Teased Orange Hair: Update & Inspo

I know what this blog hasn't seen in a while - hair and makeup looks! Since I got a new phone for the holidays I've been documenting my face a lot more. My old phone's camera was gone, plus the phone was really old and slow, so using it for other than making calls was impossible.

from a while ago, going out. I need to overdraw my lips more!

We all look at inspirations for our style, and even though I do no do it too often, I love looking at picture of 80s goths for some hair goals. I know a lot of people pull off the look a lot better than I do, it's just an interpretation after all.

But I like looking at pictures of people with orange hair especially, since most goths have black hair.

 Found on Now This Is Gothic

Source
This is my favorite "warm toned" teased hair of them all. I love the length, I am aiming for it!

By now I have pretty much settled on a hair coloring routine. I wanted to make a post about how I color my hair but ended up not having the time to take pictures during dyes. Yes, dyes - it's a 2 step process, as I need to lift my natural brown hair to a brighter color. I've been orange for a year now and my hair feels amazing, so I will stick to the same routine for now. For a change, I do not have plans to change my hair color. This hair simply rocks.

From last night

Teasing long hair is more challenging than teasing your hair in the first place.

The Nr. 1 rule for teasing long hair is - hair products! Your teased hair is like a building, you need to build a solid foundation before going higher.

So before I hit the comb I apply mousse to my entire hair.

1. Wet hair in sections
2. Apply mousse in sections
3. Blow dry hair upside down
4. Start teasing with hairspray, again in sections.

These are the products I use:

  Source                           &                          Source  

The Taft mousse really does the trick, and the Got2B is a big hair staple by now for goths and punks alike. These products are unfortunately not cruelty free.

There is also an option to use teasing powder, but I haven't tried it yet since the above combo works. Does anyone have any experience with it? What would you recommend?

Having your hair cut in layers is also a huge help. I do want to have long hair, and I will probably only cut the most top layer frequently for that Patricia Morrison look.

I also don't straighten my hair (anymore). My hair is wavy which makes for a nice teased texture. I am damaging my hair enough already.

Then there's the biggest teasing trick of all - the brush. Some people use a thin comb, some use a special teasing comb. However, for my thick heavy long hair I use a round brush:

Source

This is a trick my friend showed me, and I would have never thought about it myself! This is not exactly good for your hair, but when is teasing anyway? This brush helps picking up big sections, and with your solid foundation on your really don't need to stand half an hour in front of the mirror ripping your hair out.

With a solid foundation and the right tool, your hair will last the night. I sometimes re-tease it during the night with the same brush. Take a backpack lol! There's also a mini version of the brush available in most stores.

It's funny how my hair color looks different depending on the lighting. I have to edit the saturation of my pictures to really make the red shine through the phone camera. Funny enough, all selfies in this post show my true hair color, it just depends with which lighting you look at it, hehe.

I have dyed my roots since then as can be seen in the previous picture

Here's a post-teasing aftermath. You can tease your hair, but can you bring it back to normal?

Personally, I sleep with my teased hair and detangle it the day after. The hairspray loses it's hold so it's easier.

Needless to say you need to section your hair and slowly comb through it without pulling. I use my regular brush, which is also a detangling brush. 

Some people prefer to soak their hair in conditioner and comb it when it's wet. That make sense, but I prefer the dry option. How do you do it?

Hope you liked this little hair update. Do you have any hair tricks/goals?

Wish everyone a wonderful weekend!

Maria

I´m a mod now

I am still alive! And look at this amazing second hand jacket I bought yesterday to comfort myself from a recent horrible time:

I wanna hold your haaaaand

 Don´t mind my hair. I wanted to change it, so it started as one thing and ended up something completely different.

On other news:
After searching since mid December I have finally found an internship! I began last week, it´s full time and is taking most of my life right now. What with band rehearsals twice a week I hardly have time for anything. Weekends I just rest and sleep.

The internship I´m doing is at a firm called The School Of Life that offers further education classes/ coaching for adults about work-life balance, inspiration, creativity and basically to help adults how to adult. It´s a concept from London that is in development in Berlin, and will open only in April. We are just preparing the materials and classes and it´s very exciting.
My favorite part is when we do tryouts for teachers and we get to see them play out half an hour of a class (which is 3 hours in total). I was happy to see that it´s nothing sketchy like "5 steps to have a perfect life" kind of thing but really nice and diverse programs to give you new ideas.

