Cupcake Hair and General Life Update

What's going on in my life? Well, I'm FREEZING at the moment. But that's better than melting under the Great Fiery Orb. In other news, some of you may have noticed (I'm sure you rabidly check this page every day waiting for a scrap of an update) I haven't been posting very much at all! There is a long and short explanation for this...

Short Explanation!
I have been uninspired and busy.

Long Explanation! 
I have been uninspired about blogging and feeling a little distanced from goth in general. I was really excited to go to college because it had a reputation of having a lot of goths lurking about but thus far I've been sadly disappointed. Other than a totally old school goth lady I've befriended in my drawing class who calls herself Raven, the only other goths I've met are a sketchy library help student who is rather greasy and worships at the alter of "Black Metal" but is somehow unable to apply a band name to this genre...(although we did have a nice talk about Emilie Autumn) and another artist in my watercolor class who likes to fill me in about every detail of her relationship including the...er..intimate moments...and shows quite the interest in reminding me that she is "goth, very goth!" These people are nice enough I suppose (trying to save my Karma here) but they certainly aren't the creatures of the night I was hoping to meet (in my mind there is at least one Victorian chap with a cane who likes to read English literature in graveyards and a few punk-tastic-chicks with mohawks to go clubbing with). Growing up in a small town where I was pretty much the ONLY goth, well, there were a few alternative kids in high school but none of them with any interest in the basic roots of the subculture, it's a little disheartening to always be the lone bat.

Random awesome picture!
Check out this girl's deviantart!

Also, people at my school, and on the way there, seem to have strange expectations of me. I've had several instances where overweight older men on the public transport ask for my number after complimenting my "tights" all the while staring at my thighs or cleavage, and a few times where I've been sitting quietly reading and people come up to me, sit down and go "So. I've noticed you're GOTH." Why yes, how keen of you. Would you like to start a conversation? No? You'd rather just sit there staring at me as though I'm meant to transform into a black cat with a poof of purple glitter? So there's that.

And I also recently lost my job because the place I was working shut down. Which is a MAJOR bummer because its October now and I have no money for Halloween goodies! :( I'd also come to like my previous job quite a lot (you can read about my initial concerns in this post) and I'm missing the friends I made there and the surprising amount of appearance tolerance I'd gotten used to. They let me wear my piercing, as much makeup as I wanted, and show my undercut, my manager even told me he expected my hair to be "a different color every week!" and all I had to do was smile at the customers and weigh their frozen yogurt. So most of my spare time these days has been taken up by job applications. But wanna see something that made me laugh until my little rib-cage almost cracked? This question:

This is a screen shot from my phone as I was filling out apps online.
This is an ACTUAL question!! :D

In addition to all that tomfoolery, I've been experiencing some conflict about makeup. I've come to integrate makeup, A LOT of makeup, into my daily definition of goth. It really adds to outfits and amps up the ookie-spookieness factor. I sometimes miss my natural face, but I also don't feel comfortable wearing no makeup, months of scrubbing off blackest black eyeliner have given me some pretty severe dark circles and with my undercut I feel very boy-ish if I'm not wearing at least a little eyeliner. On the one hand, I really like my dramatic makeup. Creating different looks is fun and interesting. But sometimes I feel like I'm doing it because it's what people expect of me, not what I really want.

All of these things combined have lead me to just feel a little...lonely. Which is why I've realized, I need to start blogging again! I love all you guys, seriously you should see me when I get a comment from any of my followers, I practically burst with glee. And if I can't find any gothy types in my hometown well, here everyone is online posting pictures of their drool-worthy outfits and macabre topics of interest. Thanks for having the confidence to be yourselves! You give this dark hearted girl some smiles (with vampire fangs of course). I really enjoy cliches. :D

THIS needs to happen in my life.
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Anywho! Enough about me, what about my hair? (Yes, it truly is a separate entity, it has a MIND of its OWN!) Perhaps you read my last post about the new products I was trying and the color results I was aiming for? If not, I'll wait. I'm sure I have some knitting around here to occupy my time...

Okay, up to speed now? Well. The results of last night's several rounds of bleaching and then dye application left me very disappointed. After letting the dye sit for FOUR HOURS, I washed my hair to find I was blonde with slightly pinkish streaks everywhere and two spots of rather brighter pink on my undercut. Not. What. I. Wanted. Altogether, it looked almost orange, and it was a really muddy shade, probably because some of my hair wasn't entirely light enough for a pastel color to go over. And what was with the dye not taking on the short super bleached side of my head? It was a mild disaster, so I reapplied bleach to attempt to go back to blonde. The pink didn't bleach out but it did get lighter, much closer to the shade I intended. While it was wet it was still looking rather stupid, but this morning I saw the dried results and was much happier:

It still has a lot of blonde showing through on the bottom parts of my hair. I'm not sure if this is because the dye (I used Ion Color, their shade "Rose") just didn't take for some reason or because it was my first time dying my hair all by my lonesome (I usually employ the help of my wonderful mother who has bleached and colored my hair so many times by now I should really start tipping her) and I probably didn't apply it as evenly as I could have. For now I'm just combing all my hair over my silly half dyed undercut and working with it. Although I did purchase some Splat hairdye today (I found out they never test on animals or use animal products in their colors!!!) to try using with this tutorial, we'll see how it goes! Hopefully the end result will be something like this:

In addition to just liking pastel pink, my interest in pastel goth is growing, I like the cutesyness of it.
Although from what I've read its not actually "goth" its purely fashion?
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So! I know I've said it before but I'm going to try and keep up with the regular posts again. Inspiration has once again struck and I've got some more ideas for posts. October tends to do that to me. :) Thanks for checking back! I hope you're all doing well!

