From when I started 6th form about 6 years ago I used to wear hair extensions all of the time, I was forever changing my hair different colours and therefore my hair was in really bad condition! I used to therefore always wear extensions every single day, I used to get them from my local hair shop down the road from my house or from ones in the city (Birmingham) or even from eBay. My hair was quite thin back then and I could get away with buying cheap hair extensions as they were thin like my hair. Here are a few photos of the hair colours and styles I have been:

Bright red nearly 4 years ago Jan 2010, short hair with long extensions:



A lot of bleaching to go back to a very light blonde with different dyed colours on the side, I often changed the colour a lot from black to red to purple etc. June 2010: 


All bleach blonde, very short hair still with long extensions as it refused to grow which was my own fault, August 2010: 


My hair was really short here because of the bleaching I used to have to put my extensions in really high to try to hide it, September 2010: 


My hair with no extensions, I decided to go a bit darker blonde than the bleach blonde I was, my hair was about this short for all of 2010 but I always wore extensions. I wanted my hair to grow so I thought but dying it darker I wouldn't have to bleach it so much, December 2010: 


I then decided to go even darker to a brown however I went too dark (not in this photo) it was going a dark golden brown which I didn't like and decided to go back to blonde after a few months as it made me look really washed out. Jan 2012:


Back to blonde, hair is still quite short here with shorter extensions, May 2012:


Hair is still quite short and thin, about to my shoulders here with extensions in but it was gradually growing, July 2012:


It was round about October 2012 I ombre'd my hair for the first time which allowed my hair to grow loads and become a lot healthier. I still needed extensions for the first few months about christmas time I stopped wearing them. I no longer dyed my hair loads as I could deal with my roots, they are still a different shade of blonde to my natural blonde but I can deal with it. I did a couple of months ago go back to all over blonde but this time I highlighted my hair but I went back to ombre just because I prefer it. It is less hassle and I love the fact that I don't have to worry about my roots and let my hair grow. 

In my pictures recently on my blog apart from one photo I am not wearing extensions my hair is quite long now, it comes to about the end of my bra strap and the back and just above my chest at the front. However from the highlights it did damage it quite a bit and some of the top layers did go quite short. However now my hair is in great condition and is growing again, but I do miss having really long hair thanks to extensions! 

I did buy some cheap extensions off eBay but I had so much trouble with them, because of how long my hair has gotten it has gone back to its natural state. When I was younger my hair was quite thick and it has now gone back to this which is great! I love the fact I have really thick hair but it is a nightmare when it comes to extensions. The eBay ones I brought was in 16inch and 20 inch, I think I got a full pack of 16inch and half a pack of 20 but then I brought another pack of 20 because of how thin they were. There must be only about 40g-50g of hair, and they are stupidly thin at the bottom, it just looks weird when I have them in. Even when I curl them it just doesn't look right! 

I have therefore been looking at more expensive extensions from websites such as Foxy Locks, Clip Hair, Dirty Locks, Lush etc but I am still undecided on what hair extensions to get. I would want to get 160g or more for my hair as I would need the thickness of it. I just want thicker better quality hair extensions but as I haven't worn any for ages I am not sure what is my best option. Also I am still not 100% sure I want to buy them, but then when I look at images of girls with hair extensions in and it just looks so pretty it makes me want some! Also the fact I never never spent so much on hair extensions it worries me! I think the most I spent was about £50 but this was years ago and even then I felt bad for spending that much! 

Then again I could just wait and hope that my hair grows quick! I am still using the Lee Stafford for hair that never grows past a certain length. I did stop using it for a couple of months but I have been using it again. I do notice that my hair does grow a lot faster and with using Bleach London's hair mask treatment my hair is in seriously good condition that I do hope it grows quick! I just miss being able to do loads of different styles with my hair as I think that some styles look a lot better if you have longer hair! 

I think I may wait it out for a bit and see how I feel in a few weeks, if I still feel the same I think I will invest in some...

OH decisions decisions... 


I have defiantly put on a few pounds over Christmas! Back to healthy eating and exercising more! I shall be starting on the 1st Jan as tomorrow night we are having a sort of new years buffet type thing. 

I have decided that the days I am at work I wont exercise because I am rushed off feet for sometimes 8 hours, walking around etc so I don't see the point in exercising on these days. As for the other days I am going to use the cross trainer I have at home and do some youtube video workouts. Hopefully when the weather gets warmer I shall go for walks as well.