I go over the programs each day and know the classes theoretically, so it´s fascinating to see what the teachers bring themselves, how they attune the program to their persona and character, and when someone is inspiring you there is a lot you can take from a class on a subject you previously thought you were an expert on, like "how to have better conversations".
Fuck you, I know how to communicate in 4 languages, am open minded and communicative and I rock this shit - said I - but having a different person from a completely different background and profession deliver the class material and idea through their own eye can teach you so much, and it´s really motivating (needless to say the less successful tryouts were a disaster and it felt like you´re being sold bullshit).

As I study social sciences (Erziehungwissenschaft, good luck translating that one), further education is exactly the field I wanted to focus on. My studies have been extremely boring from the 1st Semester btw, which did not surprise me at all, but I was happy to find a niche in the vast education field that interested me. No education with children for me, no thank you.


So much on updates. I have been devouring The Smiths´ first album which I haven´t heard before and will now go take a long hot shower, a thing which I began appreciating ever since having über long days.
Stay strong, Spring is almost here!

Small Faces / Watcha Gonna Do About It

Maria

Dye them black + Autumn thoughts

Long time no face of the night posts. It has been two and a half years and I have gone full circle, back to having black hair. I have terribly missed it.
Surprisingly I have missed the "darker" look black hair gives, and wanted to look more "alternative" and ever "gothier". Wow, next thing you know I will be worshiping the devil.

The days have become a lot colder here in Berlin, Autumn is coming at last and with it the anticipation for change, darker days, cosier clothes, Opeth and inspirations from music genres other than post punk.

My current musical obsession are Riverside and My Dying Bride. Just like with black hair, I love going back to things, especially to certain bands that have influenced me as a teenager. I have missed (for the lack of a better umbrella term) dark metal about mental struggles and misery.
I am starting to think it has influenced the kind of music I would love to make myself, at least lyrics-wise. Although I lack composing talents, I can only make something up through collaborating with someone. And it feels so satisfying, taking me to a deeper and safe space in my mind that is only rarely gets touched, and is very personal.

So much for seasonal musings.

 Have a wonderful beginning of Autumn everyone! (I have no idea what season are you people in the southern hemisphere at but it freaks me out to know it is the opposite to what we have here).

Gotta hate most metal album covers though

N. Finsternis

New hair color due to Henna fail

So I was all about letting my natural hair color grow, expecting that dying my roots with henna will make my natural hair look slightly more reddish and make the bleach leftovers a lot darker. This was my second henna coat (end of March), and well- it failed:

picture is censored for your well being.

 This is what the henna did to my roots: absolutely nothing. Don´t know if it was the type of henna I was using, but I was disappointed. The bleached parts look exactly the same as before, when I thought that henna should intensify the color with the applications. Ah well...

I have been thinking of going dark colors again, so I said fuck it and tried to mix 2 box dyes, a dark brown and dark plum.
The result turned to be quite interesting, and somewhat close to my natural hair color. It was a lot more purple in the beginning and is now slowly washing out as expected and looks more mahogany (eww, I hate mahogany hair) at the moment. I have been getting a lot of compliments on my hair because of the unspecific shade, so I guess that´s a yay!

Uncertain about how it turned out, I ended up loving it. I just missed dark hair so much and it´s just so easy to keep up with. Here are some pictures featuring different lighting:

This is basically me going back to my 17 year old self. I feel so much in my own skin! Plus brown hair + all brown makeup is my new favorite thing.

So much for the hair front. Sorry for lack of posting, life has been hectic ever since the semester has begun. The highlight of it has to be Polish class though, and I am killing it if I do say so myself!

N. Finsternis

New year - new hair

Or: giving up on bleaching!!

There comes a time in every person´s life where they want to try and pull off blonde hair. There also comes another time where this decision seems not as important as initially was...

I have been a blonde for the past year and a half.
I was so eager to get long, blonde hair that I loved to ignore how bleaching actually damaged it. This is the first reason for changing it.

