Bleach London: Super Cool Colour Awkward Peach and Rosé Review

I am fully comfortable admitting that I'm completely obsessed with Bleach London and I often while away the hours scrolling through their pics on Instagram and tweets on Twitter, like I said, I'm obsessed (but in a totally healthy kind of way). 

Having visited their hair salon at their Topshop concession in Oxford Circus (their main salon is in Dalston) where I treated myself to a 'Bleachenders' dip dye about a year and a half ago, I figured that although I can't currently afford to get my hair done there, there's nothing stopping me from enjoying some of that Bleach London fun and trying out some of their products at home.   

The first products from the Bleach London range that I tried out were two of the dyes from their Super Cool Colour range which I used back in July (I miss summer so much!) as I had a night out planned and wanted to refresh my slightly dulled-blonde dip dyed ends.  The two hair colours that I used were Rosé and Awkward Peach as I wanted a pinky-based colour with a peachy tone to it.

Left to right: Bleach London Super Cool Colour in Awkward Peach (150ml) and Bleach London Super Cool Colour in Rosé (150ml) both available from Boots (RRP £5) .

I mixed half the Rosé with half the Awkward Peach in a tinting bowl and applied it using a tinting brush to my shampooed, towel dried hair.  I only applied the dye to the ends of my hair as this was already lightened from when I'd last had my hair dip dyed.  The instructions state to leave the colour on for 15 minutes but I left it on for an extra 5 minutes because, well, what can I say?  I'm a daredevil who occasionally rebels against hair dye instructions when it comes to timing, it's just the way I was made.

After washing it out and blow drying it, I had a gorgeous, rich, peachy-pink colour on the ends of my hair which I fell instantly in love with.

Looking super serious here!

These dyes are semi-permanent and according to the packaging they last about 2-10 washes which was fine by me as I wanted a colour that would wash out fairly easily.  I found that after the first wash, the majority of colour came out but it left a gorgeous, peachy tint which I think I actually preferred to the vibrant colour that it had previously been.  Overall, the colour lasted about 3 washes which I was fine with as they were more pastel-based shades so you wouldn't expect them to really last much longer than that.  I would definitely recommend both Rosé and Awkward Peach from Bleach London's Super Cool Colour range to anyone as these shades allow you to play about with your hair colour without the commitment and maintenance that comes with some other so called 'semi-permanent' hair dyes -  I definitely can't wait to try out some of their other shades now!

Slight peachy/pinky tint after one wash.  Nice!

I'll be blogging about Bleach London's Super Cool Colour Hair Crayons in my next post so be sure to keep an eye out for that.......only if you want to keep an eye out for it though.......no pressure here!

Have you used any of Bleach London's Super Cool Colours? Drop me a comment below if you feel like it and let me know what you think?

Office-Appropriate Nails and Reliving my Teen Years

Office-appropriate nails are always a dilemma of mine and I have spent many an evening going through my drawers of nail polishes trying to find a colour or shade that is suitable for an office environment.

In general, I tend to opt for subtle, natural shades such as nudes, beiges, greys, pale pinks - nothing that is too 'in-your-face'.  However, sometimes this all just gets, well, pretty boring, especially for a nail art obsessive like myself.  So, this evening I tried to come up with a compromise: I would stick with this subtle nail polish palette but I would incorporate it into a nail art design.


The key with my chosen nail art look was to stick to the subtle theme and keep it fairly understated which meant no neon colours and clumpy glitters (my heart just broke a little bit from writing that!).  This resulted in selecting only two simple nail polish colours, a grey-based nail polish by Topshop and a shimmery (well, I needed a little bit of glitter, I'm only human!) sheer nude-based nail polish by Maybelline (this is the same one that I used for my nail art looks in the posts Nail Update: Summer, glitter and sparkles! and Black Gloopy Nails, just in case you were wondering......were you actually wondering or have I overstepped the mark here?). 



Office ombre nails!


I went for an ombre nail design as it's a quite soft nail art look and a fairly easy process which doesn't take too long to achieve.  To start off with, I used my standard base coat which is OPI's Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener followed by one coat of Maybelline's Color Show nail polish in Sugar Crystals.  Once this was dry, doing one nail at a time, I used a Topshop nail polish in the shade Hopscotch and painted the top third of my nail so that it looked like this (this bit does not need to be too neat):







A little messiness is just fine by me!

Once I'd applied the polish to the top third of my nail, I grabbed some tin foil and dropped a few blobs of the Topshop nail polish onto it.  I then grabbed my cosmetic sponge and dabbed it into the nail polish and lightly blotted it on the foil a couple of times before dabbing the nail polish onto my nail using the sponge.  I carefully brought the colour about halfway down, so that the colour faded out as it approached the bottom half of the nail.  I then finished this nail art look off with a coating of Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat to blend the nail polishes together and soften the look even further.  The reason why I did one nail at a time was because I needed my Topshop nail polish to not be completely dry when adding my top coat otherwise it would not have blended as nicely.

Items used from left to right: Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener, Topshop nail polish in the shade Hopscotch, Maybelline Color Show nail polish in the shade Sugar Crystals and a cosmetic sponge.

I'm really happy with this look as I think that it is subtle enough to be acceptable for an office job but it's still slightly quirky and unique which is very much a good thing in my opinion. 

The irony of this whole nail art look was that whilst I was trying to achieve this 'mature' nail art design, I was reliving my teenage years and listening to 'The Best of Hilary Duff' on Spotify, I'm not even ashamed about it though.......and I'm definitely not ashamed about the fact that I still know all the words to 'So Yesterday'.  Not even a lit bit of shame here, only Hilary Duff-lyric-knowing pride - turns out my teenage years weren't wasted after all!




No shame here!

Feel free to let me know what you think of this look, or Hilary Duff, I'm not fussy!

Not Ready for the Cold

It's already starting to get cold and now that it's September I am panicking because I am not ready for it.  Not at all.  In fact, I was so determined to ignore this end-of-summer feeling that I felt that it was necessary to keep my summer dream alive so I designed some fun, summery nail art creations to cheer me up.  Take a peek:

The shine on these is exactly why I love Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat!

It's a pretty easy design to replicate, all you need are three different coloured nail polishes, one being a black shade, a base and top coat plus some dotting tools which you can buy really easily (and really cheaply!) off eBay.  I began this design by applying my OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener to my nails as my base coat and then applied my Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat to make them look super shiny as there is no base colour involved in this nail art look.  Then grabbing a smallish (technical term for you there!) dotting tool, I used Barry M's Nail Paint in Matt White to dot on the petals of my flower.  Essentially, you want five petals for the flower so think of a star shape when doing this and it'll make it a little easier, or at least that logic made it easier for me.  For the next step, I used the next size up in dotting tool and selected a Rimmel London nail polish in a yellow shade called Cute as a Kitten Heel and then added a dot to the centre of each flower.  Following on from that, I grabbed my smallest dotting tool and used Barry M's Nail Paint in Black to add a little dot to my white petals just to add a slight bit of definition.  I finished off this design with a slick of the Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat and then they were good to go!

Nail polishes used from left to right: OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, Rimmel London Lasting Finish in the shade Cute as a Kitten Heel, Barry M Nail Paint in the shade Black and Barry M Nail Paint in the shade Matt White.  Dotting tools purchased via eBay (and yes, some are a little broken, don't judge!).

I absolutely love my flower nail art design, it makes me smile and for a second or two I can almost trick myself into believing that it's still July and summer is in full swing and that the shops aren't already getting in their Halloween stock and displaying their Christmas cards (really Clinton's, REALLY?!).

It's pretty clear from this post that I am a 'summer girl' and I feel so blue when it's over, it's just...I really hate the cold, mostly because about 90% of my wardrobe is made up of summer clothing.  I love being able to wear crop tops, shorts, skorts, mini skirts, maxi skirts, maxi dresses, summer dresses and flowers in my hair.  I am not a fan of having to wear bulky coats, about five billion layers of clothing just to keep warm, gloves (have you ever tried to use your iPhone wearing mittens?  Just don't even go there!) and woolly hats (nobody wants crazy-lady hat hair.  Not a good look.), plus my nose, hands and feet stay perpetually cold until spring finally reappears once again to make those trees blossom and the daffodils erupt from their bulbs just to say 'haaaaai'. 

 

Only bought my favourite summer outfit last month and I'm just not ready to say goodbye yet (black crop top from Topshop and high waisted vintage Levi 501 jean shorts by Peekaboo Vintage from Topshop's Oxford Circus flagship store).

Ok, so now that I've got my anti-winter rant out the way I can move onto something else -  'Phew!' is probably what you're all thinking right now and I don't blame ya!  Anti-winter rant over.   

