Melted Popsicle Hair,Take 2.

     Time for more of Amanda's hair adventures! This time she just used a boxed bleach first, which was by Feria and called...I don't remember what it was actually called in English, but if "Super Platino" is any indication I'd guess Super Platinum was the name. I remember Super Platino because that sounds like an amazing superhero. This one actually got her hair way lighter, and once the blue was on there....well, see for yourself! 

     Oooh, so shine, much mermaid. The annoying part is she keeps saying "oh my ends are sooo dry, they feel horrible" and then I touch it and it's softer than my hair has ever been in its life. The nerve. 

Melted Popsicle Project: Part I

     So the time has come once again: the time when Amanda wants to do something different with her hair. This time she started off with slightly faded dyed black hair and was shooting for something like this; a sort of ombre fade into turquoise. Here's the before.

     And here's all the supplies she picked up at Sally's, in case you're interested in such things.

 

The Wella Colorcharm is for toning the hair once it's been bleached nice and pale to give you a good non-orangey starting point. She didn't use it this go-round because her hair only lifted about three levels and she was fine with a more green-y blue anyway. 

     I warned her that because her hair was starting off so dark there was pretty much no way she was going to get it light enough to be as vibrant as her inspiration picture in one go. So she just bleached the tips until they were light enough to at least take some color, then put the blue overtop, reasoning that once it fades (and her hair has had some time to recover; obviously avoiding damage is always a priority) she can do another round of bleach to take it lighter, then add blue on top again. So! Now that we've got all that out of the way, here's an after for you!

     As the title gives away, I hope to bring you an update as it progresses so you can see how this hair experiment turns out. Right now it's pretty subtle except in sunlight. But hopefully we can get it to her goal: looking like a melted blue popsicle (hey, follow your dreams everybody).

No moving parts: A true story.

     Alternative title: I have issues. (Also the title of the autobiography I'm not ever actually planning to write.) 

I mean, this may be a slight exaggeration. But it did feel pretty weird. 

3 Ways to Fake Shorter Hair, for all your Incognito-ing Purposes

    

     I love having my hair super long because it makes me feel like a magical mermaid princess (grab your happiness where you can get it, people), but sometimes I want a change. Not badly enough to actually cut my hair, because I know myself well enough to know I'd regret that enormously at this point in my life. But still, sometimes I get tired of my hair creeping into the neckline of my shirt and tickling me, or whipping around in the wind and getting tangled in my eyelashes (never underestimate the gripping powers of my hair). Other days I just want to look a little different so I can slip by my nemeses unnoticed. What, you don't have nemeses? How droll. Anyway, I've learned a couple different tricks for making my hair look like someone else's hair, ranging from "so easy it's almost like cheating" to "kind of tricky but worth it for the shock value." Here's how! For the record, I'm starting all of these with my hair already roughly curled from the half-assed pincurls I had in the night before, and I do recommend starting with curled hair if you decide to try any of them! 

METHOD ONE: CRAM IT INTO A HEADBAND SO YOU LOOK ALL DOWNTON ABBEY AND JUNK

     Difficulty: Stupidly easy. 

     For this one, all you're going to do is take a headband/bandanna of your choosing and slide it onto your head, on top of your hair, pinning it at the back to keep that bump of hair above it under control, if that's a thing that bothers you...

     Then gather your hair at the bottom, bring it up and tuck it into the back of the headband, like so...

This photo guest-stars my ridiculous cow-lick that makes it look like I have a bald spot. I think a cow actually sneaks into my room every night and does that. Maybe it's Lexie. 

    

     Then all you have to do is squish it around and rearrange it until you like it and it covers most of the headband in the back, then stick a few bobby pins in for security. Mind you, this won't hold up in a wind-storm or anything (tested that theory the other day; it ended solidly in hot-mess territory). But with a good number of pins and some hairspray, it'll see you through an average day. 

     

     I think this one looks best with very curly hair, and in the past when I've done this I've hit the front pieces with a 3/4 inch curling iron, but I'm on a heat-styling ban right now, so I couldn't do that this time. That's also why my bangs look nuts like 98% of the time these days (no flat-ironing to force them to bend to my will), but whatever, my hair needs a break. 

     The end result is very 1920s socialite who doesn't care what society says ladies can and can't do, wearing a sassy pants ensemble to an afternoon of golf, which I happen to think is a fabulous look. 