The other reason turned out to be a lot deeper than I thought. Sharing older pictures here in the "blast from the past" post series made me look at old pictures of myself, and I realized that my best look was when I was in high school: fringe + long natural hair. Back then I just didn´t know what to do with it.
I was so determined to changed the way I naturally look like that it made me underrate my natural beauty, which I am sort of denying enough by putting my cat-eyeliner every day and changing the shape of my eyes...
I have stopped doing that lately and did this brown-eyeshadow stuff instead, as on the picture below. I quite like it. I haven´t changed my everyday exaggerated cat-eyeliner in 3 years.

before

And so, after a year and a half of (quite successfully) growing out my hair, I have decided to cut it, as a first step for ridding off the blonde.

I had 2 layers in my hair, and asked the hairdresser to even it with the highest layer. I then asked her to make me a fringe, because fringe is who I am. I grew up with it, and I can´t live without it (frankly because of practical purposes. Can´t stand hair strands falling of my face, it makes me very angry up to the point of thinking about homicide).

after haircut

But I didn´t stop there. I have decided to give Henna another try, since I liked it so much the first time I did it in December 2013. I bleached it over at the time since I was determined to get bright hair. But this time is different. I do want to get the blonde out and change how it looks, and I might as well do that while enjoying this very nice intense orange:

after henna!

So what´s the plan? Enjoy this color, and to cut my fringe regularly until it will be all natural hair. I will continue coloring my natural hair with orange Henna, since I would love to add an orange tint to it.

So what did I learn of this?

• I could rock blonde hair, I looked awesome in it, despite unprofessional bleaching ;)
  
• Blonde hair is a great color to have on short till shoulder length hair. The longer the bleached hair is, the more breakable and damaged it is. Blonde hair is great for people with natural blonde hair who just want to touch it up with bleaching, but if you have brown and darker hair, bleaching is not such a good idea... unless you´re having a mohawk or other form of short hair (my personal opinion of course!)
  
• I should love my natural self more, instead of forcing the beauty I was born with to be otherwise. So instead of changing the way I look drastically with bleaching, I could change it... a little... (lol lesson learned?)

taking a picture in the morning right in front of the window really makes change. note to self...

I am happy to start a new chapter for my hair, and am excited to see the affects of a few Henna treatments on it in the future.

N. Finsternis

Face Of The Night -somewhat sceneish-

Last weekend Boris and I went to a punk-queer event, got there too late when the place as too full so they didn´t let us in.
This however didn´t prevent me from taking some selfies before I went out, and although the night ended modestly, I still loved the look I´ve had so much that I will definitely recreate it again!

Foundation: Catrice "Photofinish Liquid Foundation" 010

Concealer: Jade (IL)

Eye Primer: Catrice Eyeshadow base (very shitty, can´t wait till it´s gone)
Powder: Manhattan "natural"

Eye shadow: Black eyeshadow by L´oreal (not animal friendly and very shitty)

Red eyeshadow random brand (IL)

Eyeliner: Catrice waterproof eyeliner (waterproof my ass)

Eyebrow pencil: black eyebrow pencil by Essence (it´s amazing!!)

Mascara: Manhattan "No End Volume Flex"
Lipstick: random brand (IL)

It´s nice how the nuances of the makeup are still visible regardless of the camera flash. Outfit wasn´t as exciting, just a mini skirt with a huge velvet top, it was cold outside and I didn´t feel like whore-dressing as usual.

Fun Fact: I´ve actually attended makeup school at Kryolan Prof. Makeup at Tel Aviv 2 years ago. It hasn´t taught me what you see on my face in this blog, and frankly it hasn´t brought me any other revelations except for some product differences which I wasn´t aware about. One thing they did bring to my attention- that good makeup survives heavy flash photography. I generally don´t recommend visiting makeup school. Your own DIY experiences are so much worth it! 

Lol NEVER look at the camera, that´s what I say. featuring the map of Berlin behind me!

I´ve also had some fun time with selfies, a pleasant experience which I didn´t enjoy in a while.

I´ve had a nice hair experiment for this look. Right after I finished my makeup I wanted to do my hair and surprise surprise- was out of hairspray! Talk about a goth´s biggest nightmare....

However I´ve managed to finally get to the bottom of a backcomb-like creme I´ve bough a while ago, which is called Taft Volume Booster Creme by Schwarzkopf.

