Sweet 2016

Hello, hello!

I haven't posted here in such a long, long time, and I found last night that I was able to resurrect my blog!

The main reason why I had stopped posting was due to the crossover from Blogger to GoDaddy.
Originally, I purchased my domain name, hibkoko.com, from Blogger. When Blogger moved this service over to GoDaddy, I managed my domain through there, until GoDaddy decided to sell the URL on.... Fabulous!

I couldn't access my blog at all. And last night, I was finally able to access it, for the first time in at least a year and a half!

So here we have it. Whether I carry on blogging at hibkoko or change to a brand new name, I'll be sticking to this from now on. I used to have such passion for blogging, and I wanted to reignite that passion I once had.

So for now, let's have a bit of a catch up, as my life has changed quite a lot since I last posted.

Let's see...


So the last time I posted:
I was 23 years old.
I had been living at home with my parents again for a while.
I was working as an Assistant Manager for a Topshop store.
I had silver hair.
I had a few facial piercings.
I had one tattoo.

Although not huge topics, these are some main, and noticeable (visually especially) things in my life that have changed!

Roll on 2016 (even though I'm still going to be writing 2015 on everything for the next few months) and all of the above, has now become the below:

I'm 25 years old. 

How on earth did this happen?!! To be honest, I've had the attitude and mindset of a grandmother for many years now so it's not like it makes so much of a difference.

I live alone again.

Okay, so not totally alone. I live with Aimee! I'll have been living with her for two years in March.

I work in Head Office for Topshop Topman.

I work Monday to Friday again, woohoo! I enjoy my job so much more, and I have such a lovely team. (That's me on my last day in store above, and below, is me and some of my team now.)

I'm a blonde....again?

Yeah.... so I always end up going back to blonde. Long time followers of this blog will know that! I did go dark blue and mint green by mistake back in 2014 actually!

I only have three piercings now.

Okay, so not the most important thing, alongside not having silver hair, but it was a pretty big change! I now only have my right nostril, septum, and tongue piercing.

I now have a fair few tattoos...

That's some of them. 90% of the tattoos are on my legs, and it looks like they're the part of my body that will be most covered! 

I'm really looking forward to writing more entries and really getting to know everyone again, and hopefully, everyone can get to know me again too!

How to become a Mermaid!

Hello!

Eek! I feel a bit bad not blogging for a few weeks! But nothing much of significance has been happening in my life really! I've mainly just been working and chilling out really! Life is now so much better. I can't believe that only a month ago (maybe just a little more over) that this whole crazy thing happened. When I think and try to look back on it, all I feel is how good this has been for me, and that he actually did me a favour!

I sorted out my hair extensions - finally - so now I am a glorified MERMAID! I posted this picture to my Instagram in preparation for the epic dying fest:

So as you can see, I've ended up using a mixture of Crazy Color and Directions for my current hair! I'm giving Crazy Color another go, even though it's still not my favourite dye! The one thing I've had problems with so far is the purple, because as soon as I put heat on it, it goes white! But that's to be expected, as purple and blue tones are usually found in the undertones of silver hair colouring/toners. It's actually a good (and sometimes cheaper way) way to tone hair if you haven't got any silver dye/toner to hand. Just mix a dark purple with some conditioner, leave it on the hair you want to tone and it will work! It will either bring it to a nice pastel lilac shade or the silver you want. Conditioner is such a boss, as you can do so much with it.

So as a refresher, when my hair was done by the salon, it looked like this:

And the pastel shades faded quite quickly, as you would expect them to! So when it came time to redo my hair, this is what I came up with:

I completely got rid of the pastel pink because I wanted something a bit more vivid, and I also brightened up the pastel shades! This picture is taken without a filter as it really shows off the true shades! After I washed my hair once and used straighteners, this is how my hair came out:

So it was time to re-dye! (hence the lovely dying cape!) And I took some photos to show you how I do it (as I get asked soooo much haha)

Here are the things you'll need!
1) Mixing bowls/tubs - yes, I use Ice Cream tubs! They hold a lot of volume and are just perfect as they're washable etc, AND they're great value, as the ice cream itself is maybe like, £3-4? And good mixing bowls at a salon supply store can sometimes cost more than that - for something even smaller!
2) Hair dye...obviously :D
3) Conditioner - if you're planning to do pastel shades or just want to tone down a more vivid colour, which is what I did with the blue in my hair
4) A mirror - really handy to see the back of your hair in another mirror
5) Gloves - my lovely marigolds that I bought in a conbini in Japan in 2010!
6) Tint brushes - a few different sizes can be great
7) Hair clips/grips to clip away parts of your hair you aren't ready to do just yet
8) A dying cape or a towel you don't mind getting dye on. I got the cape in a hair shop for about £2, and it's super handy

If you're combining conditioner and a dye together, then pick the colour(s) you want  - I would recommend using a few different tubs/bowls so you can alternate between each colour (if you're doing more than one in your hair) rather than mixing up a batch and then washing it all out and mixing another.

It really is this simple! I think people seem to think that dying hair at home is a big inconvenience and really difficult to do, but it's so easy, and it's really fun! Keep mixing in more conditioner until you have your desired shade!

This is how the "work station" looked whilst I was dying my extensions, and as you can see, I had 3 different tubs for each colour, and I used 3 different brushes too. It's easier to do your dying in a bathroom/kitchen where there is a sink at hand! When my hair was just pastel pink, it was easy to do it in my bedroom with no sink needed, but now it's a little bit more tricky, so it's really helpful to have this at your disposal. 

My extensions came out these colours when I dyed them and were slightly darker than my hair so this time I wanted to match them more, and made the blue darker, and didn't mix any conditioner with the purple.

Ignore my man hands and my incapability to paint nails properly, and you will see that this is how the dye looks like on. I didn't really need to do the pink again, so I only did the blue and purple.

AND. THE FINISHED RESULT....

Of course with matching eyebrows! Well, I hope this was an interesting blog for you to see! If you want me to post more hair/beauty related stuff, let me know! After all, it's my passion :D