think pink.

Pink hair with kool-aid and food coloring. I felt like a unicorn. I didn't like it that much.

Love,
Kaia

i am not a goddess.

It's pretty apparent that I try to steer away from any talk of hair because ever since I bleached my hair in April, I haven't stopped experimenting with different colors and dyes and methods of dying. All the talk about my hair makes it hard for me to talk about anything else. I'm going to talk about it this time because it feels weird to have my hair suddenly change in outfit posts and not talk about it. It'd been four months since I bleached my hair, and my roots were completely visible and I had to find time to fix it. I hadn't decided what color I was going for, just that I wanted to fix up the roots. After bleaching roots the first time I had to go back and have my roommate touch up all the areas that I missed. I mixed too much bleach and ended up bleaching the rest of my hair. Some pictures I took after bleaching. When Emily saw the pictures she said "oh my god, Bianca. You look like a goddess." I couldn't stop laughing. The first picture was taken on high exposure while the second one was taken on medium. The latter is a pretty accurate representation of the color at the time. It was bright and yellowy, but not nearly as blinding as the orange I had gotten in my first round of bleaching earlier this year. This other picture was taken after I dyed it with Revlon Colorsilk Ultra Light Ash Blond. Also when I took the pictures from last week. I liked it okay, but didn't think it suited me. Pale yellow blond looks fantastic with fair skinned people with an even skintone. I have a medium-uneven skintone, so my hair color requires me to cake on foundation every morning, which I don't like doing. Since my hair was light, I had the liberty of going pretty much any color that I wanted. I've wanted to try La Riche Directions hair dye for a while, so I bought myself some online. I highly recommend this website! It only took two or three days to get my order. My top choices were pastel pink and silver, but since I went pink relatively recently, I bought the silver. La Riche Directions is semi permanent like Manic Panic, for those who are familiar with it. It can be left on the hair as long as you'd like because there isn't developer in it to harm your hair. It works kind of like applying conditioner. The silver comes in a little indigo tub and looks pretty indigo-blue when applied (similar to purple shampoo but more blue). Silver was what I was attempting when I bleached my hair earlier this year. I've wanted silver hair since Tavi first went silver. It didn't work out because my hair was still in the orange phase so it wasn't nearly light enough to take the silver tones. The results weren't unpleasant, though. Silver worked out a lot better this time around, though. Silver goes relatively nicely with all clothes. It photographs unexpectedly well (meaning the pictures are nicer than in real life). The dye works better the lighter your hair is, so in all of the parts my hair was a pale-nearly-white-yellow, it washed out as an aqua silver. The parts where the yellow was a bit darker, it came out more like a haystack-sand. From far away it mixes pretty well but the difference is very visible up close. So far I've only washed my hair once since dying so I don't know how long the dye will last yet. If it washes out and I'm back to yellow blond by October, I'm dying my hair pink for my birthday. Love, Kaia

and now back to hair

I dyed my hair last week with powder drinks since my hair faded to that really gold shade of blond that I don't like again, and I had a little more time on my hands. You might remember me trying out Kool Aid as dye earlier this year. I didn't leave it on for very long, thus the color was barely visible in most lighting.

I slept on it this time around, making it that much more visible. This is after the first wash. It's been two washes now and the color faded less than my Fresh Light Champagne Pink (faded completely within three washes!) which is pretty sad considering hair dyes are made for dying hair and food coloring and drinks are just a temporary alternative.

I wanted to use Kool Aid Pink Lemonade this time around, so I went to Safeway to buy it but that flavor wasn't available, so I bought Crystal Light Pink Lemonade instead. BAD IDEA and I'll tell you why. I didn't realize until I was done applying and then touched my neck and thought "this is weird why is my neck sticky." Crystal Light has natural sweetener which results in stickiness when dried as opposed to single packet kool aid which is unsweetened. Opt for unsweetened if you can. I found out later in the week when I visited Target that Target carries Kool Aid in pink lemonade. Woops too late.

1. The box of Crystal Light was $2.99 for 10 packets. In my mixture I used 7 packets, a packet of Kool Aid strawberry that I found left over from last time, a couple pinches of Kool Aid grape (which didn't seem to show up at all), a few drops of neon pink food coloring, a little bit of water, and conditioner and mixed it all together. And don't forget gloves!

2. Applied it on my hair and combed through it to make sure I got everywhere. Then I clipped it up and put on a shower cap, then laid a towel out on my pillow and slept on it.

3. Washed it out in the morning, and voila! I would suggest just rinsing it out and not shampooing right away.

I was going to talk more but this is a relatively text heavy post so there you go. It's just past 10pm but it feels so late because I've been waking up at 5am since Saturday so I wouldn't miss the gymnastics event finals as they stream live. There's lots of events tomorrow so I have to wake up at 5 again and probably go to sleep now.

Yeah.

Love!

Kaia

i like pink a whole lot.

Just a quick hair update. The food coloring dye only lasted for a wash. After that I dyed my hair ash grey again, but it didn't last very long because I had packets of kool-aid lying around and I threw a packet of black cherry on my bangs. Big mistake. It turned kind of pink but mostly really gold. Afte another wash it was just gold. It looked kind of gross. I bought a box of Fresh Light Champagne Pink hoping that it'd kind of work. My deal with Japanese dyes is that it never stays on my hair for longer than a week. I like their dye-in-a-box colors a whole lot but they're so temporary. End result is a nice pinkish blond, which I really liked. But in some parts it looks a lot yellower, as if there's a temporary pink covering the yellow gold underneath. I washed my hair for the first time today after dying it and I can already see it fading a little. Disappointing! I don't know what I can do to make the color more permanent. Redying my hair once every few months I can understand but once a week to keep a color is too much of a stretch! I want pink hair forever. Love, Kaia

color fancy.

Today my brother was bored so we were driving around and decided to go to Safeway. I was roaming around and then thought "I wonder if I can dye hair with food coloring," so I bought a pack of neon colors. I tried Kool aid dye before, but I had dark brown hair at the time so it didn't work out. I figured it'd show at least a little bit with blond hair. There are a lot of cool colors I'd like to try, but pink would be the one I'd want to try the most. I wasn't sure how to go about doing this, but I figured it'd be difficult to apply it with water, so I mixed it in with conditioner for easy application. I started off with dry hair. After mixing the color together applying, the color shows up pretty bold. I let it set in for 30 minutes to an hour. I would have liked to leave it in longer to see if it would set in better if I gave it a few hours, but I didn't have that much time today. Result after washing the mix out and blowdrying. I rather like how it looks, though it's very subtle in most light and doesn't always look pink. In some pictures, it doesn't look any different. It looks pretty pink in the last picture. One of these days I'll actually dye my hair pink, but for now homemade alternatives are quick and fun. Love, Kaia

color me fancy.

I bought some hair dye over spring break in March, but I need to bleach my hair before I can use the dye, and I hadn't had time to go buy supplies until I made time last week. There isn't a Sally's in Manhattan or Brooklyn, so it's a little bit of a hassle. I had never bleached my hair before and I had been pretty terrified before and watched at least a dozen youtube videos and searched up several tutorials on blogs before hitting the store. I had my roomie help me with the back of my head. It wasn't as scary as I made it out to be. It wasn't uncomfortable and felt as if I was just dying my hair, except it lightens pretty fast with visible results. I had only ever dyed my hair black or brown before so I never saw results until I washed and dried my hair. The first bleach came out uneven. I was applying the bleach too slow and it became spotty in some areas, and my roots didn't bleach. I tried to cover up those spots on the second go. After applying, it didn't take long for my head to look yellow, so I freaked out and washed it out a little early. I didn't know that bleach looks lighter when it is still on as opposed to what it actually is when washed out. When I washed it out, the unbleached spots were mostly gone, but it was kind of gradiented so it goes light to dark. It was still more orange than yellow since I didn't leave it on long enough. It's like. Glowing orange. It hurts my eyes a bit. Bleaching and dying the same day didn't strike me as an option as my hair was already pretty dried out. I had the hardest time finding something to wear. Orange hair clashes with everything. After I took a break for a couple days I did toning, which didn't really do anything except make my hair feel really dry. I dyed that day too with Gatsby Aqua Silver. Honestly I didn't really know what to expect. In the color result chart, my hair color fell in between two base colors. I left it on for 30 minutes as the box suggested. It came out being Mostly ash blond with streaks of silver where the bleach took more effect. For the most part I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out! I'd planned to have it silver, but ash blond isn't bad either. I think I'll try silver some other time. Next year, I want to do pink, too. During the duration I had my hair bleached, I suddenly wanted to try all sorts of colors that I'd never really considered before. I never considered blond because I didn't think it'd look good. Cool tone hair is nice. No more color clashing. Happy first day of May! Love, Kaia

be strong be pop.

