Damn, Girl Special Edition: Beauty Youtubers

As my very first Damn Girl feature, I am doing a special edition. My current obsession is YouTube beauty bloggers. I have been a fan of general blogging for a while but only recently have I discovered the multitude of fantastic bloggers - or vloggers - on YouTube. If you found yourself in The Click List recently then you will have seen a couple of the channels to which I am subscribed. Because of this, I decided to compile a little list of my favourite beauty and fashion ladies and why I like them so much.

5. Beauty Crush
Sammi was the first beauty blogger that I subscribed to and it was through her that I subsequently found all of the other numerous beauty and fashion Youtubers that I am currently following. She has a keen eye for dupes of more expensive products which in my opinion is fantastic.

image via www.gramfeed.com/labeautycrush

A Bit Of Tumblr Inspiration

So I have been, for quite some time, a fan of Tumblr. I've been tumbling (yeah I just said that) for about two years now and I have to say that for a scrapbooker like myself Tumblr is an absolute haven. I always see people posting various style inspiration pictures on their blogs and even though I don't normally do that, there are just so many fantastic pictures floating about at the moment that I couldn't resist. So I just chose a few little pictures that I am finding particularly inspirational at the moment.

This girl is probably the coolest individual on the planet...

Hair Flair

So as I summed up in a post HERE back in December my hair has changed quite a bit over the past few years. Now though I have decided I wanted to go very something altogether more natural.Preceeding this dicussion though, what did I decide to do? Dye my hair blue. Not entirely blue though (before you make that Seriously? face) just the bottom of it. Like a that dipdye that you see everywhere in that moment. It's just so faded now and is quite greeny unfortunately but I did like it quite a lot for the first few days. The semi-permanent colour that I used was Peacock Blue by Crazy Colour which you can buy in lots of Hairdresser supply stores for about seven euro or so.

I also made the massive mistake though of not wearing gloves (moron) as I had recently put lilac through my hair and as well as having little effect on my hair it did nothing to my hands. The blue however did and I had to do some major scrubbing to get it down to what you can see below.

All I want is for it to do now is grow which it seems to be doing painfully slowly. As it is now quite prominently divided into three different colour sections of equal parts brown, blonde and quickly fading blue so I figured that it was time to make a bit of a change. When I get back home after my exams I have decided to get my hair either striped of colour (which is so so bad for your hair) or just dyed the same colour as my roots which are now a light brown colour.  

Hopefully it will be back to around the length that you see below (taken September 2010) soon. Fingers crossed anyway. 

I am really feeling Scarlett Johansson as hair inspiration at the moment, all except for this dodgy look HERE. Am particularly liking this ones HERE, HERE and HERE if I cannot bring myself to ditch the blonde.

On a final note here a great song that is getting me through these final exams. 

Cheers for reading,

Jane

Backcombing Brush

So the other day I was casually walking around Penneys (Primark), minding my own business, when this little brush caught my eye. I am not really that bothered about styling my hair - I dye it a lot and occasionally curl but most of the time my hair is either just tied up or left straight down, I also wear an unhealthy amount of hairbands - but I am not immune to the odd bit of backcombing. At €1.50, I wasn't going to leave this little gem behind.

So there it is (above) still in its packaging. As you can see my hair is a little flat so this is an ideal product for me. Y'know the way you can have combination skin? Well I have combination hair. Because of the blonde dye, the ends are quite dry and a little frizzy (I know this probably isn't a good thing but I actually rub moisturizer into my hands and then pat it through the ends of my hair which helps an awful lot), yet my roots get greasy quite quickly. This isn't helped by the fact that I have quite fine hair, it's healthy hair despite all the dye - no snappy ends or anything - but fine all the same. 

So here is the wee brush in all its glory. The end of it looks vaguely like something you'd polish your shoes with but as a backcombing brush it's quite fantastic. At the opposite end of the brush there is a little pointy thing for lifting hair up which will also I'm sure prove quite handy for parting (not that I experiment much with my parting).

I wasn't going for an all out backcombed look but as you can see from the picture below and the picture  at the top, it does create quite a bit of extra volume particularly in the little quiff thing that I have going on. Finish it off with a bit of hairspray and you're ready to go. I use Toni and Guy's stuff because it holds really well as you can see in my Halloween costume post.

