A sneak of our new place...

We have been moved into our new place (upstairs at mum and dads) for a few weeks now.  Over the weekend, we FINISHED unpacking, putting together, finding places for our storage items, and cleaned up!  I am so happy it is all done.  I am loving the space that I am continued to be blessed with for my crafts.

I now store my hairdressing supplies in my craft room, which is new, but I found those great black and white drawers which fits everything in perfectly.  I also have to put my filing cabinet under the desk, but I still have plenty of room.  I also have a window right next to the desk which is lovely for fresh air and sunshine.  In my old craft room, I never ever got sunlight!

Everything is still packed into my cube shelving and white drawers.  And there is that beautiful sunlight I was talking about.  

Waste not want not!!!  I am planning to measure up the top of these drawers so I can have some wood cut which will give me another space to maybe store something, or put something decorative.  I actually use scraps for 50% of my sewing projects.  You'd be surprised what you can make with them!

And a couple of my personal touches.  My Texan corner (hubby is Texan).  All that is missing is something with the Texan flag.  Maybe a project for the future!

My awesome plaque at the door of my room.  My sister got it for me for Christmas.  I love it!

And then there's the lounge room.  In moving in, we had to sell our couch as my parents had a few up in the lounge upstairs.  They're not the most gorgeous couches, but I'm trying to make do with what we've been provided with.

The couches are a little uncomfy, so I have plans to make a few more cushions so that I can lounge more comfortably!!  We also got rid of our coffee table because mum has an antique blanket box that had nowhere to live so we are using that as our coffee table.  I was worried about the top of it getting damaged so I made a topper.  Just a piece of chipboard cut to size, and covered with some nice tough fabric.  And then a piece of felt adhered. to the base so the staples don't scratch up the top of the box.  Not too bad I say!

There's isn't much else to show at this stage.  Husby's study is also the storage room, so his desk has boxes stacked up, our dining room set disassembled and stacked up.  Not the prettiest room.  And then our bedroom.... STUFFED with furniture.  Not pretty, but practical.  

It's time to start adding the little touches that make a home.  Thanks to Pinterest I have plenty of ideas!!  Now I just need to get started!!

Chop chop

So I got my hair cut today.  Monumental for me.  Normal for some others.  Considering I've only had one haircut in two years, I think that could sum up my fear of hair cuts.  I don't trust my fellow hairdressers.  I've seen far too many poor skills.  But today I got over it and went and saw a hairdresser that I have heard about from friends for YEARS.  I had to wait a few weeks to see him.  But I needed a few weeks to get my head around it.

Before:

It was just long, floppy, dry, stringy, gross, knotty.  It had to go.  It had no shape.  It was pretty much not acceptable, especially for a hairdresser.  Come on, I'm supposed to have awesome hair right?

After:

Now it has shape.  It feels amazingly healthy - especially compared to how it previously felt.  It will take half the time to dry.  Funny thing is, he took SIX INCHES off... and it's still reasonably long.  He probably could have taken more length off, but considering the first thing he heard from me was "I hate having my haircut, I don't trust hairdressers and I'm freaking out", I think he played on the safe side.  I'll probably be braver next time :)

Need to work on that side fringe though.  It's all floppy.  Not used to sitting like a fringe should.  I'll whip it into shape in a week or two.  It won't know what hit it.

What are YOU scared of, and have conquered to some degree?  

I'm also petrified of having a baby.  I'll be conquering that one next year :)

My Creative Space - hair hiding accessories + the hair reveal + envelopes

*WARNING:  Sorry about bad pics, I had to get them off my phone.*

If you've not heard my hair story, feel free to read about it here.  If you have, you would understand why on the weekend, I was embarrased to go to church on Sunday with that hair.  So Saturday night I made a hair accessory... big enough to cover the whole front of my hair.  And you know what?  No one noticed my ugly hair.  Win!!

And I think my hair story can also be included in My Creative Space this week, because it has been a creative journey... to put it mildly.  So here's the final result.  Not perfect, but acceptable.  My sister put the colour in on Tuesday night - just in time to go back to work!

Much improved!