METHOD TWO: MAKE LIKE IT'S THE '90s AND GRAB A BEANIE 

Difficulty: Can be done while half-asleep (tested and confirmed).

     This one's also so easy I almost feel like I'm insulting you by including step-by-step pictures, but it is a blog after all, and that's kind of what I'm supposed to do. It's in the manual, you see. So onward we press. For this do, all you have to do is pull your hair up into a high ponytail, fanning it out around your head so it's pretty evenly spread all over...

     Then slap a beanie on top. If you don't like the look of hats that stand up too much, you can always pin the top of your ponytail so it lies flatter, then wear any number of other hat styles, but if you want to do it the easiest way possible, beanie it up. 

     This seriously could not get any easier, and it's a lot more convincing than the headband method, if you want to see genuine panic flicker across your loved ones' faces when they see you and think you've chopped all your hair off. But if you REALLY want to freak people out, try method three...

METHOD THREE: THE "HOLY SHIT WHAT DID YOU DO"

Difficulty: Kind of tedious and takes a little practice, but really not that hard.

     For this one, you'll need to start by sectioning off your hair into just the top-most layer, starting at the ears and going up toward the back. You want to get those front sections in there so you can use them to cover all the dirty trickery you're going to be pulling elsewhere. Here, have a hopefully-helpful picture to show what I mean:

     Clip that outta the way and forget about it for a while. Now for the sneakiness. Taking one-inch sections, you're going to wrap up a little loop near your head to take in the length of your hair, then pin it down. Like a-dis:

     See how I just coiled it up and pinned the little hair-pretzel (barf, I'm so sorry for even bringing that mental image to life) to my scalp so that the end hangs much shorter? Easy-peasy. Continue doing that with all the hair that isn't clipped up. It doesn't have to be neat or pretty,  but you'll probably want it to be somewhat flat, unless you have a small head and want it to look bigger. No judgment. I have the opposite problem. My head has its own gravitational pull. 

     Once you're done, you can let down that top layer. If you wanted to pick a time to have doubts and start to panic a little, now's a great one, cause it'll look bat-crap insane at this point. But don't panic for too long, it'll all come together shortly. When you're emotionally ready, take the top/front piece and pull it back over all the pinning you've done underneath. What we're gonna do here is approximate the look of a half-up style as a ruse to cover our tricksty hobbit dealings. 

Totes gonna be my new profile picture because what is even happening here? This is some Effie Trinket sculptural weirdness, and I sort of love it. 

     Do the same on the other side, then, as ever, squish it around and pin wherever you don't like things until you do like them (I instructions goodly). If you've got any oddness showing or pins that you don't feel like endeavoring to conceal, slap a bow or other accessory on there and roll with it. 

     

     This one is easily my favorite because if you pin it right it's super secure, so it feels like you actually cut it. If you're having a sick-of-long-hair day, this style will make you feel like you got a cute new bob without having to commit to anything. And it's so, so fun to startle people with it. Just go around letting people think you cut your hair, then show up the next day with it long again. Act like you don't know what anyone's talking about when they ask you how you did it. This is how witch-hunts are started. 

     I hope if you're feeling the hair malaise this gave you some ideas to shake things up, or if you don't have long hair in the first place, then I hope you... enjoyed a post full of pictures of me doing weird stuff with all the dead protein filaments growing out of my head? I dunno man, only you know why you stuck around this long, but I thank you for it. 

Just a friendly reminder...

     ...that gluing stuff to bobby pins and hair clips is really easy and super fun and you get new stuff for free! I've been on a bit of a spree lately. I dunno what it is that makes me want to take random things and stick them in my hair for decoration. Some sort of bizarre birdlike instinct to augment my nest of hair before spring comes? Who knows. The heart wants what the heart wants, etc. Anyway, here are some of the things I've turned into hair bedazzlements recently.

     The first idea I had was to make a pretty little velvet bow from some pink ribbon I've had sitting around since before Christmas. I want to wear it on top of my head like Marie, the cat from The Aristocats. Except like...human. Like this picture that I pinned on Pinterest.