It's been a while since I blogged about music! I still buy CDs sometimes? I've always really liked the idea of owning CDs, so when there is a music artist that I really like, I buy all the albums. I used to buy singles whenever my favorite artists release them, but I haven't in a while because singles are really expensive for the amount of content there is. LM.C came out with a new album that was released April 4th and I received my copy of it yesterday! It took three weeks to arrive which is very normal, but I was anticipating for so long that I started to get really worried that it would be stuck in customs or lost. Back in California it took two weeks for Japanese imports to arrive, but three weeks to New York. Huge box is huge! That's because I bought the t shirt edition (which is too expensive ohmygod). I bought first press which is supposed to come with a poster, which is why I preordered. But I preordered about 4 days before the release, which was too late and I didn't get a poster. More than bummed. The shirt included is cute. It has an allover print in bright colors. It's a Japanese free size aka SMALL. It fits alright size wise, a little smaller than I would like, but the top is a bit tight if I have a bra on. Ever since I started second semester in Construction Techniques II, a lot of things on clothes kind of bother me. I pay too much attention to how something fits and the seaming detail and hem finishes. The neckline of this shirt bothers me. It wasn't constructed with very much care, which I can understand as it is a promotional item. But even so, it was a pretty expensive promotional item. I haven't talked about my hair yet. I will probably make a hair post soon. This was early yesterday, which was after the first bleach on Sunday. My hair is currently not this color. Tomorrow is the senior fashion show! There are 41 fashion seniors and the show cut down to 17 people presenting, and from what I've heard, all the ones presenting are all really strong. Non seniors are not allowed in the senior studios (I've been in twice to use specialty machines, though), so I haven't seen that many pieces. I'm excited! If I can I'll take pictures at the show, but I'm guessing I wont be able to grab a really good seat, as there will be a lot of people and I have class in the morning so I wont be able to make it to the city until a little later. Love, Kaia

salt is kind of analogous to hair accessories.

I was eating broccoli for lunch today and it didn't taste all that good so I added salt. All of a sudden it tastes so many times better.

Recently I've been really wanting to get a haircut. The back of my hair was getting unmanageable and the front is overgrown. The plan was to go last week, but I didn't have time so my trip was postponed to today.
Hair salons make me feel a little uncomfortable, actually. I never really know what to say or what to ask or any of that. I've never had a stylist that I felt really comfortable with, so I'm still pretty awkward. I went to Shine Salon in Brooklyn Chinatown to get a haircut, after reading reviews saying the price is affordable and the cuts are pretty good. I'd actually looked up and found the salon(s) that I wanted to go to before even moving.
The location isn't hard to find; it's only a short walk from the subway station. I freaked out a little bit when I didn't see it right away when I got to where I thought it was. I was on the wrong side of the street.

Since it's Chinatown, I'd hoped that the stylists there would be able to speak mandarin, because I feel more comfortable being able to communicate in mandarin. They spoke to me cantonese instead of mandarin, so communicating was a little more difficult because I'm not familiar with the language. I found out from my stylist, Raymond, while he was cutting my hair that all the stylists can understand mandarin, but don't speak it.

For my haircut this time, I asked for something like a helmet bob, with clean, straight bangs. Something like what I already had except shorter in the back and more tidy.
Raymond gave me the nice clean cut that I asked for. With the wash and massage, and then the extra wait from other customers, my cut took about an hour. It's the same cut I had when I started my blog, just a little bit shorter. In about a month's time, it should look pretty similar.

I wanted to dye my hair too while I was at it, but I didn't know how I should ask, and how much it would be, or how much time it would take. Fortunately I didnt because since it's cash only, I dont think I would have had enough money to pay for a dye job. After the wash, massage, cut, and tip, I paid $22. I'd never been to a salon myself before, so I didn't understand how paying worked. When I paid the total, the lady at the counter asked me where the tip was. So I paid that too, but looking at her expression, I'm guessing my tip was unsatisfactory. Woops.

On my way back, I passed by a shop with cute decor and it was instinctual to go in. I'm generally not very spendy, but something about getting haircuts makes me really want to buy hair accessories. I bought a hat-scarf and a cute hairclip that I forgot to take pictures up. Maybe I'll make a purchases post soon.

