer ombre look would be to go over the hair a 2nd time with bleach and just focus on the bottom 3-4 inches, leaving the feathered sections near the middle alone. This would brighten the ends even more and make the ombre effect even more apparent. I was honestly just too lazy to do it, but I'm very satisfied with the look I got. 

 I hope this tutorial was helpful! If you try your own look or have any questions, feel free to ask any questions or leave a comment below!!

 

OFFICIALLY MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's over! I'm hitched! It's pretty nuts, but it's all over. 6 months of planning, all leading up to last Saturday where Steve and I finally got married :)

 

It was pretty sweet, I won't lie... All in all it was an amazing day, things ran very smoothly, and we had the perfect weather. Slightly overcast and didn't rain until all the shenanigans were over!

We got married in a picnic shelter in West St Paul, MN then took a party bus over to our reception spot.

 

I had my bridesmaids all pick an Edward Sung dress in Garnet, giving them the option to choose the style they liked best, while still staying cohesive. I was lucky enough to have a good friend do their hair as well as my own, and she made us all look AMAZING! LOVE YOU AMANDA!!! I ended up doing my own makeup, as well as my sisters. I made all the flowers out of paper, as seen in my last post. I made a video tutorial showing how to make the bouquets, centerpieces and boutonnieres.

 

 

Not a bad group of lovely ladies, if I do say so myself! My oldest sister was actually our photographer, so I was glad a friend got this picture that included her :) This one's getting framed for sure!

 

My buddy was also nice enough to take a picture of my hand made centerpieces in action!! They held up extremely well. They were a boat load of work, but I liked that they added a lot of creativity and uniqueness to my reception.

 

My mom actually made these super cute chair bouquets for the ceremony! She did them all herself!

 

This was our program/guestbook/tissue/bubble table. I got a bunch of super cute champagne bottle bubbles for the guests and designed the programs myself.

 

 

WOOO!!! My boss bouquet in action! I'm rather proud...

 

My whole wedding party! (minus my oldest sister, taking the picture!) I love how the dresses/flowers/suits worked out. EXACTLY what I wanted! I couldn't be happier! Everyone looked amazing.

 

And that's a wrap! I married the man of my dreams and had an amazing night. I'm so grateful to all my friends and family for supporting us and making the day perfect.

 

Now, back to real life! I have time to myself again and will be filming ASAP! I'm getting over a cold, so haven't started just yet, but have a few ideas of videos I want to shoot soon.

 

XOXOXO

Decorating My Wedding

 

 

 

Surprise surprise, I'm going with a retro look for my wedding. I'm trying to make sure I get the vintage pieces I like without going over the top or overkilling the theme. I want everything to be simple and beautiful, elegant but still casual enough for everyone to have a great time.

 

 

My lovely ladies :) I wasn't very interested in making my girls wear the same dresses. All I really care about is that the dresses are red, short, and that the girls feel beautiful in them! I decided to go with Alfred Sung dresses, so my bridesmaids could choose the style of dress they're most comfy in while staying the same color and relatively same look. Above are the styles they chose. My maid of honor to the far left, then my sisters and Steve's sisters to the right. Very cute if I say so myself! Can't wait to see it all in person!!

 

They will all be in black shoes with subtle jewelry. Not sure what I want to do for them for flowers yet... more to come on that!

 

 

I've always said I wanted "Reservoir Dogs" for the guys in my wedding and thankfully Steve was on board! All the guys will be wearing plain black suits with thin black ties. Steve will get a red boutonniere and the rest of the guys will get white.

 

 

Since I decided to go with paper flowers, I've been skimming through Pinterest for ideas on what to do for centerpieces. I originally planned to do real flowers, under water in vases with candles floating on top. Once I said farewell to doing real flowers, I thought I could do little vases full of paper flowers, but that sounded a little too plain. Then I found the above arrangement and fell in love! Especially because it's using the style of flowers I already figured I'd go with :) I want to do little flower wreaths around a vase and may or may not put a candle inside... we'll see, they'd have to be taller vases to make sure nothing starts on fire... Bleh, so much to consider!

 

These are the colors/styles I'll be using.

 

I'm still not 100% set up on what I want to do with my hair, but I really do like the above picture. I like that it's simple, classic and could be taken down if I felt like it later in to the night. I'm doing a few trials to see if I'd be able to pull it off myself, otherwise I'll look in to tracking down a stylist for the big day.

