Discovering the perfect blue hair dye
It’s been a long journey of wanting, wishing and waiting, but in February this year, just after my 28th birthday, I finally booked an appointment to have my hair dyed blue.
Several hours of bleaching, foils, and inadvertently making both of my hairdressers look like they’d been busy murdering Smurfs, it was done. Eeek!
But because my hair doesn’t hold anything (colour, curls, shape), I found myself having to re-apply the dye twice in the first week. At £9.50 per tube for the (admittedly pretty) Fudge blue colour, this quickly became unworkable. So I did what I always do when I have a problem, and asked the internet for help.
@duckingfabulous My sister’s had great results with Directions Midnight Blue, she’s been using it for about 2 years (with different colours)
— Aeth (@aethre) March 20, 2014
This pretty much summed up everyone’s advice from all over the internet – try Directions. It’s also, as far as I can tell, vegan, which means the lovely Annastasia at Not The Vegan Police will approve!
So I trooped into town, bought a pot each of Atlantic Blue, Midnight Blue and Lagoon Blue, and proceeded to re-dye my hair.
The results:
Atlantic Blue is by far my favourite, and caused more than one colleague to exclaim “Carla! Your hair! It’s SO BLUE today!” which I think can only be a good thing.
Lagoon Blue, while much lighter in colour, has actually lasted almost three weeks and has faded to a bright turquoise, which is absolutely acceptable and will probably be my summer colour of choice.
Midnight Blue I’ve not yet been brave enough to try, as I’m scared it’ll be too dark – but I’ll give it a go soon.
I’m yet to master decent lighting for photos, but here are a few:
I’m over the moon with my new hair – and it was summed up best by two of my friends. Josh told me it was “mermaid hair”, and Naomi’s is still my favourite comment – “it’s the hair you were always meant to have”. That’s definitely what it feels like!
An unexpected baby unicorn
You might remember that a while back, I declared April 15 to be Give A Girl A Unicorn Day. (Complete with not-especially-well-designed Tackk page, and it’s evolved from “buy” into “give”. But you get the idea.) Having blurted about it quite a lot on various social media, I had a sneaking suspicion that my Facebook timeline might have a larger-than-average smattering of unicorns on April 15.
But what I definitely wasn’t expecting was this, in the post, by special delivery, when I was still in my dressing gown and really should already have been at work. (see? The Universe at work, right there). (Terrible grainy picture because I was so excited to open it, I forgot to take a decent one. Sorry.)
Inside were lots of American cat toys for my two silly kittens, of which more in a separate post, and a BABY UNICORN for me.
It was so completely unexpected that I laugh-cried my way through the box (I’ve not done that in years and years), and it turned out to be the best timing ever, as my Gran went into hospital on the evening of the 15th and the rest of this week has been rather more stressful than is ideal. (She’s recovering now, but it’s been a very odd week).
Both the thoughtfulness and the surprise of it absolutely made my week 🙂 I’m a lucky girl with awesome friends.
Special mention also to these wonderful unicorns which also popped up on my wall…
So perhaps I’ll make it a proper day next year and see if I can send it viral?!
A peek into my life, through my handbag
Good grief. I work almost exclusively online – here, with The Website Beautician, and as a web content editor at the university. So what I want to know is, how on earth has my daily handbag ended up full of all of this?!
Yeah, not Clover – she was just being “helpful”.
That’s a makeup bag, four eyeliners, two blushers, three lipglosses, a mascara, two mirrors, a pair of tweezers and foundation – and I don’t wear makeup during the day at work.
A CD (wtf?!), a pencil case with 15 (15!) pens and one pencil, chocolate, biz cards in a Loughborough holder, a notebook (green) for a course I’m doing, my beloved Moleskine diary, £20 I’d forgotten I’d got out of the cash machine, my little camera, half a pharmacy (ibuprofen, iron supplement, antihistamine, rescue remedy), my clip in dreads, various hairbands, my purse, two forks, a spoon, a cloth for cleaning my glasses, a plug for a phone charger (but no cable) and a USB stick. And a half written letter to Chloe.
