Fifa's Over.. Back to Real Life

So I am back from Brazil and FIFA World Cup is over, back to real life and back to work.

Coming up on my blog:

* Studio Calico Project Life & Card Kit Review
* Thank You Cards/ Summer Birthday Cards
* Packing for Brazil (what worked, what didn't)
* My Brazil Trip
* Hair Update - Going Red Violet..

Please comment, subscribe by email, pin or share so you don't miss a beat! :)

Stay Red My Friends!

Hey my Red Colour Headed Ladies! Haha

Tonight I am going to let you in on my stay red hair routine.

1) First things first, NEVER EVER EVER do I use hot or even warm water on my hair.
Yes, it sucks but even with cold water the red dye still goes down the drain. I usually take a hot hot shower with a shower cap on and then wash my hair using the spout in cold water. This way my body is still hot enough that I don't freeze too much.

2) I always use a sulphate free colour-safe shampoo. Don't cheap out! The Joico brand is a great brand and its $19.95 (CDN) per litre - not bad! The eSalon Brand smells AMAZING and I actually like it better than the Joico brand as it lathers up so nice for a sulphate-free shampoo. Did I mention it smells amazing? It is $9.95 a bottle each if you are on the auto-ship program for hair dye! That's 20% off the original price. I WILL be picking it up once my Joico has run out. Sigh! I can't wait for that day.

3) I do not wash my hair every day or even every other day. For thicker hair types like me, we can easily say every third or fourth day is okay, but I know with finer hair you may need the help of a dry shampoo to get to your third day. The more you wash, the more you wash your red hair away :(

4) Every other wash (once a week) I use a colour depositing treatment/mask. The lovely people at eSalon gave me their Tinted Love Colour Treatment in a custom colour for my hair! Love it! 

(Picture above)

5) I try to protect my hair from the harsh elements like the sun (What Sun? I'm in Toronto it's still so cold here :( ) and heat. Using a UV protectant and a heat protectant for styling like the one I reviewed last month will help fading. If you swim in salt water or chlorine make sure to avoid getting your hair wet at all costs!

6) Last but not least, I colour my hair every 6-8 weeks as needed with a quality professional dye either from eSalon.com. Alternatively if you do not like doing your own hair, see a professional.
Start colouring your hair for just $9.95 with eSalon.com - You cannot beat that :) Read My Review Here! Did I mention how much I love eSalon.com? They are the cats meow he he. 

Stay Red my friends, 

eSalon.com: Red Hair Update

Hey y'all!

I received my re-formulation from eSalon.com and I love how much red is in my hair now! 

It's amazing what lighting can do to red hair, my hair looks so different in different lighting. 

My Hair now:

Compared to my original inspiration:

Much better, don't you think??

Stay tuned to see my "How to keep red hair red" post coming soon!

Much love,

My New Hair - Blonde/Brown to "Medium Brown Red Mahogany"

As you all know,  I ordered from ESalon.com (Read my Pre-Review here) and last night I dyed my hair RED for the first time ever!

Here was my inspiration:

(not my photos- found on google images)

My Hair Before:
In sunlight and in the shade. I had a lot of blonde and light brown highlights up top and my hair was virgin/dark dark brown on the bottom. I also had about 2-4 inches of regrowth. We will see how the red reacts to the different colours!

The Process/ eSalon.com Review:

I received my box on March 17th (Yesterday) and after work I dyed my hair (at 11:00 at night!). 

First can we comment on how adorable and cute the packaging is? My name is even on the bottles!

The first thing you notice is this large note card that holds your personalized instructions (you can also download these from your eSalon profile).

My Personalized Instructions for my custom formulated hair colour:

In the box they have two colours and two developers. One for the roots and one for the ends. In between this they have a small box of hair colour accessories called the Perfect Match Kit.  

The Perfect Match kit included: Heart Lock It Color Safe Shampoo, Love Unconditionally Color Safe Conditioner, Stain Guard (which was a life saver! so amazing), One Towelette of Stain Remover and two pairs of latex gloves. On the far right you will notice the bag called Coloring Tools- this was purchased separately. 

The Coloring Tools Included: 4 Hair Clips, Coloring Bowl, Timer, and a colouring brush. 

My review on the accessories:

Shampoo & Conditioner: Smells amazing! Thou only enough for one use for me as I have a lot of hair! it was also very conditioning and is available for purchase at $9.95 a bottle.

