Tips for colouring your hair at home

I would have to class myself as an expert in home colouring of hair from my many years of colouring my hair at home. My speciality is filling in the roots of blonde hair to go darker, because that is what I do every two weeks myself and have done for the last few years.

I wanted to share some of my tips and tricks if you are planning on colouring your hair yourself at home. It is really simple if you are prepared and willing to put down a bit of time. The instructions you get in a colouring kit is usually quite good, but there are a lot of things they do not tell you...

First of all, when you buy your hair colour - check the contents before you go to the till. It has happened to me before that the actual colour is missing from within the package.

Depending on what kind of hair colour you use and if it is permanent or semi-permanent (as my hair colour is) you might need unwashed but damp hair or dry hair, so check this a day before you are planning to colour your hair. For my hair colour I need my hair to be damp but unwashed. When my hair is still wet, I comb it though properly and make sure to leave the ridges of the comb when going through my hair. This will help a lot in the process of colouring the roots!

Next step is to mix the colour. This is fairly straight forward, but I have to say that the way my hair colour has created a perfect holder for the tube in the package makes it so much easier!

If you are a rookie to colouring your hair and are scared that you will get colour everywhere, make sure to wear clothes that can take some spillage. Also, to protect your face and specifically your hairline from becoming very uneven (most important when colouring with darker colours) you can put some Vaseline just by your hairline to prevent the colour to stick in your skin.

When applying hair colour to the roots, the ridges made by combing your hair are now your new best friend. Use them by opening them up slightly and apply a line of colour along the part. Then gently massage into the hair and open up the ridger about 0.5 to 1 cm next to it and repeat.

I usually leave the bit nearest to the hairline by my forehead to do as the last step when the rest of the head is done. This eliminates any chance of getting a very hard and dark coloured hairline. Eventually, when all the roots are covered, leave in for the time stated on the package.

I usually use the last bit of hair colour to colour the lengths of my hair for the last 5 minutes as a semi-permanent hair colour acts as a deep conditioner to you hair and leaves it shiny and smooth. Then it is time to rinse - if you can keep a plastic glove, washing the colour out is much easier and will not stain the hand you use to massage your scalp to get all the colour out.

If you still end up with quite a harsh dark hairline, your saviour is peeling. If you have a mechanical exfoliator or a chemical exfoliator does not matter as it will still help to get some coloured dead skin cells off.

Leave it on for a bit or massage it into your skin and then rinse. Now, your hair is quite sensitive for the next 24 hours, so make sure not to wash it again within that time.

A few more tips:
The conditioner to set the colour you get with your hair colour is very valuable and if you could save some and not use all of it, it is great to keep using as a conditioner for the coming week to make sure the colour stays in as long as possible.
If your eyebrows are now a different colour to your hair, make sure to match them to your hair colour. You are not supposed to use this kind of hair colour on your eyebrows (as the package says). However, I always do this and it works fine if you are careful and only leave it on for a very short time. But don't tell anyone!!
If you were wearing makeup and especially foundation when starting to apply the hair colour - this could be a good thing and keep the foundation on! It acts as the Vaseline to prevent the hair colour from sticking to your skin around your hairline too much. Also, if you wash your face beforehand you will remove dead skin cells from your face and the hair colour will stick in your actual skin.

If you can get your coloured head around these things, you will be fine! With a few times practice you will never have to colour your hair in a salon again.

This was my result:

Have you ever coloured your hair at home? 
How did it turn out?
Have you ever had any home colouring catastrophes?

Kristina xx

Lash Extension Effect Mascara

I have kept to the same mascara for years now because I love it so much. I recently found out though, that it is not being produced any more, so I had no choice than to change to a new brand.

I am quite particular with how I like my lashes - I want them separated, long, but with some volume to them. This is not always easy to achieve. In the hunt for a new mascara, I found Maxfactor Lash Extension Effect (Extreme Lengthening Mascara) and though it sounded like all I was looking for. So, here's my review on what I thought about it...

The Lash Extension Effect mascara has a short, soft rubber brush. That is the best kind of brush in my book, as mascaras like that does not poke your eye out if you accidentally get the brush in your eye, and it is also known to be the brush for best separation and length.

Here is my lashes without any mascara to compare the results to:

The brush made application really easy and I have to say, this is the first mascara I have ever tried that does not leave any clumps, at all!

After applying one layer of the Maxfactor Lash Extension Effect mascara, this is what my lashes looked like:

I was very happy with the result, but decided I wanted some more volyme for the day, so I applied one more layer. And one hassle free and clump free layer later, my lashes looked like this:

I would absolutely recommend this mascara to anyone who is looking for length and separation. If you are looking for extreme volume though, it is probably not the mascara for you.