Song of the Day: 

Hair Misadventures: We're Getting Better At This?

Hi guys! In my never ending quest for fabulous hair, I have another product to share with you.  After my brief stint with black hair, I decided to go for cotton candy pink! This was a mighty feat as the light pink needed a pretty light base to go over. But before we get into that, a review of the black dye I finally found that didn't turn my hair green!

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The above brand receives four out of five bats from me. On the plus side, it is reasonably priced and since you mix it with toner, you get a rather lot of dye for your money. As someone who has LONG THICK hair and usually dyes her whole head, I know it can be expensive to buy enough dye so the head is evenly covered without breaking the bank. I believe I bought two tubes of dye for twelve dollars total, and this mixed with the toner (which was four dollars for a fairly large bottle) gave me enough to coat all my hair with a massive amount left over (around two and a half cups). So for $16 I was able to dye my whole head! This compared with a four ounce pot of Manic Panic for $13.95 plus shipping was certainly a satisfying deal. I was also happy to find that their color "Noir" is a real and true black with a purple base as opposed to a blue one, so it won't dye very light hair green. (If you're interested, red + blue = purple, so we get the red to counteract the "yellow" of blonde hair, this keeps the dye from going green, and the blue to make our eye see a darker hue so in a burst of magic black sparkles, we get a black dye!)

I love her undercut!
I've been thinking about getting mine a little more styled.
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Wella does have a few problems though, the first being that it is a little difficult to find. It is considered a Professional Grade Dye so it can only be found in specialty beauty stores such as Sally's Beauty Supply or Ulta Beauty. (These are what we have in Colorado, sorry I'm not sure they exist elsewhere!) Wella also leaves the hair feeling a little dry. After washing and conditioning my hair, I went to brush it and the hair was rather...scratchy. This feeling goes away after a few washes. Wella is also not entierly cruelty free from what I could find, they don't test on animals, but the company that owns them does. Overall, it lasted me through around 30 washes, some with plain hot shower water, and was still fairly black before I got sick of it. It was actually fading a bit, but was mostly black with nice chestnut undertones so it didn't do any of that fading to green or grey business. There we have it!

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A few notes on dying your hair black in general:
From my personal experience it looks rather fake in a way that bright colors (which are obviously fake) don't seem to. While a dark color right next to your face will certainly make you look gloriously vampire-like, goths wear a lot of black. My long hair tended to fade into my outfits rather than Wednesday-Addams-ify me. In short, I thought it was rather boring. Which is the reason for the switch. And in order go pastel, I had to get the black out of my hair!

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A few weeks prior to my D-Day (dye-day? See what I did there?) I started washing my hair in hot water again (which we all know is a big no-no if we want to KEEP the color yes?) and it helped to fade it a little. But I still needed a strong bleach! I also wanted something I could mix up in smaller batches because my undercut requires a tiny bit of bleach as it grows out and I have to re-shave and re-dye it. So, as per the recommendation of the lovely KillNatalie I went over to my trusty Sally's again and purchased:

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Prism Lites comes in Blue and Violet. The Blue is a stronger lightener, so that's the one I went for. It is powder that is tinted so you can see where you put it on, and you mix it with a toner, choose from 20-40 depending on the strength of the lift desired (gee, I should sell this stuff shouldn't I? :D). I already had some 20 volume but it was a little diminished from the last round of dyeing, so I also picked up some 30 volume. Overall, 4.5 bats! A container of Prism Lites is a little expensive, I think the tub was $20, plus the toner made for $24 dollars for my hair project. But its enough for several entire head jobs, and its easy to store and measure out (it comes with a nifty little scoop!). Its also only available through specialty beauty shops. But its well worth it! Prism Lites with 20 volume toner lightened my blackest black hair to light brown in 40 minutes, and another round with the 30 volume toner brought everything up to a lemon yellow with some streaks of auburn (these were from when my friend put highlights of pure pigment colors in my hair). 

Can we be friends please? :)
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Washing your hair after bleaching with Prism Lites leaves it feeling surprisingly like you just got a deep conditioning treatment, but that silky almost slimy feel you're experiencing is probably the basic compounds doing their work (if you spill a base on your skin it'll feel slimy, this is because your skin cells are being dissolved. :P) After drying, my hair was a little straw-like, but not too terrible, and most of the damage probably came from the fact that my current length of hair has been through four color changes and three bleaching rounds in the past year. I'm abusive, I know...Anyway, by far the BEST feature of Prism Lites is that IT DOESN'T DO THAT ITCHY BURNING HORRIBLE THING that box bleaches like Manic Panic and Splat do. The only think I noticed was my head getting a little hot under the 30 volume toner, but it wasn't nearly as annoying as other bleaches I've tried and I had it right down to the scalp and along the hairline. If I ever feel like entertaining you I'll post a video of me trying not to rip my head off while itchy bleach sits...its embarrassing. :)

I'm currently typing this with my hair all pulled up and sitting under a shower cap while I let my pink dye sit for a few hours so I'll post some pictures once I know how it turned out! I guess while it's setting I'll listen to the Song of the Day: