Archive for the ‘Hair’ Category

As promised here is a tutorial on how to do the big poufy curly style up-do thingy that I’ve been wearing a lot lately ^_^

Apologies for how tired I look in these photos, I really wasn’t feeling well but I wanted to get the tutorial finished for you guys >_< I’ve been quite stressed lately so I haven’t been sleeping well!

So what you need:

• Bobby pins
• Hair straightener/curler/hot rollers
• Heat protector spray
• Decorations eg. Bow and hair flowers
• Brush
• Hair Spray

First thing’s first, pin your fringe to the side to keep it out of the way.

Brush out your remaining hair so there are no knots.

Apply heat protector spray. Very important step so you don’t damage your hair at all ^_^

Heat up your straightener or whatever you are planning to use to curl your hair.

Btw I’m wearing my new blue lenses from E-Circlelens.net in these photos, the full review is coming soon but I’m excited because I haven’t used blue ones before

So anyway! Curl the bottom 1/3rd of your hair. You don’t need to make the the curls perfectly even or very good because they are all going to get mushed up anyway.

Like this is fine:

Continue until you’ve done all of your hair like this…

Add a little bit of hair spray:

Get all of your bobby pins ready so you can easily access them.

Lightly tease/back comb the front section of your hair at the roots. You don’t need to tease very much at all.

Flip your head upside down! Gently brush the back section of your hair up and forward. Don’t brush the curly ends!

Grab the hair loosely in one hand like you are making a pony tail.

Twist it clockwise once.

Using your other hand grab the ends of one side of the curls. Scrunch upwards to your head.

As you bring it to your head continue to grab hair around it. Once you actually reach the base of the twisted big, grab hold of it.

Turn your head up the right way again and you should have something like this…

See how it’s long on one side and shorter on the side that I did the grabby thing on? Now it’s time for pins!

Start by pinning around the twist. Don’t just slide pins in, slide them half way then twist and push them in the other direction, this is how you get them to stay in really well!

Pin it  enough to keep it in place by itself:

Now tidy it up with more pins ^_^ You can create the bubbly waved effect by adding a pin every 5cm or so across the top of your head. This is basically using the curls you made earlier and forcing them into place.

If you’ve curled it well, you shouldn’t have to do too much work, the curls naturally want to sit like this. The back looks like this:

Now time for decoration… I added a big bow!

And I used a bunch of flower pins too I just put them randomly all over the place, you can use them to add to the bubbliness on top too because when you add them close to the scalp you will squish the puffier bits down.

It’s also a good time to touch up any of the major curls ^_^

Un-clip your fringe and give it a quick go over to ^_^

Extra hair spray!

And you’re all finished

This is a really verstile hair style, you can change it completely just by scrunching the hair up in a different position. In this next photo I had it all on one side rather than a couple of curls hanging down, it just depends on your technique. You probably won’t be able to get it to look exactly the same twice but having it slightly different every time is kind of fun

Hope that was easy to follow and you enjoyed it, let me know if you have any questions!

Here are a couple of outfits I’ve been wearing over the last few weeks ^_^

This one was a nice casual outfit for a lunch out.

Dress- Target

Jumper- Thrift store (I love it because it has beautiful wool embroidery)

Stockings- Myer

Shoes- Payless modified by me

This one was a bit more dressy, I can’t remember what we were doing that way but I think maybe it was something glamorous like grocery shopping?

Dress- Angelic Pretty

Cardigan- Myer (I think?)

Stockings- Myer

Shoes- Wittner, modified by me

Scarf- Hand knitted by me

As per usual my favorite thing about the outfit is my nails

It’s just a simple 3 colour gradient but I love it! I’ve had requests for a tutorial on this too.

I like them because they are quite understated usually but when they get in the sun they are crazy shiny!

I’ve been experimenting with new hair styles too This is my favorite so far…

I think it looks quite complicated but it’s really easy to do, I’m going to take photos for a tutorial on this tomorrow

I think I want to make a whole more of these rose pins too, time for a trip to a craft store

Cancan hats are another trend that seems to be everywhere right now. Of course they’ve been around for practically forever with various names… straw boater, basher, skimmer, katie, senni etc. Here in Aus they are actually part of a lot of private school uniforms. I’ve always loved them because the remind me of picnics in the park with a nice cup of tea!

Anyway whatever you call it what I’m talking about is this:

Image courtesy of google, full credit to the owner.

Because they’re popular now they are quite expensive. So I decided to DIY my own ^_^

What you need:

• Round top straw sun hat
• Scissors
• Needle and thread
• Glue Gun
• Ribbon and lace for decoration if your hat isn’t decorated already.

You can easily pick up a big wide brim rounded straw sun hat for $2 from a thrift store and if you check out junk stores you can probably find one new for not much more than that! I happened to have one from back in my Country Lolita days that I had decorated with ribbon and lace but I’ve never actually worn it because the shape looked silly on me… time to make it all flat and pretty

Ok let’s get started!

At the top of the hat you will notice that the whole thing is made of a big spiral of straw which it stitches together. Carefully wedge your scissors into the top of the spiral and cut a few of the stitches.

Gently pull it apart, continue cutting stitches if you need to.

Start unraveling the sprial and cutting the stitches as you go ^_^

Keep going until you get to around this point:

When you get to here there are two options depending on the type of hat you started with. Some of these sun hats have very straight sides and some of them are basically a gigantic dome.

If you’re lucky enough to have one with straight sides then you can skip the next few steps.

If you have one with curved sides (like me) you will need to continue unraveling the hat until you to get to a point where the part that’s left is completely straight. This point might be different for you hat but mine was just above the ribbon band here:

Now you should get your needle ready and thread it.

Ok now it’s time to put it back together so the sides are straight and the top is flat!

Because the straw has been in a curved position for so long you will most likely need to bend it straight before you put it back together. Make sure to be gentle when you do this so you don’t damage it. I straightened it by putting it flat on the floor and gently bending it the other way.

Now you need to start winding the straw back into place. You can either do it the right way and stitch it in place or the quick way and hot glue it in place. Either way secure it as you go around.

You can see that the way I’ve put it back in place is much more vertical than the original pattern.

Keep going until you think your hat is tall enough and then do one more rotation around the top to make sure it is flat enough for the top of the hat not to be on an angle!

When you’re finished you should cut the excess straw off and secure the ends. I am going to cover the straw end with more decoration at the end so it doesn’t show.

Now let’s make the top! Get your left over straw and arrange it on a flat surface in a spiral.

You should measure the spiral to make sure it fits the top of your hat exactly and pin it in place.

Now stitch or glue your top in place.

Continue until it is the right shape and diameter. You should stitch the end of the straw around so it forms a circle like this:

Cut off the excess and this is what you get:

Do make sure that it fits the top of the hat before you cut the ends so you don’t have a gaping hole in your hat!

At this point I cut off the elastic string which holds the hat on your head because it was pointless and in the way.

Now on the inside of your hat, glue/stitch the top in place

You should get something like this:

Hurray it has a flat top!!

Now we’ve made the top shorter and flatter the large brim looks a bit silly! So let’s make it shorter

Find the edge and snip the stitches. It should come apart very easily.

I pulled out maybe 3 or 4 rows of it. Now secure the edge back in place.

And you get this…

Last step is decoration! I wanted a nice big rosette style thing on my hat so I cut off the long tulle tail…

And added another one of top. This also covers the join around the hat. Again hot glue or sewing is fine here.

TAADAA!

And there you have it, an adorable cancan hat that cost me nothing And I have another cute hat to add to my arsenal of bad-hair-day-hiding-tools

What do you guys think?