Stain Guard: Has coconut oil and vaseline like properties and is applied to your forehead, ears, anywhere you think you might get hair dye on. This stuff is amazing too. No staining for once!

Stain Remover: The guard was so good I didn't need to use this.

Clips: Are amazing, they held all my hair with one clip, thats nearly impossible. Love these!

Timer: Great little tool, didn't think I would need it because I have an iPhone but when you have gloves on with dye, you don't want to touch your iPhone. The timer was very handy and got all covered in dye but cleaned up easily. Even came with a battery.

Bowl and Brush: I didn't end up using these like I thought I would. I am in a rental condo and I was afraid of splashing the dye everywhere with the brush, but dying my hair with the bottle was very easy.

The After:

So two hours later, because I have a lot of hair, I emerged from the bathroom looking like this:

Now the results aren't as red as I would of liked but the colour is still very pretty. It is more medium brown than red which is unfortunate. I did email eSalon so we will see what happens next. My hair is super soft and looks and feels healthier than it was before. The hair colour was a great quality and was easy to apply. Depending on the lighting my hair looks more brown then red but direct sunlight obviously makes it look more red. I do really like it, I just want to add more red to look like the hair pics above. I am on a auto-ship program where you get 20% off automatically so maybe the next one they will send colour with more red. Hopefully they can send me another gloss in the mean time. We will see!

The suggestions I did provide to eSalon were:

1) If there was a spot to add photos of what we want our hair to look like- that would be nice.

2) Faster shipping options/ tracking for Canadians (mine took two weeks!)

Hope you all enjoyed the transformation and are inspired to have a "new-do" for Spring! Thanks for reading, Pin, Share and Subscribe via Email to my blog for future Red Hair Updates!

UPDATE: MARCH 24th: 

eSalon.com got back to me and they were super amazing! great customer service. They are offering me a "Re-dye" resending me what I originally ordered reformulated with more red. THEY ARE AWESOME!  

Here is an update of the second dye job:  The Update Here

Review: StyleSexyHair 450º Headset

Today I am reviewing the Style Sexy Hair 450º Headset Spray.

I was looking for a spray that would be a shine spray but have hold as well. I went to my local beauty supply store and spoke to a lovely lady who recommended this Style Sexy Hair 450º Headset Spray.

At first I didn't know if I would like the non-aerosol pump, I am used to aerosol even thou its bad on so many levels!
But I really really do like this product, and heres why.

1) It smells AMAZING! omg, I could smell it all day long.
2) It Heat Protects the hair, spray on dry hair before using styling tools, protects up to 450º.
3) It really does hold well. The photo of the side of my hair was taken right after styling in the morning. The pic with the red lips is 9 hours after in the evening and the picture of the back of my head was the next morning.
You guys now have a good idea of what my hair looks like now before I dye it with ESalon.com hair dye!
4) It does make my hair shiny. Now my hair is always shiny so this may be skewed but it does enhance it.
5) It left it still soft and not hard or crunchy but still had the amazing hold.
6) Its humidity resistant and frizz fighting! YAY!

To use: Simply section your dry hair in three layers, one on the bottom, one in the middle (front to back) and the top section.  Lightly spray holding the bottle 10 inches or so away. Spray once on each side and one on the back. I ran my fingers or a brush through the hair and repeated on the other sections. Once dried I sectioned my hair in smaller sections and curled.


 
If you are looking for an all in one spray for curling or even straightening your hair, this is it! They also have sprays for decreasing drying time, curling, volumizing and more. Check Out their website!
PS: I cannot wait to dye my hair.




Hope you all enjoyed my review!

Disclaimer: I was not paid to talk about this product, it was purchased with my own money and I love it so I wanted to share it :)

eSalon.com Pre-Review

As you all may or may not know by now - I am now in Toronto. Where prices of everything is high, including the hair salons. I have a few great hairstylists back in Burlington but with my work schedule its nearly impossible to get out there. My roots are in dire need of some TLC and my highlights are looking a bit brassy. What's a girl to do?

Thats where ESalon.com comes in:

You create a profile, answer some questions about your hair now and where you want it to be. You also can add photos of yourself so the colourist can really see what they are working with. ESalon.com will custom create a colour for you that will work with your previous colour/treatment history, your desired results and hair length! So Cool!