Note: I do not recommend Schwarzkopf products because they are not animal friendly :( However this brand is dominating the shelves in all German drugstores, and vegan products such as Alverde do not provide hair products like this.

So the principle with that Taft thing is that you rub it on the roots of your hair, preferably as much spreaded as possible, which helps the hair to create a nice volume and look almost backcombed! I´ve decided to try this product as I didn´t want to torture my hair with backcombing, and it is much easier to remove.

The creme gets stuck to your roots and is very hard! So it holds the hair nicely, and if you want you can add a small backcomb on the top of your head (what I did). I´ve also spread a little bit of it on my hair. The result turned out somewhat scene-ish, yet I really loved it and will definitely use it again!

I only rarely smile to the camera, mostly because my eyes disappear when I smile. Although I do like my smile in those pics :)

I´ve been not busy at all during the past week, searching for a job as a room service girl and lazying my ass off by watching a ton of anime. I´ve finished Death Note 2 days ago after watching it for the first time and my heart still pounds when I remember the experience. I´ve been seriously fangirling ever since, such a forgotten feeling! I highly recommend everyone to watch this masterpiece! I think I´ve even persuaded Boris who dislikes anime!

Have a lovely week everyone!

I´ve fell in love with this soundtrack which reminds me of dear Opeth!

N. Finsternis

Henna Hair - how to enjoy it and get rid of it

Yaayy, I can finally blog, ever since my exams at the University are finally over!
I had a total of 2 exams, one of which I hope to have passed since it was on statistics and was really hard, the second one, get ready- I´ve overslept (the reason behind that was stress, more than anything). So it´s chilling for now, and working my ass off again and again a bit later on. But at least I can live.....

This post I have decided to dedicate to my hair adventures, the Henna experience and that I can´t actually promise anything regarding hair.
So when I said that Henna was the most perfect thing in the world, bragged about how easy it was to color with it and how I will continue to color my hair with Henna for the rest of my life, I lied.

But let´s go back in time 2 months ago before Christmas, when my blonde hair was quite fried and I got tired of the bleach damaging it. I´ve wanted to have orange hair, I´ve always wanted to, and thought that Henna was a good idea.
I´ve used this incredible detailed guide on how to dye your hair with henna. Basically if you want to dye your hair with Henna, this tutorial will be very helpful.

Henna felt great. It was super messy to apply, and Boris and I had fun rubbing the shit-like mud on my head. My hair looked and felt amazing afterwards, Henna is actually the best hair mask out there. The color was amazing, I was so happy how it turned out!

But time went on, and so my roots grew. The color remained the same for almost 2 months, which is incredible!!! My hair felt so nurtured and healthy....

Yet alas, my roots reminded me about how no other product in the world would make my hair bright than bleach.....

I began to hate my natural emotionless hair color coming out, and began to long for that bright hair around my face.

 Roots after 2 months. A test strand is being bleached behind my ear.

The realization that Henna won´t make my hair bright was saddening. At that point it didn´t matter to me what color would be on my head, as long as it wasn´t my natural hair color or anything darker than blonde!

So the only option for me was bleaching.
I began to read a lot of frightening advice regarding bleaching henna hair, that it will melt your hair/ turn it green/ you will die.

But then I realized that I was actually looking at advice regarding henna from the US, where (as I understood) a lot of unreliable shit was sold. But my henna hair dye was 100% natural! So after reading some reviews in German, I was more confident about bleaching.

So after my second exam was overslept and I walked the walk of shame back home, the first thing I did was to color and wash my hair (I didn´t wash my hair a few days before the exam, it´s bad luck).

I´ve decided to bleach only the frame of my face, in order not to fry my entire hair. I´ve always had one hair color on my head, so I´ve wanted to try something new, and give my hair a more alternative look:

WARNING

Pictures of me without makeup, and for your entertainment I´ve decided not to edit them

When I washed the bleach out, I was more than happy to find out that the bleached henna turned almost pastel pink!!!! What a miracle, I have pastel hair without planning it! My hair had only one layer of henna in it, so I am guessing that played a roll as well.
I´ve dyed the rest of my hair in a cheapy plum color. I didn´t want black because I´ve already had black hair once. We´ll see how long the plum will last.

 Didn´t have enough plum color for the tips lol, but it didn´t really matter that much. Featuring my kickass thumb!

Featuring my kickass nose. I love my nose.

Before I go on on either disclaiming why my natural face looks so unfortunate or how I am absolutely in love with my new hair, I shall sum things up:

Henna would be a great choice if you:

1. Want to stick with one hair color for a very long time.
2. Like your natural hair color and want to spice it up just a little bit.
3. Want to have burning red hair (not orange)!

Henna would be a bad choice if you:

1. Are schizophrenic regarding your hair color.
2. Absolutely detest your natural hair color. 
3. Need to be flexible with hair and dye it differently each time.
4. Want to have bright hair!

All in all, henna was a great thing. It just didn´t make my hair blonde. Bleaching over Henna is a okay, as long as it is 100% natural!!! If your henna had something chemical in it, the only way to get rid of it would be to chop it the hell off.

So far so good, and I am eager to post more and more!

Have a great week everyone!

N. Finsternis

Happy New Year / Hair!

Since I come from a Russian family where Christmas has absolutely no meaning and the new year is like the biggest holiday ever, you can imagine my level of ignorance towards the passed jolly holiday. The next 2 final days of 2013 are going to be very festive for me however, so I thought I´d share some of my resolutions here with you.

We didn´t really have a tree this year, because we are going to eventually move this year, and there´s nothing more uncomfortable having a new year´s tree in a none-permanent house... but I´ve collected some fir twigs from the forest nearby and set them in a bouquet on my altar, with some additional cones. It looks lovely with red candles.

This year has been more than crays. I´ve got so many life changing things done!!! In January Boris and I have made our dream come true and moved from Israel to Berlin. We´ve gone from different horrible apartments/ flat sharing until we found a sort-of permanent flat share in Summer. We´ve also managed to pimp out German so well that we´ve even got into University this Autumn! I still can´t believe I am officially a student, I thought I wasn´t too bright for studying, but I´ve proved myself wrong.
We´ve also made such good friends over this year, friends that felt more close to us than (almost) all the people in Israel we´ve ever met, friends that introduced us to interesting music and the many different people around us, people the made the gothic scene here alive.
We were happy to create here. Boris finally managed to record his songs and began making concerts, and I was more than happy to help him build a concept for his project, to kick his ass when he needed it, cheer him up and encourage him to do whatever the hell his heart wishes to do no matter what.
I´ve had lots of fun DIY-ing this year, from clothes to making photoshoots with beautiful people, to band logos and dying my hair.

Speaking of which, behold the Christmas miracle. I went from blonde to ginger!

Before:

Kinda forgot to make this "face of the day" post, hehe.

After:

Had fun photoshopping myself just like I used to do when I was 14. I felt so glamorous!

 The camera shows the color variously. Let´s just say it´s more of a bright orange color, which sometimes glows like neon orange in the sun! I dyed it with Henna, which was the best hair dying in ma life!!! More detailed info on that in a different post, including the reason I´ve decided to change the awesome blonde. I am more than happy from the result, I´ve always wanted ginger hair and it looks so wicked!

This year was very very hard on top of everything. All those cool adventures in this new world of Berlin forced us to go through a ton of difficult adjustments, uncertain times and constant hard work. I´ve lost my confidence and faith in myself a couple of times, but with Boris´ help I was happy again to go through everything, because eventually the stuff that was happening which I´ve called suffering, have made us both stronger and proud of ourselves for not giving up, going for our dreams and staying awesome.

Fun Fact: Whenever it new year time, I sit down one evening to read the horoscope prognosis for me and for Boris. Call me old fashioned, but my mother used to do this and whenever she read mine on some occasional female oriented Russian website, they were always right. ALWAYS. I am really excited about this year, because the horoscope was particularly curious.

Of course I do not blindly believe that what I read will take place, but it´s just more fun like that :)

This year my blog got recognition more than ever, I have over 70 followers and I am so so thankful for that!!! So I want to thank you guys for being here and subscribing, checking out my silly sarcastic nonsense and my angsty photography.
I really appreciate you checking my stuff out, because it really means the world to me. Heck, being recognized by other people is an individual soul´s little orgasm! So thanks you so so much for being here.

I wish you all an amazing new year, that all you´re plans and goals will come true, that you will always have the strength to work on and achieve your biggest wishes. And that you will always be your gothy selves, alive and kicking, and never ever ever have a doubt about yourself and what you do! You are all beautiful and special.

And remember- the way you´ll great the new year, that´s how it shall be! ;)

See you all next year!

My fav new year song.

N. Finsternis

Quick outfit post

What I wore to last week's concert.

The cream colored shirt is a really old piece of clothing that I have, being sent to me by my lovely mother from Israel, along with other useful old clothes. I haven't worn this shirt since a couple of good years, and I was surprised how well it served me with this outfit. I took off the heart patterned shirt during the concert, but forgot to take a picture.

It looks like I have circle lenses in my eyes, but it was the result of the camera flash. I'm not that of a masochist to wear lenses :)

Boris has agreed to post this really nice picture that I took during one of the last songs. I love so much the way it turned out!

This shall perhaps be one of the last hair posts of me with a fringe! Today I've had enough [another hair crisis freakout] and made myself a side fringe! I will show pictures as soon as I dye my roots again! :)

Until then, stay warm!

N. Finsternis

22nd Gothy Birthday

Yesterday was my first birthday in Berlin. I've turned 22 and that probably won't mean anything to me until next year when I'll get older again ;)

I had a fun and romantic day with my dear Boris. He woke me up with roses and gave me the birthday present I'd asked for- a Tibetan singing bowl :)
We then went to a forest near our house for a walk to great the Autumn once more, I took some pictures of the beautiful Nature I'm so happy to be surrounded with. Later on we made a birthday pizza [since I was a little girl I always had pizza for birthday instead of a cake, because I dislike cakes. I had candles on the pizza when I was little :)] and drank a whole bottle of bubbly with Mozart chocolate :P
And then we went to an 80's party. Sounds like a lot, but it was a quiet house hang out throughout the day, just Boris and I.

Here are some pics from the forest!

The beautiful singing bowl! It has 2 sticks, one of wood, and the other covered with leather. The two produce different sounds. I've already used it for a bath meditation, it was amazing!

 How I love Fungi! Yum yum XD

There was such magical atmosphere that day. I've spoken with all my family members, but sadly nor with my own parents. That was a bit odd, and although both wrote me very touching birthday wishes, not talking to my mother in person on my birthday made a lonely atmosphere. It was weird and didn't to good to me the entire day. But with Boris by my side I couldn't ask for better company and bigger love. 

Moving on to the party pics :)
It was great to see my dear friend Marta and hang out, the music was so much fun and the atmosphere got better after dancing to Joy Division, She Past Away [I've also happened to see them live the day before my birthday, photos will come soon!] and In Death It Ends.

Face: Catrice photo finish makeup + powder + Jade [IL] concealer

Eyeshadow: Sparkly white from a Careline [IL] palette of mine + black eyeshadw by L'oreal [not cruelty free and I don't recommend it]

Eyebrows + Eyeliner: Caltice gel liner

Lips: Careline "very purple" lipstick + a little bit of black lipstick

Mascara: Manhattan

I love how it looks as if I have false lashes on, but I don't! False lashes are an equivalent of masochism in my opinion.

I then spontaneously felt so glamorous, a feeling which got followed by a ton of selfies, something I haven't done in a while [if to exclude the special face posts I do for you guys]. I felt so deffrokkk....

And last but not least, the party outfit:

Don't mind the "Maria" behind me, it's a sign for our room with Boris that I've made so that our ever changing flatmates will know our own names.

I've also finally worn my new combat boots to a party! They were a blessing to dance with. I can't describe the pleasure of living in these shoes! XD

I had a great time yesterday, I've felt that I've changed so much since my last birthday, my surroundings changed and the person who I am has developed [thank god]. I also look nothing like myself a year ago, blonde and deathrock-ish, I like how it looks!

However, I feel that for the past 2 days I've experienced quite a few ups and downs, made mistakes and resolutions. I hope I will become a better person and continue to learn about myself even more.

I thank each day for having someone so special like Boris by my side.

For those who have wished me a happy birthday privately and on FB- thank you so much. I am so lucky to have so many people who love me. It's a blessing and it makes me happy and alive.

N. Finsternis