I shall get back to eating the way I did when I was on my diet, although not as strict, I just watched a video on pixiwoomadness where Sam talks about her diet/weight loss. She said that her brother who is a personal trainer goes by the saying 'if you can't pick it or kill it, don't eat it' (something like that!) I shall link the videos below. Which is basically saying no processed food, which I did stick to before and I hope to again! I shall every now and again probably break this but as long as I stick to it as best as I can I shall be happy. 

I haven't been to see my consultant since the end of November, I did say to her that I was going to go back in January but I am hoping that I won't need to. I am hoping that I can do this from now on by myself to shed the pounds I put on over Christmas and to drop the last few that I wanted to drop. It is just mainly on my stomach that I have a problem with but by wearing skater dresses you can't really see it that well! Thank god for them! 

I also did start a food diary but I haven't been writing in it a lot but I shall hopefully start to do this again as I think that sometimes by looking at what you have eaten it can help. 

So hopefully I shall get back to how I was before Christmas, no more junk! 

Sam's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTddJzzhJM

John's fitness videos:
http://www.youtube.com/theleanmachines
I had brought a couple of things for work and I decided to wear two of them for Christmas dinner with the family.


Everything I am wearing is from H&M: 

Floral wrap cardigan- £14.99 
Mesh top skater dress - Sale £7 
Basic leggings - £5.99 (I think) 

I tried to find the links for these on the website but I can't find them. 


I recently went to Boots to get a couple of things:

I firstly brought the Bleach London Reincarnation Mask for £6. My mom actually got a small bottle of this in the Bleach toner she recently used as I put a lighter dye on her hair and she needed something to tone it as it was quite orangey (the toner is pretty amazing!) As for the mask, I have been using it with my normal conditioner mixing the two together then putting it all over my hair and leaving it for about an hour. It says to leave it for 10-20 minutes but I prefer leaving it for longer. Once dry my hair feels so soft and smooth like it hasn't been bleached at all! Even my ends which were really dry went like this which I have never been able to get so soft before! It is such a good product I highly recommend it!


The concealer I had been using was from Collection I had been using the lasting perfection one but I had run out in the creme concealer and had been using the stick. I decided to go back to the creme concealer as I found that it was a lot better as my skin had become dry it was a lot easier to put on. I got the concealer in the lightest shade fair £4.19. 



I normally use a gel eyeliner pencil with a brush to put on my eyeliner, however I was finding that it wasn't going on as good as it used to. I had tried a felt tip liner before but I never really liked it, it was when they first came out and the colour turned from black to a weird black/green only after a few applications. However I decided to try it again as the tips are so thin it is a lot easier to build up the line rather and make a thin line than I was finding with the gel eyeliner pencil. I decided to get the felt tip liner from Collection as well as Extreme 24h felt top liner in black £2.99. I found that this eyeliner did exactly what it said, I wore it yesterday and it didn't smudge, it stayed on my eyelid and I managed to get a really nice thin line with it (image below).


As there was an offer on with Collection you got a free gift when you spent over £5 which was the Supersize mascara £2.99/free. As I had spent over £5 I got this for free. I did use this yesterday (image above) you can't really see that well I have mascara on but I do. I wasn't really impressed with this product, it was free which was a bonus but I couldn't just use this on its own. I found that it gave really good length but it made my lashes look long and thin, it stuck quite a few of the lashes together. I found that I had to use another mascara brush to separate the lashes but even this didn't turn out very well. The lashes still looked thin but quite long, therefore it is good for length but not very good if you want thick lashes. It does say it creates big lashes, if they mean long then yes it does but the thickness wasn't there which is what I want out of a mascara as well. 

Here is a closer image, as you can see the length is there with the lashes but they just look quite thin compared to how they normally look. Also with the liner I can finally do a thinner line! 






Disclaimer: I am no hairdresser, this is just how I have done my hair, and how I have been doing my hair for years. This may not work for yours, as every person's hair is different. I am just telling you what I did to my hair to try to achieve the look I wanted to get.

I am not 100% happy with the way that my hair turned out when I put a dark blonde over it. Although I did put it on each section of my hair gradually to create a more natural looking ombre look I want it to be more natural and ashy than it turned out. Only the light blonde of my hair is very ashy but the top of it isn't. I still love the ombre look but I do want it to look more natural. I was going to put a medium ash all over it but I have decided to do something slightly different.

What I am going to do is put a range of highlights and lowlights through my hair, not loads just a few to make it more multi-tonal to make it look more natural. I plan to put mainly lowlights on the top half going through to the ends of my hair but the highlights from the middle of my hair where the ombre starts to the end.

I will use a bleach for the bottom of my hair but I will not leave it on for very long and I will use less powder from the kit so it won't be as strong. I already have some of the powder at home from a powder kit I brought but I need to get some of the creme to mix it with.