So there you go. Pop into Penneys for your very own backcombing brush because it really is very good. I did not go all out for a mad backcombing look but if I do attempt a bouffant in the coming weeks then I may post a quick picture of it so you'll be able to see how well this wee brush works. 

Also, dear reader, if you do happen to be a follower/regular reader of my blog, you'll probably have noticed that I'm not really a posed picture kind of gal. I don't take pictures of myself for the purpose of this blog - I once did a makeup post but I took it down because I couldn't bear the Photobooth-style pictures of myself but I'm quite happy with how there photos turned out so I'll leave them up, and maybe I'll even do a few more.

Plus, for anyone who is interested I'm wearing MAC's Vintage Vamp on my nails. I just bought it last week and I so love the colour!

On an unrelated topic, Diet Coke and Benefit have recently joined forces with their Get Glam makeup kit competition and guess who just won a set!?! Just got the email this evening and I am so thrilled! It is the perfect start to my 21st birthday month! Cannot wait for it to arrive. Hopefully it will be here in time for my birthday. I kind of doubt it though because it said in the email that it would arrive within six weeks. Still super excited for it though. Yay!! 

Cheers for reading,

Jane

she had nothing human about her, just mystery

I have for a very long time been a fan of Edie Sedgwick and consider this November past was the fortieth anniversary of her death, I have decided to do a post about her.
I don't know when I first became aware of Andy Warhol but art has always been an important thing in my house so I guess I was probably introduced to the man himself as a child. As a kid though I probably didn't understand his art but as I got a bit older I started to appreciate it. When The Eternal Now: Warhol and The Factory 1963-1968 came to Sligo back in October of 2007, my mum and dad were given tickets to the opening night. I attended with them, with two friends of mine from boarding school and with the three of us being the only people there under the age of 40, an absolute blast was had!
While drinking tons of champagne and enjoying the oysters (ugh!), we trotted around the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, admiring the work of our man Andy.

 It was a unanimous decision that the Silver Clouds instillation, created in conjunction with electrical engineer Billy Kluver, was our personal favourite as it kept us entertained throughout the night, while all of the adults chatted amongst themselves. 

Seeing Factory Girl back in 2006 was, I'd say, my first introduction to Miss Sedgwick and her tragic, yet iconic, life. Having seen Edie portrayed by Jennifer Rubin in The Doors and by Michelle Williams in I'm Not There under the pseudonym CoCo Rivington, I do think that Sienna Miller's portrayal of her was truly fantastic. The image below of Edie balancing on the leather rhino is one of my favourites and I am constantly reblogging it on Tumblr. I also really like the promo shot of Sienna Miller striking the same pose. 

image via google.images.com

image via google.images.com

Edie Sedgwick has been a style icon for decades and in my opinion she will continue to be for a long time as she embodies 1960s chic. Back at the beginning of the summer when I lobbed off all my hair, a friend of mine said it was kind of Edie Sedgwick-ish which I did not discourage.

my edie hair

Cheers for reading,

Jane

evolution of hair

My exams are over! Yay!
Again with the celebratory balloons, this time with a silly wistful look.

So I have decided to do a super long post about hair. My own hair in particular. So I guess I'll start at the beginning.

Possibly a tad to far back but as you can see, I had average baby hair.

I had fair hair as a kid. I was very fortunate as with the slightest bit of sun, tons of natural little highlights would begin to appear and it grows extremely quickly too. Fast forward a bit and just before my twelfth birthday my mum took me to New York and as a treat in anticipation for said trip, I had my first dose of highlights, beginning a life long obsession with hair dye. Now compared to my older sister my zeal for hair dye just seems like a mere inclination. She has been pretty much ever colour under the sun, including intentional neon orange. My range simply covered very dark brown to white blonde and pretty much every shade in between including dark red. So here is a little inventory of pictures covering the evolution of my hair. 

age 13

age: 15

age: 16

age: 16

age: 17

age: 17

age: 18

age: 18

age: 18

age: 19

age: 19

age: 19

age: 20

age: 20

age: 20

So that last one is pretty much how my hair has been since May only it has got a little bit longer as you can see in the picture below. After I dyed it really light blonde back in the Spring I also got my eyebrows tinted darker. I like the whole contrast thing. I intend to keep it this way for a while longer but I'll probably change it after Christmas.  

Anywho so that is my hair.

Cheers for reading,

Jane