Blue hair dye disaster

So after 10 bleaches in less than 1 week (you read correctly) and one very refreshing blonde toner, several clumps in my hair brush later (which I didn't really mind), my hair didn't exactly turn out the way I was expecting it to.

EXPECTATIONS

 REALITY

 ... So I applied the manic panic SHOCKING BLUE, and my hair went from blonde to a mix of black, navy, purple, blue, greenish brown... it doesn't seem to show on the picture, but in reality it's just allover the place, and transforming for the worse with every wash since. What I have wasted is a total of 100$, and as much as that is a mother load of allot for me in my circumstances (let alone a miracle that I was able to save up that much in the first place), looking on the bright side, it would have cost triple that at a salon. So yeah. That's the bright side, I guess.

I'll be honest. I got depressed for a few days. Really depressed. Might still be on the inside. But I'm making the effort to distract myself with yet another new idea I got for my Etsy shop that I truly believe will this time finally get my shop noticed & running. And I'm telling myself over and over that it's JUST hair. It's just that. And I don't even have a job out in public, so I can hide inside till I think of what the next step will be for my supersonic video game character troll-hair. (sigh...) Yeah, I know, I'm exaggerating. I think I deserve a bit of that. But again, on the bright side, my boyfriend and mom and sisters seem to enjoy the new look, and I guess that's a little comforting while it will still have to stay on my head.

Pomplamoose memories + Actually getting my blue hair!

Wow. I used to listen to this band allot a few years ago. I felt as if I'd found a real gem, really loved the sound of their music. Ever get one of those moments when you remember something is really good to the point that you stop everything you're doing and go find it?

If you like Feist, you'll love this Youtube born band and their covers / singles.

Well... in other news, I did something crazy 3 days ago! I went out and got 3 bottles of peroxide, 10 packs of bleaching powder and a few other things and started burning the dark brown right out of my hair in a long journey to platinum blonde, which is the base I will need to die my hair Shocking Blue by manic panic. I was supposed to keep my money for something else but... I thought, to hell with it. I'm just gonna finally do it.

I am currently a very pale ginger, not quite at the blonde yet, but I still have 3 more packs of bleach and a blonde hair color to go through before I expect I will be ready for the blue dye. My hair is very very angry at me, not friends with my brush much anymore but I calm it down with massive amounts of conditioner between bleaches. Yes, I've bleached my hair 7 times in the past 3 days. OUCH! I'm aware of what I'm doing, and as I expected, because I am not leaving the bleaching solution anywhere near my roots till the last 4-5 minutes of the treatment, I am not losing any hair. The damage is obvious but my hair recovers very easily with the right touch of love. (conditioning love)

So yeah! Hoping to get rid of this ginger tint tomorrow & finally get it all over with! 7 showers in just 3 days... and it's giving me some kind of a cold & wet scalp headache, not to mention a few bleach rashes resulting from my ears, neck & shoulders having been too exposed to the bleach. Once this is all done, I look forward to relaxing and enjoying the new almost witchy night blue look.

Bath Bombs by ZENfulworld (featuring Caramel Latte)

Caramel Latte Bath Bomb Bath Fizzy Made with by ZENfulworld

Oh my god! Look at this thing! Caramel Latte Bath Bomb. I am an absolute adorer of bath time, and with my collection of bubble bath soap and bath salt and whatnot, I had no idea this sorta thing existed.

"Drop one in the bath tub and watch it fizz. Great aroma! Also moisturizing and great for your skin!"

ZENfulworld on Etsy sells many of these pretty little bath bombs with a diversity of interesting scents. Putting a few of these on my Christmas list. (yes, I am aware of the current month)

Blue hair.

I don't know why, but ever since a few years now, I've been stuck on this insane idea of dying my hair completely blue. I don't mean Lolita blue hair or scene blue hair or any of that. Just blue hair. Just like that. If anything, I epxpect it will make me feel like I can tone down on everything else. Relax my wardrobe worries and stick to comfor and simplicity. I'm 20 years old and usually don't give into these kind of things but geez, I really gotta have that blue hair soon. Maybe not forever, but at least for a little while.

I kinda got up and got out of bed like the obsessive thinker that I am to look up pictures and pictures and pictures of blue hair. I found this image that I kind of like because the hair cut is a bit like the one I have now (And have had almost my entire life). The piercing thing is a... sudden innexplicable urge. I don't know, maybe the sudden interest will dissipate in a few days. Regardless, the plans for blue stay. I'll have it one day! That's a promise to myself.

Image source: [ link ]

Shop fiiinaly back in business.

We finally got internet at the new home. (when am I just going to start calling it home..?) The second the setup was completed, I reopened my shop and posted a new item! Not only that, I redesigned everything... E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. like a maniac. From my Gabrielle Caramelle logo, to this blog's entire layout, to the thumbnails in my shop, and so on. Refreshing.