 

And lastly, make up. Nothing too surprising there, I want to go with a subtle, simple wing liner look with bold red lips. Subtle blush and maybe a little contouring for the pictures.

 

That's what I have so far! For all the stress planning a wedding causes, the styling of it really is the fun part. I want the look to be classic, creative and unique, without breaking the bank!!!

 

If anyone has any decorating tricks, tips or DIY's, please comment below! I'm very open to suggestions and will appreciate anything ideas :)

 

XOXOXO

 

Brunette to Ginger - My Hair Color Story

 

***WARNING WARNING!!!! Beginning is a huge rant about me and my hair!!! If you just want to go straight to the process, scroll down to the next image!!! :) PS, this is going to be a LONG post, as the process lasted over 2 weeks***

***Update w/ Final Results***

(Sorry for the grumpy face, the sun was very bright!)

 

 Alright, so here's my thing with hair........ I change it a lot :) I've been pretty much every color under the rainbow (except blue, that attempt backfired on me....) but the color I've always gone back to time and time again is red/auburn. I think I'm a redhead at heart and was cursed with brown hair. Don't get me wrong, I love brunettes and I do like my natural hair (a dark brown) but I love red heads more :)

 

If you see back in my history, I actually achieved my desired hair color about a year ago. The perfect auburn, not too red but not too orange, and I LOVED it. At the time I was using Wella Color Touch professional dye, which I was able to purchase with my temporary cosmetology ID. Though I graduated cosmo school, I really decided at the end of it all that I truly had no desire to do hair professionally. An expensive mistake, I KNOW, but I knew it wasn't going to happen. I never paid for my license, and my school ID ran out, thus no more Wella :,(

 

At the time, I was resigned to stop coloring my hair since it was too much upkeep and I didn't want to resort to box dyes. I stocked up on some deep brown professional color right before my license ran out and went back to as natural as I could get it. THAT'S when everything started getting wonky for me :)

My roots started coming in, they were slightly lighter than the dye and I wasn't cool with it. For some strange reason, I got the thought in my head that "Hey, box dyes aren't so bad, maybe I can just start with those!" So I got a box dye and went over everything. The color was fine, but then I kind of realized my error... Sure, box dyes ok, but the thing with it is, is it always comes with a 20 volume developer. It will lift then darken, pretty much jacking up your hair from the get go.

 

And THEN I got the great idea that "HEY, what I REALLY want is to go back to ginger!"...................................................................................................... I know right, I'm a genius :)

 

So below is what I did. It's so far been a 2 week process and I'm not 100% sure if I'm at my desired results yet, but this is the method that has so far worked for me. Biggest bonus? NO BLEACH. So if you're interested in seeing what I did, keep reading :)

 

 

So above is a pictures of me, most recently after going through 2 applications of Wella Color Touch (5/3 I BELIEVE...) about 6 months ago, and then in the last month or so going over it with a dark brown box dye. ISH, I know............ Like I said above, I then got the genius idea that I DIDN'T want to be a level 5 brunette, I wanted to be a level 6/7 ginger. I also didn't want to use bleach, as my hair is f*&%^ enough as it is from hair school, and any bleach would probably melt the ends off. I did a LOT of research before coming up with my plan, so read on to find out what I did. And keep in mind, this is just what worked for me. I can't guarantee it would work on you, it all depends on your hair type, the integrity of your hair, blah blah blah.

 

After researching all my options on different hair blogs/forums/etc, I decided based on previous reviews, my safest bet would be using One 'n Only ColorFix. The product is bleach free, and the way it works is Part 1 and Part 2 solutions mix together to chemically shrink the color molecules in your hair, so they slip out of the strand, leaving it in whatever condition/color it would be without the added dye. Not necessarily back to your "natural" color, just stripped of the artificial color.

 

1 step to NOT take is Part 3, the processing lotion. The box leaves a warning that after using ColorFix, it is possible for some of the color to re-deposit back to the hair, darkening it a little from the initial removal, and all the reviews for this product I read stated the processing lotion basically guaranteed that. Everything said the processing lotion seemed to un-do everything the remover did, so I'm unsure why it's even in the box, but just don't do it :)

 

One thing also to mention, ColorFix only works well on Permanent color. Due to the different chemicals used in semi/demi permanent dyes, it's not nearly as effective with those colors and you most likely won't see any positive results. It's a miracle worker on box dyes though!