And last but not least, I've been having fun playing with my new envelope template.  I think I'll be making quite a few more, and even might pop a few in the shop!

Pop over to here to play along!

The anxiety that comes with pink hair.

Not entirely sure why, but it's been a rough trot for me lately.  Been feeling unmotivated - in general life.  It has been a bit of a struggle to get through the daily grind, when I would typically just potter along and not take notice of things so much.  Right now, all I seem to be able to stay on top of is the laundry, and sleep.  I haven't really cooked anything for weeks.  I'm grateful for a husband who realises I'm not myself and doesn't mind that I haven't made him a roast dinner or something delightful.  He's happy with a frozen meal, or some steamed dim sims.  My craft room has barely been graced with my presence lately either.  I have done a few projects.  Projects which I normally would have shared with you, but lacked the desire to photograph and load them up, and edit them, and then write a blog post.  You get the message. 

Yesterday I decided I wanted a pick me up.  Some may or may not know, I am a hairdresser.  I no longer work actively in the industry because it's RUBBISH money :)  My sister is a hairdresser too... which comes in handy.  I have been talking about going dark for quite a while now.  I have been blonde for around 3 1/2 ish years.  Naturally, I am a medium brown colour.  I decided I wanted to go back to my natural shade, but add a little touch of mahogany, just cause it's always looked nice on me.  My skin is quite pale, so going really dark doesn't work for me.  The word 'gothic' usually comes to mind :)

Yesterday didn't quite turn out as planned.  My knowledge of colouring chemicals was proven to be faulted from my years of not working in a salon to keep up to date.  It was also tested on information that you don't usually need.  Let me expand on that for you.  

Here is my hair before.

 

One hour later I was left with this.

Along with this pink hair, came a mild panic attack accompanied with chest pain.  This was NOT what I wanted.  This was supposed to make me feel better.  After a little cry, and after I calmed myself down from the panic and anxiety, I got myself together and went to my supplier.  Walked away with 2 lots of hair colour erasers, and 3 boxes of different shades of brown semi permanent colours.  You see, I had to buy everything I could have possibly needed at that time, because two hours later, I was due to have a client come to my house to have HER hair done, and by the time I finished her hair, all the supplier stores would be shut for the day.  SO I had to purchase all that I needed however way  my hair turned out.  Sorry, I suck at explaining.  Let me try again.  I was prepared for whatever my hair threw at me. 

So I started with Eraser box 1.  It smelt bad.  Like perm solution.  But I read all my instructions, got everything set up and slapped it into my hair at super speeds.  Five minutes after application... it looked like this.

Notice I haven't been including my face since I stuffed up the colour?  Yeah.  You don't need to see the look on my face!!

The eraser is fantastic.  It is new technology and doesn't use bleach - which destroys your hair!  It literally goes into your hair and erases as best as it can.  When I saw how well the eraser was working, I started to relax a little.  Lighter weird coloured hair, I can work with.  Dark weird coloured hair.. not so much.  

This is my hair after the first colour eraser.

At this point, I felt like a teenager who had black hair and tried bleaching it myself resulting in patchy nasty colour.  But, it was better then what I started with.  Afterall, in a short 15 minutes my hair had gone from super dark fluro pink, to random cherry red & blonde - not to mention the still dark roots in some places. 

I did another round of colour eraser on the red ends, and then for the last 5 minutes massaged it into my dark roots.  I didn't take a photo of the outcome because I forgot, and had to duck out to pick up husby from the train station to scare him with my hair :)  Basically I was able to reduce that cherry red by about half, and removed the dark from my roots.  So I was left with blonde at the top and red on the ends.  How delightful!

This is with the second lot of eraser on.

After dinner, husby came to my aid and helped me get a medium brown semi permanent colour in my hair.  The colour I ended up selecting to use was just a basic plain brown colour with a little bit of toner.  I didn't want to try anything too experimental - I just wanted to achieve something socially acceptable.  But of course, by this point, I was OVER IT.  I had showered 3 times that day, shampooed my hair about 8 times.  My scalp was mighty sore.  As the photo shows, I was spent.



 I don't have an after picture of the colour with my hair down, just one how it is pinned up for work today.

So it's back to being socially acceptable.  The roots are a boring flat brown, then all the ends are still quite a bright reddish brown.  I am going to let it rest for about a week.  Put in lots of treatments, and just deal with how ugly it looks (to me).  Then I hope to put in a permanent colour that will deposit a LITTLE red into the root area, and then cool down that red in the ends so that it's just an even medium mahogany brown. 

So I am REALLY looking forward to this gigantor long weekend approaching.  For those who are not Aussies - we not only have this Friday and Monday as public holidays for Easter, we also have Tuesday off for Anzac Day which is our version of Memorial Day.  So that means a 5 day weekend.  I have NOTHING planned.  NOTHING!!!  I am absolutely thrilled and have been thinking about how I want to spend these upcoming 5 days.  

A few things came to mind:

-  self administered pedicure

- doing a corned beef roast

- eating hot cross buns till the cows come home

- snuggling up on the couch with husby watching DVD's

- putting a few things in my madeit store

- putting together a few packages of goodies I want to sent to some friends

- maybe putting together an inspiration board

- make a few more rosette headbands like I'm wearing in that last pic

What do you have planned for the long weekend?

Hopefully next week I will come to you feeling refreshed, and know what the bejingies to do with my hair!!!

Personal touch

#29

I thought I'd share a little about myself today.  I don't think I have before.  And it's probably about time you knew a little more about me.

I am Australian.  I am 25.  I have been married for 1 1/2 years.  I am a Mormon.  I have 1 niece and 1 nephew.  I'm a trained Hairdresser and used to own my own mobile hairdressing business.  I lived in America for just over a year in 07 through to 08.  This is where I met my husband.  He's Texan.

I have a calling (responsibility) at church as the Young Women's 2nd Councillor.  Young Women's is a program we run that is for girls between the ages of 12 and 18.  I look after the 12 and 13 year old girls.  It's HARD work but I love it.

I have always enjoyed crafts, but have only really got stuck into them over the past 6 months.  I have my own selfishly awesome craft room filled with all my goodies.

I work in an Accounting Firm as a Receptionist.  Not my most favourite thing in the world but my co-workers make it bearable.

I love to shop for bargains.  Proof is here, here and here.  These are just three examples of goods I've found this month alone.

And that's the basics about me.  Now for some fun facts that I usually don't tell people.  I have a few quirks.  My husby often looks at me and laughs.  I think he laughs so he doesn't cry.

- I hate odd numbers.  Even writing the word 'odd' makes me feel uneasy.  Luckily I was born on the 22nd, or else we could have problems.  I was born on the 3rd month though, but I ignore that and just call it March.  I never refer to it as the third month.  The volume on the TV and radio must be even.  But for some reason I can accept 5.  It doesn't bother me the way that 1, 3, 7 & 9 do.  Ugh.

- I am obsessed with wearing accessories.  I must be wearing at LEAST 2.  One day I forgot to put any accessories on, and didn't realise this until I got to work.  I was a mess all day.  Most days I wear earrings and a flower in my hair.  Necklaces and bracelets are optional.  The other two, not really.  I feel ugly without them.

- I have super long eyelashes.

I probably should have cropped this photo but I'm lazy.  But it's a good photo of the length of my eyelashes.  Problem is, they shed alot.  I love them, but it makes wearing glasses and sunglasses difficult to wear because if I am wearing lots of mascara, they touch the lens as I blink.  So on a daily basis I barely wear any.

- I hate being tickled.  It makes me angry.  Quite literally.  My husband learnt this the hard way.

- I love tropical everything.  Flavours, fruits, drinks, smells, the whole lot.  My favourite fruit is mangoes.  It is currently Mango season in Australia and it makes me VERY happy.

- I have a really deep belly button.  I can fit my entire pointer finger inside it.  All the way down to the joint.  A few years ago we thought it would be funny to see how many sultanas we could fit in it.  I think we got to around 40, then we (I think it was my sister and me) ran out of sultanas.  There was still room for more.  We peed ourselves laughing.