(Bracelet link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/125626627/water-forest-minimalist-woodland-zen? )

I've also been doing allot of publicity on Etsy team forums, which has earned me 11 favorites in the last 24 hours. Made a list of threads to keep posting my items on daily. Let's get this all finally going...

Update: Presenting my new Sculpting Project! + Painting & Glossing FAILURE...

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a new project for my Etsy shop. Instead of making jewelry, I designed a bunch of different minimal looking sculptures in gold, black and white, like the ones in the image above. Those are the first two finished results so far. I can say I've gotten around to creating the shape. This is not a problem for me anymore. A few other things however turned out to have been a failure in this first batch.

The gloss I used, for instance, is some kind of semi-shiny polyurethane meant for wood. I guess that serves me right for asking advice on sculpting in a small shop that provides supplies for construction and home renovations. When I opened the can, the gloop inside was... some kind of peachy-salmony-orange. When I spread it on the sculpture, the color of the gloss didn't make a difference on the black and gold, but it did make the white allot less white, almost like bad teeth. Ouch.

...Not to mention that the white paint I used was old, with little crumblies in it, which made for a lumpy texture. It's not that I decided to use this bad paint despite it's condition, I kind of just found out along the way. I wouldn't have used it if I'd have known!! Too late, the lumpies have invaded. My paintbrushes are also getting old and crummy, too.  Yikes... I am in desperate need of new supplies! But all I have left is 10$.

I guess I'll go buy a good gloss at my local art store, and a pack of new paintbrushes to apply it without spreading dust around (goodbye old paint brushes). It's all I can really afford. The reason I'm so low on cash is I JUST DID my art groceries! (or rather, I thought they were done) : I got a can of white spray paint (ooh, fun!), an ENORMOUS roll of paper tape like I've never seen before, 3 different sized circle-sponge-brushes (round sponges on a stick) and when I realized that sponges make for awful poorly defined polka dots, a hole puncher.

The idea is to, for example, paint the entire sculpture gold, cut out my designs in the paper tape, stick it on the sculpture and spray paint my designs using the white spray paint. The hole puncher is for my polka dot patterns. I also got a skinny roll of tape for my striped sculptures. I'm hoping the spray paint will look more professional  (well, anyway, allot more professional than old lumpy white paint!) and save me allot of time.

It's okay!!! Everything's fine. This is taking forever, and I get it, new projects aren't always up and ready to run instantly, it's going to take me some trials and errors. We still don't have internet at the new home, but I'll try to keep coming to this coffee shop for the WiFi to post updates. It's a nice experience anyway, getting away from my new daily load of god awful house chores. (they're not that bad, I'm just lazy ;P) And as much as an x-small coffee with whipped cream might not be anything like a tall choco-mint iced cappuccino, it's still better than no coffee and no internet.

Presenting our 3 week old kitten! + Currently

That's my little baby!!! Bijoux! (French for jewel/jewelry/precious thing, as in a "un vrais bijoux" ("a real gem")) This is our kitten to be. Well, he is currently a kitten. Duh. But he's only a few weeks old, so we can't take him to the new house for another month or so. I got to hold him for two hours today, sitting warmly at the fire. He squirms and meows when you lift him, which worries me, but when I set him down on me, he calms down. I think he's getting used to me, because every time I pick him up he seems to be getting more comfortable, falling in deeper sleeps rather than dropping his head and lifting it up like he's surprised himself off guard like he did the first time I picked him up. Today he even rolled over on to his back and started stretching and licking himself! (or, trying to lick himself rather... it was dead CUTE!) It was brief, but it means he feels at least a little safe on me... right? I think he liked baking in the warmth near the fire, rather than being at the back of that closet, for a change...

I've been seeing people, and this is funny, everyone everywhere allover my blog reader, saying this or something similar: "Everyone has been doing this Currently thing so I'm gonna do it too!". And so, here I am, pretty much saying the same thing.

// c u r e n t l y //

Drinking : My dad's really into juicing, so... today's mix is cucumber, chicory, celery, ginger, strawberry... it's just allover the place. Can't really place the taste, but... it's healthy! Definitely healthy.

Listening : Needed to listen to Lilies (Bat for Lashes, Haunted Man) and stumbled upon one of my all time favorites, Let Go (Imogen Heap, Frou Frou), which feels... really really good. Really don't listen to music enough...

Anticipating: MOVING OUT! G'AAAH! Two days... TWO DAYS!!!

Planning: Waiting for Oli to finish super at his mom's, cause he said when he'd come back, we could go to the house so he can show me how apparently wonderful the curtains we picked yesterday look all set up, and so that we can start putting away kitchen supplies and all my little bathroom things! YAY!!!

Watching: See, that's the thing. You can't have a "Drinking" and a "Watching" in the same "Currently" post. Unless currently doesn't mean right right now, but generally as of late. I'm gonna admit that the listening part was more like... half an hour ago. I am however truthfully watching, right now, American Idol. My dad got this china device that records your PC's live TV and I'm in the room. And I can't help but turn my head around every time Niki Minaj talks because I just can't get enough of her. I mean, Niki Minaj. She's, she's just a whole hell of a lot of something.