     Then I figured I'd go digging through my stash of bits and bobs while the glue gun was still hot and see what else I could come up with. I've had the red sequined Hello Kitty-style bow for ages and I had always intended to make it into a hair pin so I could run around being stupidly adorable like a Japanese cat -- follow your dreams, kids! I picked it up on clearance at a craft store and forgot about it until now! The seagull, that big round gold thing (please read with upward inflection to denote my complete lack of a clue as to what that ever was), and the floral doodad were all floating around in a jar of miscellaneous potential craft supplies that I keep. You'll notice that for most of these, a single bobby pin hot-glued to the back was enough to hold everything together (the pink bow has one tucked into the middle piece of the bow on the back with a dot of glue for hold). For the big floral...thing, though, I decided to use several pins in more of a decorative hair-comb formation, since it's heavier and could use more support. I could have just glued it to an actual hair comb, but I didn't have one on hand and I'm far too impatient to wait until I can go out and get one. So this works! That one might be my favorite, because it actually started out looking all sad and rhinestone-less because they had all fallen out years ago. I'm not sure where it came from, but I think it might have been in a bag of broken jewelry that my mom bought for super cheap on impulse at an antique store. Which makes me even happier to bring it back to a state of functionality!

Wait, don't freak out.

     That's how I prefaced my entrance into any room yesterday. See, I had decided it would be fun to do a faux bob for the day. Just for a change of pace; I'm not thinking about cutting it or anything. I just like to play around with different options. But it may have been a little too realistic -- several people greeted me with a panicked look on their faces. 

     Honestly, this one is like difficulty level: witchcraft. But I'll sit here and make it sound all simple, just to annoy everybody. First I sectioned my hair off into a top section and a section underneath, clipping the top section out of the way. Then I curled pieces of random sizes, and after each piece, I'd coil it up like a pin curl, but starting about halfway up my hair, leaving the bottom half out. A couple of bobby pins crossed over one another held the curl in place, and I continued the process around the rest of the bottom layer. Once it was all pinned up, I let down the top half and curled and pinned it the same way; the only difference is that I pulled a few of the front pieces on each side back before pinning them to cover the curls of the bottom layer. I didn't really worry about covering the pins in the back, just kind of pinned one piece so that it covered another, so on and so on, until you couldn't really see them (to my knowledge. What do I care, it's the back of my head. I don't have to look at it). I threw on a clip just for kicks and giggles and called it a day.

     It was pretty fun for a day, and I do so enjoy leaving panic in my wake everywhere I go. I know I've been talking about hair a lot lately, but I promise this isn't turning into a hair blog (although I do have one more hair post coming up -- but after that, I'll cool it for a while, I promise. Wait, no I don't. No promises. Hair is fun). I just really enjoy messing around with my appearance so that I never look the same from one day to the next. It just tickles me. Being pretty much unrecognizable from one day to the next: it's kind of my superpower. 

A hair post that isn't about me!

     As much as I like to talk about my own hair, today let's do a little before and after action of someone else's: my sister Amanda! She's been wanting to dye her hair dark purple like Katy Perry (her life-idol) for a while. Like this...

     And apparently yesterday she got express approval from her boss that it would be fine. So she decided to go for it! (A note to my mother, to whom this will probably be news: she decided on her own, don't blame my influence here. I just helped, cause if you're gonna do it, might as well do it right. Having fun in Florida? Feeling like we can't be trusted when left alone? I love you!) Having gone through a rainbow of funky hair colors myself, I had some useful insight in the area. Since her hair was already mostly naturally dark, with some ombre blonde at the ends, layering purple over it would result in the color being very subtle at the top (since it's obviously not going to come out neon when put over dark dark brown) and a bit brighter at the bottom (where the hair is lighter and a bit more porous, which makes it better equipped to grab onto color). But she didn't want to commit to a style that she might change her mind about any minute, so we decided on Manic Panic, which, as anyone who has used it will know, is kind of harder to keep in than to wash out. That way it would be bright and fun for a bit, but easily faded with clarifying shampoo or hot oil treatments should she get sick of it. Low commitment! The other benefit is that since Manic Panic is just a vegetable dye, it wouldn't damage her lovely silky Barbie hair at all. But enough blabbering. Here's the before and after!

I made a deal with the devil...

     ...my eternal soul for exceptionally pliable hair. Not really, but since the underlying theme of this week's posts seems to have inadvertently become "look at all the weird things I can make my hair do," I thought I'd finish out the week with a post about possibly my new favorite hairstyle: cat ears. 

     Yeah, I said it. I made cat ears with my hair yesterday for a low-key daytime Halloween look, and realized I totally loved it, being the weirdo that I am. With some faux rolled Bettie Page style bangs (that I ended up liking so much I actually cut my hair into Bettie Bangs for real), it was kind of a 1950s Catwoman situation, but if Catwoman was like, swinging by the vet for more flea and tick preventative and running some errands along the way on her day off. 

