Seeking Silver: Mellor & Russell Simply Bright

This is the first post in my new series "Seeking Silver". I will be trying out many different silver hair dyes/toners and showing my process and results with you. This web series will be hosted on my YouTube channel with more in depth opinions written over here! If you have any dye/ toner requests leave them in the comments either here or on YouTube and I'll try my best to get a hold of them.

The first dye I am trying out is the Mellor & Russell Simply Bright Cool Silver hair dye which I purchased from... Poundland!?

The picture below is the state my hair was in just before applying the dye. My hair was an extremely dark pink into pastel pink before I bleach bathed it out, so that's why my roots were a much darker/ brassier blonde than the rest of my hair. 

In the box comes the tube of colour, a bottle of 9% (30 vol) and a pair of plastic gloves. The instructions are printed on the inside of the box, so you need to cut/tear it open carefully to make sure you don't make them unreadable. It doesn't come with a conditioner for afterwards, but I usually use my own hair masks anyway.

I decided to switch the developer (35ml same as was contained in the box) to my own 6% (20 vol) as my hair is already extremely pale and usually takes to colours quite well. I would have used 3% (10 vol) if I had any at hand, as that would be adequate for depositing colour. Personally I prefer to mix my dyes up in a tint bowl and apply with a tint brush, but if you're good using a bottle that's fine!

Upon opening the tube of colour I was surprised to see it was a light orange (I was expecting blue or purple!), I was a bit sceptical about using the dye but went ahead anyway. I applied the dye to my roots first (as that's where my hair needed the most toning), and then worked through my lengths. A short while after applying the dye to the hair it started to change to a more grey/ lilac tone; which made me feel more relaxed. 

 The instructions say to leave the dye on between 20-40 minutes, so I decided to leave it on for 40 to see the fullest effect. After rinsing the colour out I used my OSMO intensive deep repair mask and left it on for around 10 minutes to give my hair some moisture, rinsed again and ran some serum through my ends for a little extra lovin'.

After my hair had dried my results were as above. I'm extremely impressed with how well this dye toned my hair, considering it's price. I wasn't expecting it to do much to my hair at all (especially not my roots; which were extremely brassy), but it has brought my hair to a lovely silvery-white shade! My roots are still a tiny bit brassy, but it's not noticeably different from the rest of my hair (unless you look very closely). My hair didn't feel any drier or more damaged after using this dye, which is always a good thing! I've now had this hair for 3 weeks and the colour hasn't changed (although I have been using a good silver shampoo).

If your hair is much darker than mine was before using the dye it won't bring your hair to the same shade as mine, though, it will probably neutralise yellow blondes to a more ash blonde colour. Also if you're looking for a darker steel grey/silver then this is not the best dye out there for you. 

Overall I think this dye is a great option for people after the silver/white colour on a budget, but of course your hair will need to be pale enough to begin with. You can pick this dye up from Poundland, or search around on Ebay/ Amazon for it, but of course you won't find it cheaper than £1. If you aren't in the UK it might not be worth trying to find, as I imagine it would be difficult to get a hold of or much more expensive.

Thanks for reading!

♥

I've started making jewellery?

A few months ago I was searching around on the web for a new head chain. The only one I had was one I bought for a Galadrial costume (as a cheap alternative to her circlet), I'm pretty sure it was off eBay from China so it was pretty inexpensive.

I don't seem to have any photos in full costume and not intoxicated...

If you watch my YouTube videos you would've seen it in my mindfulness video! It's just a three chained head chain, a quite big metal circle to the front with a metal and diamante sphere hanging from it.

When I was searching for another head chain I had quite a specific idea of what I wanted it to look like, I knew I definitely wanted a crystal to be the main focus, with a little extra detailing... but not too much. After searching for a while and not finding what I was after I thought fuck it! I'll just make it myself! I ordered a bunch of different supplies and waited impatiently for everything to arrive, then as soon as everything was together I started playing around trying figure out the best way to create my idea.

I was pretty pleased with my first attempt, I was expecting it to come out terribly but I was pleasantly surprised with myself. It was by no means perfect, but after wearing my first endeavour for a couple of days I decided on a few alterations I wanted to make. 

I really didn't like the colour difference of the metal cones to the silver chain, how the cone was attached to the head chain (as I thought the wiring looked quite untidy and just wasn't quite right), also, a bunch of my friends wanted to try it on and found it was a little tight on them (I have quite a small head). So I ordered some silver cones, decided to try again with some gunmetal chain, figure out a neater way to wrap the wiring, and altered the measurements for the chain.

After making my improvements on the next few head chains these are what I came out with:

Rose Quartz crystal

 Blue Aventurine crystal

Carnelian crystal

I'm quite happy with how they're turning out and I'm also making silver versions and still playing around with different ideas! It'd be awesome if you guys could let me know what you think! I have loads of different types of crystals in different colours so if you'd like any more information just send me a message! It's usually best to message me on my Facebook page but any of my social platforms would work if you don't have a Facebook account.

Thanks for reading!

♥

2014

Reflecting on it, 2014 has been an extremely trying year for me. I've been all over the place this year - in terms of my mental health.

As some of you might know after I finished college in July 2013 I decided to take a gap year to try and work on myself (mental health), I registered as self employed and started doing promotional work, it was also around this time when my boyfriend moved to Germany for his placement year of his degree - both of these things carried through to 2014.

In 2014 I had two major breaking points with my mental health where I tried to commit suicide, one in April and the other in November. I had many many less severe instances throughout the year but with both of these times I ending up taking overdoses, which resulted in hospitalisation. In March I had the crisis team out to me every day until I stayed in a respite house for a few days as a different form of help (alternative to psychiatric unit), I also had to stop driving for a while, had an increase of medication, and was referred to have a CPN (community psychiatric nurse) as I needed more specialised therapy. All of this was set up in Staffordshire where I was living in my family home, but, in September I moved to Manchester to start studying Musical Theatre and was left without any support.

Just before moving to Manchester my CPN was moved to a different team, the community mental health team were going to assign me a new CPN but as I was moving I told them there was no point. Trying to get a transfer of care in Manchester has been extremely difficult, I had no idea where or how to sign up at a GP for starters, without the complexity of having to find information on mental health support teams etc. My anti depressants had seemed to not be working for a while and without access to a doctor or any kind of support I was starting to spiral downwards again, I was missing so much university, I was so far behind and deadlines were approaching but I couldn't get myself to do anything other than lie on my bed with the lights off all day. All I wanted to do was get 'fucked up' because it made me feel something, I could pretend I was this other person for awhile and actually feel some kind of positive energy within myself.

Another overdose. This time not much was put in place, I was taken back to my family home for a few weeks to be looked after, I've been referred for a CPN here now (which might take a while before I'm assigned someone), I had a medication change which involved having to come completely off my current tablets which I don't think helped how I felt at all.

I suffer with clinical depression, anxiety, horrendous mood alterations, dissociation, and a few more 'symptoms'. It's been questioned quite a few times this year whether I have Borderline Personality Disorder, which honestly I would be fine knowing I have. I'm yet to have a proper diagnosis, and though being diagnosed doesn't define you as a person I feel like I would be so relieved knowing there's an actual reason for me being the way I am.

I've suffered with my mental health really badly for a very long time, the first time it became apparent to others was when I was 13/14. since then I've been pretty secretive about all of it (regarding friends) and I've tried to keep it under wraps and try and keep it out of my life but it's such a huge part of who I am. I've realised ignoring this won't make all other areas of my life "normal" because what the fuck is normal? For such a long time I've told myself because I've just had an extremely bad period of time mentally it'll even out and I'll be fine for a while but clearly that logic isn't quite right, because it always comes back sooner than anticipated. Starting this year I'm going to try and be more open about it, and stop putting things off to work on my mental health, as it could stay with me for my entire existence I need to try to carry on with my life. It affects me in such massive ways and trying to keep up with myself and everything else and separating parts of my life is exhausting... I hope that makes sense. I suppose that's my new years resolution, being more open with people, but also being more truthful to myself.

On a lighter note, here are a couple of positive things that happened in 2014:

I visited Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain. 

(and skied on a mountain for the first time)

Tegernsee (Germany)

Munich (Germany)

Dolomites (Italy)

Innsbruck (Austria)

Dolomites (Italy)

Palma (Mallorca)

Palma (Mallorca)

I gained 4 cats at my family home
Sid, Dita, Dolly, and Kitty ♥

I moved to Manchester and started studying at The Arden School of Theatre.

If anyone is going through anything and doesn't have anyone to talk to or just wants to chat, I would love to speak to you, it's probably best to email/ facebook me. All my links are at the side and my email is in 'contact' ♥

Sending love and positivity to all of you for 2015.

♥