I've been wearing the scarf I bought ever since I bought it. I'm not usually this happy about purchases! It's so soft and nice and warm that I don't want to take it off.
It has bear ears and button eyes!! Makes me feel a little better for not having been able to afford the polka dot neck warmer bear hat at Peace Now San Francisco last winter. Actually I'm still kind of hung up about that.

This is my third post this month! So terribly few! Gosh that makes me really sad because I had a whole bunch of outfits that I wanted to post and didn't get to take pictures of because class starts in the morning and goes on until the evening, so the sun is down by the time I have time to take pictures. And I have events that I want to blog about. I'm part of Teen Vogue Fashion U's class of 2011; graduated last week!

And Kinokuniya shipped in both the November and December issue of KERA, which I bought both of. I'd like to write about those too. And I don't think I ever got to my wishlist post last month. Or this month, for that matter!

And I didn't write about my birthday!
Gosh, this has been a busy, busy month.
So is next month, for that matter.
Steppin up my game...

Love, Kaia

if i tried to do something cool with my hair i'd probably do something wrong and end up bald.

Hairstyle feature!! My light color design teacher, Kelly, has an incredible hairstyle. I asked her for permission to post her hair on my blog and got it okay'd! I want to share her amazing with the rest of the world.
Leopard print hair oh my god. It makes me want to do something with myself. I don't have nearly as much hair creativity and I'm pretty low maintenance. The most incredible part is that she does her hair herself as opposed to going to a salon! How she does that I don't know.
Kelly, me, and Shaelyn. I love cool teachers. I think Shaelyn and I missed the funny face cue.

I still want to dye my hair silver. After coming to art school, I think I kind of just want to dye my hair in general. No commitment, though. If I can't do it at home myself, then I know I'm going to put it off for a really long time.

Outfit post! I think this is from a couple days ago. I just haven't been able to get on long enough to post.
top, blouse, and skirt from Taiwan. tights from HUE, Doc Martens

College is a lot of fun. The workload never dies down, but I'm having a lot of fun every day. I'm so tired right now. I need to sleep but I should do homework and it's only 7:30.

I'm just going to think about it.

Love,
Kaia

you would think that my lack of a y chromosome would make me more girl.

But unfortunately my hair length still plays a big role on first impressions. I especially wore a dress to my first day of school so at least I wouldn't be thought to be a boy on my first day on campus.Which reminds me, my hair is growing into my field of vision. Still deciding if I want to go somewhere to get my bangs trimmed or if I want to do it myself. Lack of outfit posts recently, I know. The first few days I've been trying to take outfit posts with my DSLR but it's so loud when it takes pictures. Really awkwardly loud. So I went back to using my point and shoots.

Tee, jeans, and scarf from Taiwan, plaid shirt from Goodwill, shoes from Salvation Army.
These jeans usually feel tighter. I think I lost weight from the last couple days. I got lost and couldn't get back to campus myself so I followed other people and spent the whole day outside. I'm sort of frugal when it comes to food. Though yesterday night I spent ten bucks on pizza at Grimaldi's. The line must have been at least an hour and a half. Maybe two. The pizza was good; it tastes like they use higher quality ingredients, but I'd rather go for grab and go pizza.

These rainboots are pretty frickin uncomfortable. I'm usually a size 7.5, and these are size 6 shoes and they're still a size too big. It's dinnertime now so I'm going to go down now. Though I don't think there's free dinner tonight; just coupons. I miss free lunch and dinners.

Love, Kaia

hair rebellion.

Lately, I've been really fixated with hair. I really want to do something with my hair. I think it's because I'm going off to college soon, and I can do whatever I want with my hair after I move out. At this point, I'm not really sure what I want to do. Angled, shaved, pastel...something I haven't done yet, for sure. Though, I'll probably just settle with highlights or something my freshman year. Don't want to give my parental units a heart attack when I return for break.




Photo Credits: feel free to fill me in if you know any extra info about the pictures/ fill in unknown sources. Photo from Tumblr, Nylon Magazine, Kristen Dunst as Marie Antoinette, source unknown, source unknown, Elle editor Kate, Tokyo Fashion street snap, Tokyo Fashion street snap, Tavi, Tokyo Fashion street snap, f(x) (thank you, Kassidy!), Tokyo Fashion street snap, Ga In, Karlie Kloss, Key and Taemin.


Love, Kai