So I answered my profile and ended up with a recommendation of "Medium Brown 
Red Mahogany (AD-01-20V)" I want to go red. I have never been red before (I've put red streaks in my hair- never all red) but I have been inspired by Chelsea Houska (Pick on left is from her Instagram). Ok Ok, I totally want to copy her hair! Its so amazing. Her hair is gorgeous all the time no matter what shade (I like her best in red or brown thou). But I think I can really pull off this red brown look.  Now, I am super excited to get it already! I ordered it two days ago and they said by Friday I should receive it. AHHH!

I will do an update post (Update: March 17th: Click Here for Results) to let you know how the process goes and share the results.

Wanna Try It? Click here for $10 off!
Disclaimer: Yes I get a $10 Credit when you click and buy but in no way am I writing this blog post because of that. I think the whole idea is super cool. Besides, you get $10 too!

Happy Birthday Matt

So my lovely sister in law Lauren's boyfriend Matt recently celebrated a birthday. For his birthday I helped Lauren get all ready to celebrate including a card, dessert and her hair!

Here are pictures of our afternoon getting stuff done:

 The dessert was chocolate covered strawberries, pineapple, cake pops and rice krispies.

For Lauren's hair I used a 1.5" curling iron and some hair spray. The key to the hair is no touching the curl until all of the hair is curled and cooled- then you can run your fingers through and "tousle". For Matt's card I used my silhouette to cut out the chevron in pacific point and sent with love patterned paper as well as the lacrosse dude and letters. It was definitely a blue theme that we ran with. Hope you enjoyed,

Portuguese Flag Nail Art

EURO 2012 NAIL ARTPortugal Flag.

I am a portuguese-canadian and because of that I am a huge supporter of the portugal team in the EURO 2012 tournament for soccer. I googled portugal flag nail art and was sad to see a lack of cool flag nail art. SOOOO! I made this tutorial which is completely unrelated to paper crafting but thought my portuguese girl friends would appreciate it. So this is how I did my Portuguese nails :)
First start off with a Portugal flag for reference. There are differences from my nail to the actual flag and that is obvious because the detail is so darn small that I couldn't get it on my nail.

First step is to put a base coat on all your nails. I chose to only paint flags on the ring fingers as it would be too much work to do on all my nails. Once that is dry study the flag for a moment. Notice the red on the flag is 2/3rds the whole flag. Also note 4 blue quinas. The lines of the yellow armillary sphere cannot be duplicated on a nail unless you are super pro which I am not so the blob is going to be sufficient enough for me! Also, Make sure each layer is DRY DRY DRY!
 

Step 1: Paint red or green first doesn't really matter. When painting try not to touch the two as when they over lap it looks funny. Like mine.  I used China Glaze Starboard #949 and OPI's Kennebunk-Port #NL N09. 

Step 2: With yellow nail polish (OPI's Need Sunglasses? #NL B46) paint a blob. A perfect circle is almost impossible but you can try!

 


Step 3: With your red nail polish and a tooth pick or fine brush paint the red shield on the yellow blob (How descriptive I know!). 

Step 4: Then take a white nail polish (I used Alpine Snow by OPI) and fill in the red shield.

 

Step 5: With a tooth pick take a royal blue colour (I have China Glaze First Mate #948 same collection as the green actually) and dot the blue quinas on to the white shield. 

Step 6: Wait a good few hours before applying a top coat. Notice the lighting difference in the photographs. I waited because if you don't your top coat may make the design bleed into each other. You can add the yellow castles to the red shield if you have the time and hand to do so. My hand was shaking the whole time and let me tell you the right hand is not as pretty!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, I may do a few more in the future. VIVA PORTUGAL! 

More information on the Portugal flag: found this on tumblr from xsarahmagic


The Portuguese Flag is divided into two parts by a vertical line.

The first part is green (2/5 of the flag).

The second part is red (3/5 of the flag).

There is, in the center of the vertical trace, a shield with 7 castles and 5 quinas in blue.

Around the shield there is a yellow armillary sphere.

_____________

Symbology

The 5 quinas —» They symbolize the five Moorish kings defeated by D. Afonso Henriques in the Battle of Ourique.

The 5 white points within each quina —» They represent the five wounds of Christ.

The 7 castles —» Symbolize the fortified locations that D. Afonso Henriques conquered from the Moors.

The armillary sphere —» Represents the world that Portuguese navigators discovered in the XV and XVI centuries and the people with whom they exchanged ideas and trade.

The green —» Symbolizes hope.

The red —» Symbolizes the courage and the blood of the Portuguese killed in combat.