- I hate Mac products, but own an iPhone.  Figure that one out.

- Green is my absolute most favourite colour.  I want my bedroom to be green one day.

- I can play the piano.  Not as well as I used to, but I can.  Once I got so good, that I could play awesome classical songs like Moonlight Sonata and I also started to steer down the path of Rag music - I mastered Black & White Rag arranged by Winifred Attwell.  It was incredibly hard to learn, but hell I was awesome!  I can still actually play the first part of it. I found her playing it on YouTube but for some reason it won't let me embed the video.  You can watch her play it here, or go here to listen to this arrangement which is more along the lines of what I played.  They can play it a little faster then I could :P

- My parents could have been famous.  My mum sung in the Sydney Opera House and had opportunities to advance in a singing career but didn't.  My dad qualified for the Commonwealth Games back in the 70's I think it was, to do backstroke.  He turned it down after qualifying and decided to focus more on the direction he wanted to go in.  If I remember his story correctly, his personal best time for that particular event in backstroke was faster then the guy who won the Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games he was supposed to go to.  And it remained that way for a few Games afterwards.

- I have less sensation in my finger tips then a normal person.  All those years of hairdressing must have killed off some nerves.  I probably should have worn gloves more often.  Oopsy.

- I don't really have any friends.  I have lots of acquaintances.  If you want to be my friend, you're most welcome too.  I miss having friends.  The trouble is I'm opinionated and not afraid to share it.  And there is no such things as grey to me.  Either it's black, or white.  No inbetween.  It's either right or wrong.  The end.

- I don't like gold jewellry.

- I hang my clothes in colour order darkest to lightest, each in their own category.  My husband has given up trying to put my clothes away for me.  He puts things on coathangers, then puts them on the doorknob ready for me to put away.  My shoes used to be like this, but then I got sick of bending over.

- I hate ironing.  I have stopped buying clothes that require ironing.  I have a shirt that I bought about a year ago.  It required ironing.  I think I've worn it 3 times.



And that's me.  I'm full of quirks, but I like me.  So it's all good.

Hope you had a creative day!  I'm excited to see all the giveaways I'm going to win over the weekend.  None for you, all for me!! :P

A Day in the Life of Jessamy

#15

Hi, my name is Jessamy.  I am the hair model for A Christy Production, and this is what I did yesterday.

Hairdresser Christy decided I needed my hair done.  It was looking a bit scrappy and it had been a few months since I had a shampoo and a new style.

I agreed.  So she decided we'd do the full treatment,  starting with a good rinse.

She actually kinda drowned me.  But since I have no voice box I have to just grin and bear it.  Afterall, she is a professional right?

She gave me a pretty thorough Shampoo.  And she got soap in my eyes which hurt like hell.

But I forgave her because she gives a killer scalp massage.

She wrapped me all up and we went into the other room to start my transformation.  

Now I need to fill you in on a bit of my history.  Christy and I have been friends for a long time.  We first met in 2003 when she started studying Hairdressing in College.  We have  been friends since.  She has given me many a hair makeover.  Some better then others (we won't talk about the time I had orange hair).  About a year ago, Christy's sister asked if I could stay at her house for a little while, so she could practise some new hairdo's on me.  Christy obliged and off I went - without a say in it.  One day, I was just chilling downstairs at Christy's sisters house, and her son Spencer thought he would do my hair for me.  I instantly grew worried.  But once again, the lack of voicebox was working against me and there was nothing I could do as I watched him cut my hair into a mohawk in the front, and cut me bald on my crown.  

I feel self conscious about it, but Christy assures me she can hide it.  I just have to trust her mad skills.

So next came a good brush and a blowdry. 

It's beginning to take shape, but those spikey bits have me a tad concerned.  And you can't even see half of it.  I'm pretty much bald just to the left of that side part.  Sigh... 3 year olds and scissors don't mix.

Time to start curling it all.  

And then she pinned it all up!!

Half a can of hairspray and a tub of bobby pins and we're stylin once again!  You'll be seeing more of me soon on Christy's blog!!

Have a nice day,

Jessamy.