 

For the first week, I used 2 rounds of ColorFix to get my hair to the above lightness. My lights are AWFUL, so the pictures aren't really 100% accurate. The ColorFix did lighten my hair a good 2-3 levels and brought it to a bright brassy yellow/brown/orange. For some, that could be scary, but in my case, I was going red/auburn anyways so the brassiness actually worked in my favor.

 

 

The color I used in the first week was Clairol's Soy 4Plex permanent formula in 5RR Lightest Intense Red and 6RR Dark Intense Red Blonde with the pure white 10 volume creme developer. The ratio for the color was 1:1, so 1 part developer to every ounce of color. I read this brand of creme developer was better for the hair as it filled the holes in the hair to help make it less porous after the process is completed. Basically filling the holes so your hair isn't brittle and dry.

 

I slapped the color on, waited 30 minutes (which I found was a little too long for how damaged my hair was) and the results are below.

 

So a few things.

1. The color turned out pretty alright. A little darker than I wanted and a little more on the red side, but I'll explain why in a bit.

2. I definitely left the color on longer than I should have. The instructions say 30-45 minutes, but based on how damaged/porous my ends already were, the hair just sucked up the color and it had a lot of time to darken. THUS the weird darker at the ends to gradual lightened at the roots haha

3. Pros/Cons to the developer. CON: It left my hair feeling like it was coated in a thick layer of wax...... Very not cool and I kind of freaked out about it for a bit, and you can really see it at the ends of the hair. The extra coating really darkened the results at first, but it did lighten up once the coating wore off.

The weird texture stayed for about 2 days, I tried showering twice the first day but realized it just had to run its course. After a few days, the coating worked itself out, the color lightened about a shade and my hair felt amazing! For as much as I did to it, I do believe the developer did a good job of protecting my hair.

 

Overall Results

All in all, after the first attempt I was pretty pleased with how everything went. Coming from hair school, they teach you the only way to get rid of color/box dye is through bleach... Believing that, I've bleached the living hell out of my hair in the last 2 years or so, so I was completely prepared to deal with a clusterf*&^% but was pleasantly surprised. At the end of everything, I had very minimal fall out/breakage to my hair and I was able to brush it normally. It didn't feel overly dry or over-processed.

 

The ends of my hair were significantly darker than the roots, which I wasn't pleased with though, so I knew I'd be going another round.

 

On to Week 2!

 

Above is Week 2 Round 1 of color fix. As you can see, it once again completely removed the red from my hair and did a decent job of lightening the ends. I did run low on the product near the end of the application though, so I didn't get enough on the left side of my head, resulting in an uneven lift...

 

So I went ahead with round 2! I completely washed out round 1, dried the hair, and got back to work re-applying it. I was much happier with the results after round 2. The ends were still a tad darker than the roots, but I could really tell the majority of the color had been removed. I had an almost even color over the entire head, which I was amazed at.

 

 

 

Final results: Pretty damned pleased.

 

NOTE: The color in these pictures is not 100% accurate. The color is coming off a lot more red than what the actual results is. I included a picture with flash that gave a better idea of what the color actually came out like. Like I said above, the developer leaves a dark cast over the hair for the first few days, so the entire result is a lot darker than it will actually be. I can update in a few days once the developer has washed out to see the REAL end result.

 

I changed up my color the 2nd time around. I stuck to only 5RR and left out 6RR. I also only let the color process for 15 minutes once my entire head was covered. This seemed to help even out the top to bottom. The ends of my hair are still darker, but I feel the difference is more gradual and less harsh, and the ends are definitely a lot lighter than the 1st weeks results.

 

I don't know if I'm completely satisfied yet, but I think I'm going to give it a few weeks to let my hair get some much needed R&R before doing anything else to it. I want to see how much it lightens up and how the color fades after time. I'm expecting it to fade a lot faster than what I used to use, which is fine so long as the color itself is what I wanted.

 

All in all I'm very pleased with the process and am especially impressed with ColorFix. I'm glad I went the route I did rather than bleaching, since I'm sure that would have resulted in a haircut that I DON'T want right now!

Again, this is the process that worked well for ME. I feel like it's a pretty good judge though of how not-damaging the above products though. Again, keeping in mind my hair has been bleached numerous times, dyed and box dyed over and over in the last year or 2 and these products left my hair in tact.

 

Let me know if these tips helped you out at all! Apologies for the long post, but I felt it would be best to be very in depth and hopefully cover any questions. If you DO have questions or if you try this process out, please comment below! I'd love to hear what you think or how it worked out for you!