As for the top of my hair I will put a medium blonde through some of it going through to the ends, to create a multi-tonal darker blonde. For this I plan to use an ash blonde to try to make my hair more ashy like my natural colour.







20/12/13
I have just done my hair earlier on today and I am currently letting it air dry, I did blow dry a small section to see if it looks ok, so far so good! I shall take a photo tomorrow once my hair has air dried. 

What did I do?

Medium highlights: 

I mixed about 1/5 of the Nice and Easy Natural Medium Ash Blonde, ratio 1:1 in my mixing bowl. I always do this, I never mix the whole bottle if I am doing high lights or low lights as it is just a waste if I don't plan on using it all! I didn't even use all of the mixture that I mixed today. 

I started from my ear and sectioned the rest of the hair up I then just picked out small parts of my hair gradually taking down more hair from what I sectioned. I put some of the dye using a tinting brush onto each section I selected. I did this for the top half of my hair that was sectioned up as I wanted the medium highlights to be where the darker blonde was already. I didn't do loads of these medium highlights, as I got further to the top layers of my hair I began to put the dye closer to my roots until eventually the top layer had a few touching my roots. 

I wanted to make this quite natural, I didn't want to do loads of medium highlights to begin with. I may want more medium highlights on the top half of my hair, but if I do I shall put more in at a later date. I didn't want to put loads of highlights in my hair in case I don't like the way it turns out. 

Light highlights:

I mixed bleach powder (the normal bleach kit I used, I have done a post on this before) with a medium 30 lift creme, I normally go for a maximum 40 lift but as my hair isn't dark I decided to go for a medium lift instead, it says it will lighten the hair 7 shades. I mixed a little bit more of the creme to the powder about 1/5 of the creme and a bit of powder until the mixture was a light blue. I wanted more creme than powder as my hair was previously light blonde all over and has only been dyed a dark blonde once or twice it wouldn't need much to lift it. 

With this I did the same technique as before, I took small sections of my hair from the bottom going up about 0.5cm maybe even less, I put some of the dye onto my hair then with a glove covered hand I smoothed in the mixture so it wouldn't create any harsh lines, I normally would use a comb but I used my hand for quickness. I continued to do this until I got to the section I started on with the medium dye, for some of the sections of hair from this point onwards to crossed over the 'ombre line' to make some of the darker parts of my hair slightly lighter than before. I never went to the root, the highest I went was probably to about eye level, I still wanted a much darker section on top but I wanted it to look like some natural highlights were coming through. 

I left the dye on until the bleach had been on my hair for about 20-30 minutes as I didn't want to lighten it too much this time. I then washed my hair with my normal shampoo and left a hair mask on for a few hours which I then washed off. 

Again as my hair is currently air drying to do not know if I want to add any more highlights to my hair to make it more multi-tonal. I shall have a look at it tomorrow when it is dry and decide over the next few days if I want to add any more colour to it. 

22/12

Here is a photo of my hair from yesterday while I was at work. 



The ombre is slightly lighter, it was a weird blonde before I'm not sure how to describe it but it was quite dull compared to what it is now. It blends a lot more at the section of my hair where it goes from a dark blonde to lighter, which is what I wanted. 

However tonight I have added a few more bleach highlights to my hair, same process as before, same bleach and I left this on for about half an hour. Theses highlights were not to the top of my roots, I made them end about eye level like I did before. I shall take a photo tomorrow when it's dry and hopefully I shall be happy with it! 



Here are a few of the outfits I have worn over the past week. These images are from instagram and so not are the best but I shall write a list of what I am wearing. I shall do more detailed posts in the future!


Marshmallow jumper (as my bf likes to call it): H&M £7.99 
I wore this with a red dress underneath from primark one of the £5 red dresses. 
Leggings: H&M £5.99
Lips: Collection Gothic Glam no1 



Black crop jumper: ebay £8
Polkadot dress: H&M £7.99 
Leggings: H&M £5.99
Lips: Collection Gothic Glam no3 



Black crop jumper: ebay £8 
Polkadot skirt: H&M £7.99 
Leggings: H&M £5.99 
Lips: Kate Rimmel Matte kiss of life 





I haven't posted anything over the past month as one of my dogs got really ill and passed away last week and I have also started a new job. I now work for H&M its only part time for now I am hoping to get a few more hours and maybe even work my way up to work in the visual department rather than just a sales assistant.

Anyway I have been getting quite a few new items of clothes from work which hasn't been good for my bank balance! I shall do a haul of these hopefully over the next few days when I have a chance to photograph them all.