So I bought the last ever hard copy issue of Company Magazine this week and I've got to say, I'm pretty gutted that it's only going to be available in digital format from now on.  I mean, I get why Hearst (the publisher of Company Magazine) has made the decision to go all-out digital but personally, I think that you can't beat the actual feel of holding a magazine in your hands, flicking through it and inhaling that fresh, just-published magazine scent and sometimes occasionally using it as a fan when it's really hot on the tube and you're pretty sure that you're about to pass out.   

Farewell my old friend, I'll see you again (it'll just be via a screen!). 

Anyway, let me know what you think about anything and everything that I've covered in this post because it'll make my day that teensy bit more interesting!

 

2014: The Year of the Nail Art

New year, new nails - or at least that's the idea!  Now that it's insanely cold (I am just nowhere near ready for the snow to make it's chilly appearance) the only thing that's getting me through this frosty weather is having some fun nail art to display to the world (and by the world, I mostly just mean me and a handful of work colleagues who have to put up with me unsubtly waving my nails in front of their eyes so that they can acknowledge my handiwork). 

My New Year's eve nails (below) are not that exciting but that's due to the fact that I left it until the last minute to do my nails so I really only have myself and lack of time keeping skills to blame, such a rookie error - I feel so ashamed!

 



Freakin' loved the blue holographic nail polish though which was a sneaky purchase from Wah Nails in Topshop's flagship Oxford Circus store!

My next nail treat for 2014 was based on my five-year-old self's role mode - Jasmine, as in Jasmine of 'Aladdin and Jasmine' fame!  All I ever wanted was a flying carpet to sing 'A Whole New World' on but I was deprived of that joy because apparently flying carpets don't actually exist or whatever!  Here's my Jasmine nails for you to have a peep at:

 



My next nail art session involved smiley faced clouds with rainbows, cherries, camouflage, polka dots and a double French design. People have been loving this at work, even though I feel that my clouds look more like clowns (which is not ideal seeing as clowns terrify me!).

 



I was actually lucky enough to get my nails done at Wah Nails at the beginning of December which was sort of a dream come true as I'm not going to lie  to you, it's so nice to get your nails done by someone who actually knows what they're doing!  I even went all out and got acrylics - I don't like to brag but I kind of live life on the edge!



 

I just now need to figure out my next nail art designs to make sure that 2014 becomes 'The Year of the Nail Art' - because every year needs some kind of dramatic title, right?!





Lex Luthor Seriously Needs to Chill Out

So, I'm pretty sure that I haven't written a post since late 2012, as in last year. OOPS! I take full ownership for that and have no acceptable excuse other than I've been crazy busy........and Lex Luthor keeps trying to thwart me. Ok so that last bit re Lex Luthor may not be true but the crazy busy bit is!

I have some cute Christmas nails that I did over the festive period for you to feast your beautiful, sparkly eyes upon (yes I am sucking up right now to make up for my absence. Whatevs.):

Plus these standard non-Christmas nail designs aren't bad either:

Not much to report on since my last post. I did make one of the biggest decisions of my life just before Christmas.................I decided to get my hair cut. Pretty big deal, eh? It wasn't even a big decision in that it took me about 5 minutes to decide to get it done whilst drinking a cup of tea and daydreaming whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing. My hair was in a rather bad state from a fair bit of bleaching on the ends (courtesy of DIY dip dyes) and was stained from having been dyed various shades of lavender, deep purple and bright pink so all the unpleasantness needed to be hacked off. So I now have short (ish) hair, although it's not so short now that it's grown a bit (because apparently that's what hair does - grow). My hair for the first time in about 7 years is completely natural in colour - no highlights, no dip dyes, no nothing - just 100% natural redhead. It felt weirdly liberating reverting back to my hair's natural colour and it was nice to know what my actual hair colour was, I mean, I knew I was a redhead, I just had no idea what shade of red I was. Turns out I'm a kind of deep auburn colour which I'm digging (yes, I did just say 'digging', this is the 90s, right?). However, I get bored easily and the time has come to say goodbye to my 100% naturally coloured hair and hello again to the dip dye experience, except this time I will be making no attempt to do it myself.......instead I've made an appointment to get it done at Bleach London which I've been desperate to do for AGES. Yes, it'll be pricey but I've saved up for it and it still works out cheaper than what my highlights used to cost me plus hopefully it won't take as long to grow out so I still have the option of reverting back to natural life again.

So that's it, London tomorrow for the dip dye and a casual persual of Topshop (well, I'm only human after all.................although try telling that to Lex Luthor, he seriously needs chill out).