     To make these ears, all I did was section off two small ponytails on the top of my head, then twist each one until it coiled a bit in on itself, pin down the little hair nugget it forms (real talk, it totally looks like a cartoonish little pile of poo at this point), then untwist the remaining hair, comb it smooth, and kind of carefully fold it around the base-nugget-thingy until the angle looks right for a cat ear, then pin and hairspray like currazy. And done! I thought this was such a fun style, and not just because it reminded me of a particular villain from the Sailor Moon episodes I loved as a kid (and now, I won't lie). 

     But let's be honest, total style icon material right there. 

That's why her hair is so big, it's full of secrets.

     Alright, I promised you a post detailing that insane Zuul hair, so let's get right to it. As I mentioned before, the method I went with was essentially just rolling itty bitty rag curls all over my hair (using this tutorial) after slightly dampening it with a spray bottle of water and running some volumizing mousse through it. The first time I tested it out, I rolled them all myself while watching an episode of Blue Planet. The night before the Halloween party, though, I asked my mom and Amanda to help, since I've been sick for seemingly forever and my arms would have gotten too tired (if you're wondering how I reconciled those two things -- being sick and a Halloween party -- it's because I was the designated driver, so basically all I had to do was go look cool in my costume and be sick in a different location). By the time they finished, I looked like this. 

Hands over the face in shame at the thought of letting people see me with this mess on my head. Also, I didn't have makeup on.

     All told, I think it took a total of around 2 hours to get all those teensy rolls in there. So then I slept on it, and in the morning, the Zuul hair we all know and love was born. The rolls obviously come out a lot faster than they go in, but it still took a while to unroll them all and fluff them up a bit. I kept fluffing it up throughout the day, because at first it was looking a little too Weird Al for my liking. Pictorial evidence!

     You can tell in that picture that a) I'm full of totally original and hilarious ideas and b) the rolls toward the bottom of my head were looser and done with bigger chunks of hair because my helpers were getting tired of rolling by that point. I don't blame them, it's hard work and I was grateful to have them. But after some hairspray and finagling it looked just fine. That hair really grew on me (HA), by the end of the day I was actually starting to feel like it was kind of a hot look. 

     When it was time to return to my normal hair, I sprayed on some leave-in conditioner/detangler and settled in with a brush, expecting the worse. I was surprised to find that after a good brush, it wasn't bad at all. I put it in a braid for the night (which I do most of the time anyway, since when my hair is this long I sometimes feel like it's gaining sentience and trying to strangle me at night if I leave it down, real talk) and in the morning it looked like this. Warning: this is the part where a lot of you are going to make a scoffing noise and say "ugh, this bitch and her hair," because as I have learned, my weird magic-trick hair that pretty much just does whatever I ask it to has a way of making people angry. 

     So the final verdict here is that if anyone wants to try this method for their own Zuul costume needs this Halloween, or for some other big-haired costume (I spent much of the day swanning around in high-waisted shorts feeling like a '70s disco roller girl), or if you just feel like you want to occupy as much physical space as you possibly can, go for it! It's time consuming, but the results are killer, and it didn't damage my hair at all or make it impossibly tangly at all. 

Don't Cross the Streams

     Well, the weekend Halloween parties have come and gone and now it's finally time for me to show you my finished Zuul costume! Drumroll super '80s synthesizer beat please...

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you I wore a slip under this dress, so you're not seeing anything untoward here, I promise. 

     And of course, after spending that much time working on my demonic contouring, you know I have to include a close-up, and being the person that I am, obviously I'm gonna have to add lightning and an end-of-days-esque filter...

     This was so much fun to do. The hair was floofy, the dress was slinky, the makeup was over the top, and I was shimmerier than a disco moon (rarer than a blue moon, a disco moon happens once every couple of decades when funk music makes a comeback. The more you know!). 

     I hope you guys enjoy this epic tribute to a seriously classic movie, and I also kind of hope I'll somehow start a trend here. Every Halloween there's always a ton of Ghostbusters running around, but no Zuul! It's a crying shame! 



PS: If you're curious how I got my hair (yes, that is my actual, real, growing-out-of-my-head hair) to do that, how long it took, and how I turned it back into my normal hair again, stay tuned for Wednesday's post! 

Whoa.

     Ok, so the method I was testing for my Zuul hair...um, it works. 