Which would kind of be ok, if a) I didn’t also carry a bag with lunch and two big folders in it everywhere and b) I hadn’t cleared it out literally two days ago. At which point I removed two types of eczema cream, antiseptic cream, more pens, my TV remote control (again, wtf?!), the cable for the charger, two books, a magazine, the beads I bought on Thursday, half a brownie, four packs of tissues and a necklace. And today I left tap shoes and a scarf on my desk at work.
No wonder my back and shoulder hurt!
What the contents of my bag say about me: I reckon I’m prepared for just about anything, but that I REALLY need to pay more attention to the state of clutter in my life. So it’s just as well that the fantastic Anna Kunnecke is teaching the Queen Sweep course for free. It sarted on Monday and prompted this post. And, well – if the rest of the course is as effective as this first week, hopefully I’ll be much more aware and much less cluttered in the not too distant future!
What’s in your handbag? I suspect I’m not alone in my delusions of travelling light…
Home in spring
Spring is most definitely sprunging (is that a word?!) in my little corner of the world. Here’s my photo roundup of the last couple of weeks…
Dad cutting the overgrown lawn in my little garden
Shafts of sunlight at long last in my living room
Yarn bomb at This One Wall
My glorious, silly kittens posing most obligingly (we’ll ignore the hoover in the background)
Creative Courage and Creative Bloom – courses that are changing the trajectory of my life right now
How have you marked the beginning of Spring?
When serendipity strikes
Serendipity and excitement are the two main themes of my life at the moment.
There are so many lovely things going on, and so many possibilities and emotions and so much potential whizzing around in the air, that I am excited fit to burst, and finding it incredibly hard not to dance through the corridors of the day job with joy, on the very tips of my toes.
New friends have come into my life in the most unexpected of ways in the past few months . One through answering an ad for some cosmetics I was selling, with whom I’m now starting a craft club. Several through being sociable at work. A few of us are starting dance classes, sparked by going to the university’s dance show. Some through my ever-dependable online networks of escape artists and free rangers and lifestyle engineers.
I’ve been working with Amanda Aitken, in her new Girl’s Guide courses, and from just the first week I’ve had some lightbulb moments. I’m excited about these new ideas in a way I’ve not felt about business projects for a long time… possibly ever.
Two weeks and lots of experiments after I had my hair dyed blue, I’ve found the perfect electric blue colour for it (Directions Atlantic Blue, if you’re curious).
And new opportunities pop up at every corner – from tap dancing to faery festivals, there has been a spectacular explosion of things into my life, and I want to take advantage of every single one.
I’ve always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason… but lately I’ve also become a firm believer in the universe providing what you are open to. Like begets like, and all that – so if you expect goodness, abundance, new friendships, likeminded people and opportunities you could never have dreamed of before… then all those things will happen in the fullness of time. Pure magic in action.
I’ve been working on creating a magical, colourful life for some time. It’s been happening, but oh so slowly. Then in the past few months, it’s accelerated. And because I’ve been so focused on the life I want, feeling it start to really take shape truly feels like coming home.
There’s a way to go before I’m living my dream fully (with added unicorns!)- but now my baby steps feel less faltering, and more twirling and joyful and natural. And so I am off to run down the corridors, to spin in the sunshine and dance in the moonlight.
Buy A Girl A Unicorn Day – April 15th
Last year, I created this in response to Steak & BJ day. And then didn’t publicise it. This year – I am going to make it an ACTUAL DAY. (and probably turn it into an actual website at some stage, too).
So off you go – you have just under a month to find a unicorn and buy it for a girl.
I'm Carla, a quirky thirtysomething with a penchant for unicorns and glitter. I believe in magic and make-believe, and the gorgeous rebellion of making your life absolutely your own. And I'm a proud multipod!
I am a photographer and catalyst for small business owners, and a real life mermaid. I photograph people as they truly are, help women see and step into their brightest and best selves, add a sprinkling of magic to the mundane, and am a happy ambassador for stationery and slow living.
Proud to be both girly and geeky, when I’m not writing, photographing or daydreaming, you can find me dancing burlesque, riding my bicycle Bluebell, growing herbs and collecting typewriters.