Hey everyone! I just finished recording my Emiliani Haul and posted it on my channel, check it out if you're interested!!!
For those of you who don't know, Emiliani is a store for cosmetologists, nail technicians, and any other beauty service provider that has a license in their specific field. It is basically like a a store of all the goodies for less.. way less. My mom and I took a trip to pick up some of the stuff we needed, and being that she is a licensed cosmetologist she has access to anything in the store. I was like a kid in a candy store the moment I walked in being that I haven't been there in a while.
I picked up some hair and nail products, but I'll start with explaining the nail products.
------NAILS------
As most of us know, a single OPI nail polish runs about $8-$10 at any drugstore or department store. However Emiliani offers OPI for a shocking $4.25! That is about half off or more! (depending where you would normally purchase it from) As well as Essie, they are sold for $4 at Emiliani, which is also a considerable discount from the average $7-$9 at a drugstore.
The colors I picked up were:
- Did You Know Jaques?
- Malaysian Mist
- Did You Hear About Van Gogh?
- Coney Island Cotton Candy
- Nothing Mouse About It (Minnie Mouse Collection)
- High Maintenance
- Lovie Dovie
Here are some close ups of the beautiful nail polish that I picked up.
Some Swatches
Okay, as well as hair and nail products, they also carry a huge variety of tools. Anything from brushes to blow dryers, hair straighteners, UV nail dryers, and more. I picked up these adorable nail detailer brushes. These were a little over $7 for a set of four. I was so happy to buy these since I was searching for some like these for a while. I just have to make sure that I clean them up really good after each time I use them since they can get all stiff and gross if any nail polish lingers around. In the video that I posted at the beginning of this blog I explained what I used to do before I had these brushes if you want to check it out.
I understand that not everyone has access to brushes like these, I know I didn't for the longest. I also really love the little flower design on the handles, adorable!!! I can't wait to use these babies haha.
I also picked up these little orange sticks that I use pretty often when I paint nails. They were .10 cents each, which is less then the .99 cents each I used to pay at my local beauty supply store.
Here are the pictures of the Minnie Mouse and Spider Man Collections that the store had on display.
And lastly for nails, I just had to add some pictures of the nail polish rack that I built and painted all on my own! Im so proud that it hasn't fallen apart! Haha
------HAIR------
I will have a blog posted on my full hair story soon.
Now I am a 6N Dark Natural Blonde in the Paul Mitchell line.
However, as you can see in the picture, it no longer matches my extensions since the color has faded over the last month or so. Time to recolor!
---How I Got My Hair This Color---
Before I could get my hair to be this nice light brown color, I had to bleach it since my hair was black. You cannot lighten black, or any other dark hair color with color, it will basically just make your roots lighter leaving everything else black/dark. This happens because the hair at your roots is known as virgin hair, or uncolored/unprocessed hair. Virgin hair has no preexisting color over it so it will lighten up unlike the remaining part of my hair that has been colored, in this case, black. So I purchased (from my local beauty supply store) a Clariol powder bleach, mixed it with the cream developer (30 Volume) and applied it all over my hair, sparingly at the roots.
I applied it to the body of my hair first, let it sit for about 20 minutes, then applied a very little amount at my roots and let it all sit for an additional 5-10 minutes. I was not able to leave the bleach in for too long because it can make your scalp so unbelievably itchy and I'm a whimp. After I washed it out, my hair was was orange, yellow and brassy.. Not Cute At All. My hair lifts very brassy since it is naturally so dark. Plus, I didn't use a high quality bleach. However, I was not too worried because all I wanted to do was get it to a shade lighter then the one I planned to color it which was a chestnut brown.
I then applied my box color, Garnier Chestnut Brown. As you can probably already tell, I didn't use salon products because this whole "I want to be light brown again!" hair coloring idea was based off of pure impulse. I would have normally called my mom and had her pick up the salon quality version of the color I wanted... but I didn't. Anyway, So after two boxes of the Garnier color I applied it all over my hair in the same order as I did with the bleach but I was able to let this saturate into my hair for longer. After I washed it out, I like the color but not 100% because it was still slightly brassy. So then, on another impulse, I went and picked up two more box colors by Garnier in the color Acorn and applied it over my colored hair that same day (not good to do) And tada! the brass was gone and I had the color I wanted.
I DONT recommend doing what it did, but I got my results and I know my hairs history so I went ahead and did it. I then bought hair extensions to match and was a happy camper.
After a month or so, the color started to fade and became a little brassy again (like in the picture above). I knew that I didn't want to apply box color again since they contain harmful metals that are bad for your hair, so I went to the salon with my extensions and they applied a Paul Mitchell 6N to my hair.
Now, I like the color, but being the hair psycho and perfectionist that I am, I feel that it only matches about 90% accurately to my extensions. But in the defense of the salon, you never know EXACTLY how hair will react to color. For now Im sticking with the Paul Mitchell 6N, but I will probably switch to a different brand or color in my next visit to Emiliani.
Also, being that I used a cheap bleach, my hair has brassy tones left in it, that is also a difficulty when trying to get it to perfectly match my extensions. But over all, its pretty close. You can especially tell how much my color has faded in the video I posted at the top of the blog if you pay close attention.
Time to recolor!
Along with the cream hair color I use the 20 volume cream developer.
A developer is basically what activates the color to make it saturate into your hair. Without the developer you could slather on the color by itself and nothing would happen. There are different kinds of developer. For example, when I colored my hair black, I used a developer that would DEPOSIT color into my hair. Developers used for depositing color usually have a corresponding number of 9 or 10 written on the bottle. In my case, I used a 9. The number on the bottle basically represents what the developer is going to be doing.
In my current situation, I want to lighten my hair so I will be using a 20 developer. The most common developer volumes used when lightening hair are 20, 30 and, 40. The higher the number, the stronger it is, the lighter your hair. Now most of the time a salon wont use anything stronger than a 30 developer since it can be damaging to your hair. Developer is used both with bleach and color.
And thats that! Here is a picture of the bag from the store, receipts, and some brochures!