What's scarier, my hair or the fact that I'm so pale I'm practically the same color as the wall? And there's no filter on this picture, either. I'm just naturally spooky. 

     Yeah, that's easily the biggest my hair's ever been. Basically all I did was cut an old t-shirt into small strips and tie approximately one million teensy little rag curls in my hair, then leave it overnight. It took a really long time to tie the rag curls in, but I think the results speak for themselves. I could sleep literally anywhere with this hair, for my head had a built-in pillow. I could hold small objects in there with no assistance -- car keys, ID, maybe a granola bar. 

     I'll definitely be using this method for Halloween. Hopefully next time I can get someone to help me tie in all those curls though -- my arms got tired by the end!

Technical Difficulties

     Ok, actually the "difficulties" part is really just that I'm fighting off a case of the blues right now, so it's been difficult to find motivation to do anything worth posting about, opting instead to get in my cuddly flannel pajamas and watch Practical Magic until I'm a little less sad. 

     But the "technical" part is that technically, I am accomplishing something worthwhile at the same time, because I'm putting my hair into teensy tiny rag curls as a test run of my Zuul hair for Halloween. Should be interesting to see what great heights it can reach in the morning, and you know I'll be showing you the results regardless of how it turns out. So look forward to that on Friday!

     

A Little Change

     Sometimes you just need to shake things up a little. It keeps things interesting! Keeps people guessing! And in my case, allows me to exert control over small factors in an otherwise chaotic and uncontrollable world! Whoa, sorry, that got dark fast. But so did my hair, is the point I'm trying to make. I've been bored with my hair for a while and wanted a change, but I also didn't want to do anything that would ruin all the hard work I've been doing trying to keep it healthy while I grow it out. So that means: no bleach, no harsh dyes, no cutting. The solution? A nice gentle semi-permanent dye!

Obviously if I were more committed to proper documentation I would have straightened my hair again for comparison after. But that's a lot of work, so here we are.

     I'm really enjoying the results. It's nothing too dramatic or crazy-different, just enough to make me appreciate my hair again. Before it was just "Oh, hey hair. You again. Still hanging in there?" Now it's "Hi, hair! You look shiny and mysterious this morning! What's on the agenda for today, a bun? Half-updo? Mohawk? No, you're right, no mohawk. Good call."

     It's amazing how a little change can perk you right up! And get you having conversations with your hair, apparently, but that may just be me. The best part of this little hair change-up is that it literally took 10 minutes, which is about as close to being a witch who can change her hair color instantly with a spell as I'll ever get (though one can dream).

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?

     ...My collection of mermaid-inspired accessories, that is. It's never complete. I must press forth ever vigilant in the quest to look like some sort of sea creature (I leave that purposefully vague because what most people identify this trend with is mermaids, but honestly I'm shooting more for Sea Witch. You can't tell me Ursula wasn't fab). So today I'm bringing you another quick and easy way to bring a little aquatic flare to your hair (I didn't mean for that to rhyme, please forgive me). 

     All you'll need is some bobby pins (again, I really recommend using the higher quality ones. They last so much longer and will bring you so much less disappointment), good strong glue or epoxy, and some bubble-esque beads -- mine came from the floral arrangement section of the store, where they keep all kinds of pretty glass gobs that speak to the magpie in me.

     Then all you need to do is grab a little bubbly bead, stick a good-sized gob of glue on it, and glue it onto the side of the bobby pin. The reason I glued them to the side instead of the top is because it allows it to sit there like it's in a little cup-holder, so you don't have to worry about it rolling off while it's drying, and there's more surface area shared between the pin, the bead, and the glue this way, so you're less likely to have one pop off later on. Let the glue dry overnight -- it's always best to allow for a nice long dry time when industrial strength glue and your hair are involved. 

     Once you've let them dry, they're ready to wear! I like to stick them into the messiest updo possible, in keeping with my personal theory that mermaids ain't got time to be worrying about things like "Does my hair look messy" or "Do I look like Bellatrix Lestrange going to the prom." 

     I really like this style for days when you want your hair up off your neck and out of your face, but also want to look like maybe you came here by accident when you stumbled out of a Jane Austen novel. I won't lie -- I also like this hairstyle a lot because the less you try, the better it looks, and trying is so much EFFORT. I used to wear my hair like this all the time and got compliments on it constantly, because it looks like it takes longer than it does. If you're one of those people who struggles with the whole "artfully disheveled" thing though, fear not! Click through to the full post and I'll show you how I like to do my messy updos.