Missing: Bijoux! He's in my sister's bedroom with his mom, who's a total cow of a cat. Attacks everyone for no reason, completely unapproachable. Motherly hormonal cat gone wild. So I avoid going in there.

Going: To scavenge for food in the fridge.

Art Schools

The two schools I am hesitating over going to are these:Lionel Groulx, a french college only two buses away with a good art program that allot of my art student friends have been through.

(Image sources: The Lionel groulx website and Journal de Montreal)

1. Lionel Groulx College

which has an apparently excellent art program that many of my art student friends have been through. My issue with this school is the fact that I am not looking for a full college experience that will look good on my CV. I feel that some of the classes might be a waste of my time as I really only want to take classes that are going to be relevant to the kind of work I am going to be doing as a lone artist. I'm not going to be working for a company, I'm going to be working for myself. And time is a factor in all of this. I'll have to check with the school if there is any way to cut the classes I don't feel I will need. I'm not excluding the informative classes verses the technical classes, like history of art for example. I'm thinking more of classes completely unrelated to art, the basic college classes like English and so on. I feel those would be a waste of time and money.

2. Visual Arts Center's Art School

This is not the official image, I took it with Google Maps. This is a school in Montreal that specifies in Art. It isn't just a school, it's also an art gallery from Tuesday to Friday on weekdays, and on Saturdays. They have many classes, from painting to drawing to photography, to sculpting, and so on. Seems allot more... to the point than going ahead with the full college program... package. Honestly this appeals to me more than the college thing, but it is much farther down town, and if I don't have a car and driver's licence by then... ahhh! It's going to be scary for me. I fear Montreal. Montreal is a bit comparative to New York safety wise... verses it's safer surrounding cities. And I have a hard time picturing myself walking around those streets alone in the evenings...

These are the two schools I have to consider. I will have a decision to make soon, so I'll be thinking it over.

Shipping a Canvas Painting

I haven't blogged here for some time because I've been spending all my free time from school boxing, because Oli and I will be moving out more or less in 9 days from now. This is both very exciting and very tiring for me, as I sort through the mess I've let accumulate, that used to be something of a bedroom.

I came across a painting of a clown girl I'd drawn a few months back and couldn't really picture this one on any of our walls. I figured I should look into how I would go about selling it, if I could manage to. How does one ship a canvas?

This video on Youtube shows how simple it is to ship a 20x16" Canvas with this company's simple shipping supplies. It's called the Canvaspak.

I looked it up on their website and it says that for this size of canvas, which is exactly the size I happen to need, it would cost £50.18 for a pack of 10. In other words, About 79 Canadian dollars, divided into ten. The packaging cost would thus be of less than 10$ for a canvas, which is better than I had expected.

Now I wonder how much it is going to cost to ship this to the US, Canada and Worldwide... It's going to be funny shipping things out considering my mom just got a job at my preferred post office! Life is getting so strange for me. All these new things in store for my near future... I hope this change in lifestyle will be refreshing. I'm actually counting on it.

Supplies restrock + Shop updates

I've really been on vacation these past few weeks. My plans for my shop were kind of all over the place and I guess I needed to clear my head to start thinking of the right directions to take. Now I feel ready to dive back in.

This weekend, Oli and I went to Omer Desserres, which is the place to get art supplies here in... what, Quebec? 

I got myself a bunch of supplies:

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• 5 tubes of metallic/glittery acrylic paint. (REALLY effective!!! I tried it on my skin and it's really something.)
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• A pack of sculpting tools
• A very thin paintbrush
• Stretchy cord for jewellery (GOOD stretchy cord, hopefully. The last 3 bracelets I tried to do exploaded on me! Dollar store + me = over)
  
  
• Cutting tool (to make my own stamps out of foam sheets)
• 2 Coasters ready to be painted on
• Two 16"x20" canvases, which is as big as I feel safe permitting myself to use (the larger ones are still a little intimidating for me... but I'll get there eventually!)
  
  
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  Etsy shop

  Apparently, having multiple themes in your shop is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as your personal style ties them all together... So that means allot of time saved for me. Few!

  So I guess... I'm free to start any kind of project I'd like for the shop? I should make a plan!

  PROJECTS IN MIND:

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  • "BunnyBoxes" (drew the idea on Paint as seen above)
  •  Sculptures shaped like Hersheys Kisses / Droplets
  • Paintings IF I can figure out how to ship them
  • Jewelery (necklaces, bracelets, earrings too, eventually)
  • Digistamps
  • Painted Kleenex boxes & Painted jewelery boxes
  • Boxes / Bags with prints on them (prints meaning stamps I design and make on my own, printed on to objects)
  • Origami decor
  • Painted Stickers

  
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   Looking forward to getting back into my shop. Oli and I are moving out in 3 weeks. Things will be easier for all of us then, and life can move on! For now, my time is going to be invested in boxing all my things... this is so exciting!!!