I have also slightly changed my hair, it is still ombre but slightly darker. I had recently reombred my hair which made the ends become really 'barbie' blonde which I didn't really like. I felt like because it is winter I wanted it to look more natural and maybe add some lighter ombre parts to my hair when the weather gets hotter.

I had done my roots a few weeks ago with the hair dye I usually buy which is the Nice n Easy in dark blonde, I normally go for a dark blonde or dark cool blonde. However sometimes this dye can turn my roots into an orangey blonde for some reason. I don't see why it does as my natural hair colour is a dark blonde but I can never get my dyed hair to be the same colour so I always do my roots as well. The dye did turn my roots into an orangey blonde, it was quite bad as I had about 2 inches of this orangey blonde which then went into a dark ash blonde then onto my ombre. It was very weird!

As there is a boots next to my work I decided to pop in and have a look at other dark blonde shades from different companies. I decided to try the Schwarzkopf Color Mask in 700 dark blonde. I had looked up this product and read some good reviews about it, saying that the colour that the hair came out as matched really well to the colour on the box. This was actually on offer for £4.50 which I didn't realise until I went to the till!



This type of hair dye you have to mix into a pot and apply with your hands. It is a creme hair mask type of hair dye which I have never used before. Instead of applying it with my hands I decided to use my tinting brush as I find it easier applying hair dye like this. 

Last night before I dyed my hair I was looking for hair inspiration, I knew I wanted to use the dark blonde for my roots but I wasn't 100% sure if I wanted to do something with the light blonde ombre as well. I came across this image of Cara Delevinge: 


She has dark blonde hair but then with a lighter blonde towards to bottom, a more natural looking ombre effect than what my hair looked like at the time. So I therefore decided to put the dark blonde dye all over my hair, but I would do this in sections. 

With the hair dye I had to empty the colour into the pot which already had the mixing creme in it, then put the lid back on and shake it 40 times. The hair dying process is meant to be left on the hair for a total of 30 minutes so I worked it out that the top section of my hair near my roots would be left on the longest and the tips of my hair would only have a few minutes with the dye on. So it would just tone the blonde down a bit to look a bit more ashy and natural. 

I started from the roots and sectioned my hair adding the hair dye only to about 2 inches of the root section (the bits that had become a weird dark orangey blonde colour). Then after a few minutes I put some more dye on my hair from the 2 inch section to about where the top of my ears were as this section of hair was a darkish blonde already though it had started to fade a bit. I waited about 5-10 minutes after I had finished this section then went onto the next section of hair only doing about 1-2 inches at a time. After each section of hair that I had put dye on I would comb through it so there wouldn't be any harsh lines. Once I had done all of the darker bits of my hair and was on the lightest sections of where I had ombre'd it I put the dye on the same amount of hair 1-2 inches but I only waited a few minutes before going onto the next section of hair. The very last 1-2 inches of hair I only left the dye on for about 2 minutes before I washed it all off. 

I still wanted the ombre look but to look more natural rather than in your face barbie blonde at the bottom. I do love the look of having it a lot lighter at the bottom but I think how my hair came out was more of a summer ombre than a winter one. 


Before: 

As you can see in this image the light blonde bits of my hair which I reombred had come out a very barbie blonde which I didn't really like. I felt like as I am even paler now because of the winter the harshness of the light blonde didn't go well with my pale skin. I feel like it made me look quite washed out, I was having to apply more blush and more colour to my face so it didn't look as bad. 

After: 
(image to come as my hair is currently wet!)

(18/12/13)

I found the when I had washed off the hair dye my hair didn't seem as dry as it normally does when I have used other hair dyes. Now it is dry part natural part blow dried it is so smooth! I can't believe the condition of my hair, I didn't even put a hair mask (I have been using Bleach London repairing mask) on like I normally do each time I wash my hair. Normally when I dye my hair I wash it two times with shampoo then a normal conditioner then I wash it again the day after. My hair is always in a weird condition after dying it normally doesn't style that well so I always wash it again the next day. I do plan on washing my hair again today and letting it dry naturally. 

Colour wise, it does look like the colour on the box it is very very close to it and my roots are no longer orange. I think the colour is slightly darker than what I wanted but it normally is but then it will fade hopefully it will match my natural colour more. I shall take a photo later on tonight before I wash my hair again. It has made the barbie blonde ombre bits a lovely shade of light ash blonde this will fade a little as well but it still does look ombre which is what I wanted but just a bit more natural looking. 

I think for the spring/summer I may add some highlights to my hair but not right at the roots, still make it ombre but to have a bit more colour to it. Or I may just lighten all my hair to a medium blonde with some highlights. I haven't quite decided yet but I do love the colour it has turned out as it is great for winter!