What mascara do you usually go for?

What is more important - length or volume?

Kristina xx

Perfect Spring Shoes

I have been looking for the perfect pair of spring shoes as spring is finally here! I wanted something with a bit of heel, but comfortable enough to walk in. A few weeks ago my fried said she had found the perfect shoes for me on a Swedish fashion blog, and indeed they looked perfect, and even better - they were available on ASOS. But when I got around to order them, they were out of stock... I didn't buy any other shoes, because I didn't find anything that was as nice, but then I randomly went on to asos.com again, and there they were!

I love these shoes for a fact that they are comfortable, casual, but still very smart and even dressed up if you style them accordingly. They really are the perfect versatile spring shoe. I'm posing here in the spring sun in which I spent most of my lovely bank holiday.

T-shirt ¦ H&M

Jeans ¦ Topshop

Shoes ¦ ASOS

Have you found your perfect pair of spring shoes yet?

Kristina xx

Appropriate Birthday Gifts

My birthday is tomorrow, the 29th of April. I am dreading it slightly since I usually get quite sad on my birthday. Not because I have a very bad age anxiety, or maybe that's a part of it, but because birthdays are no longer what they were. I know it is a bit naive if you would think birthdays would be as magical as they were when you were young, however, what makes it worse for me is that I don't have my family close.

I did received a package on Friday from my family though, and my mum granted me permission to open one of the gifts before my actual birthday. It was a lovely pair of earrings and what really makes them special to me is that they look age appropriate for my new age tomorrow. They are sophisticated and smart, which is at least matches my professional self very well.

I also decided to give myself a present - a haircut! I haven't had my hair cut by a professional in years... Usually my mum tops it up around Christmas, therefore, I thought a haircut would be an appropriate gift to myself.

Do you think it is important to dress age appropriate?

How often do you cut your hair and have you ever cut your own?

Kristina xx

How to do Zebra nails - Super easy!

As I mentioned in my last post, when doing my chevron nails I used a nail art pen - so I wanted to show another really easy way to create amazing nail art with very simple measures.

Zebra print nails look much more difficult to make than they really are. It is super easy if you just have a white base coat and a black nail art pen. The nail art pen I am using is Models Own nail art pen as you can see below. It has another feature than just having a thin brush to do nail art, it also has a nail on top to make perfect dots. However, I didn't need to use that to do zebra nails, but wanted to show you anyway.

How to create your zebra nails is as I said, really easy. Just give your nails an even layer of a white polish and wait to dry. Then you just start drawing on the stripes. You don't have to worry about making the stripes perfect - even nature isn't perfect, so just go with the flow and let the stripes guide you. Eventually, this is what you will end up with:

Kristina xx

Friday Night Look - Perfect for After Work

I had a couple of glasses as an afterwork yesterday and I just wanted to share my look for the evening, which consisted mainly of my favourite dress as of lately. It is a mini 3/4 sleeve dress from H&M and was fairly cheap but it is of a great thicker material making it perfect for evenings out when it is not yet summer heat outside. Bracelet is a new edition to my jewellery collection, from New Look.

I had also had some time to try out some black and white chevron nails which was fairly successful (at least on my left hand...) It was fairly easy to make as though, as I recently bought a Models Own nail art pencil in black, which I will write more about in an upcoming post...

My makeup was just a normal eyeliner look with some dark brown in the ridge of my eye to create some depth.

What do you think of the look?
What did your Friday outfit look like?

Kristina xx

Leather Effect Nails - Surprisingly Leather-like

I am always on the lookout for new exciting types of nail polish. Some of my past favourites have been scented nail polish and caviar polish. My newest edition to my polish collection is Nails Inc Leather Effect Polish. It is supposed to create an illusion that your nails are coated in leather. I have to say that I was quite surprised by the result, and I'll tell you why...

I thought the consistency of the polish and thereby what would make the leather effect, would be a shimmer or something similar in the polish. Instead there is small, sand-like, particles in the polish. At first I was disappointed as I thought it would just looks like a "sand-paper"-effect, but actually, the small particles make the black polish look like leather (from a normal eye-to-hand distance).

The last image is with a layer of top coat as well, but I kinda like the raw, rough effect of only two layers of the leather effect polish - I guess it looks almost like suede then instead! :) I really recommend it!

What do you think? Does it look like leather to you?
What's your favourite effect of a nail polish?

Kristina xx