Au naturale- I bare all!

I have suffered with self-confidence for quite a number of years as I severely lack it! When I was younger, I was a lot worse and always wanted to look like someone else and never look like myself. I tried, over the years, to alter my appearance to "blend" in and it suited me for a while but it didn't help my confidence in myself at all. Going to the school that I did, you either had to know the "right people" to stay out of trouble or you had to look the "right way" to fit in. I guess that's like many schools across the world and I'd like to clarify now that I wasn't ever bullied as such but I was made to feel worthless at times because I wasn't a "popular girl" and I wasn't friends with "popular people". Bullying at school is a disgrace in my opinion, as there is far too much of it going on!

However, I am getting more self-confident and I wanted to share with you, and to prove to myself that I am strong enough to do it,  pictures of myself with no make-up on. This may not seem like a big deal to you but I rarely (maybes once or twice a year I'll do it) go out of the house without some form of make-up on; foundation being the major one. It struck me today how sad that actually seems; I cannot go out of the house without any make-up on, and that's how a lot of people do things. If I don't have foundation or mascara or anything like that on, I feel completely exposed and vulnerable as if at any moment, someone is going to point and laugh at how ugly I am. In my opinion, everyone is beautiful in their own way but when I look at myself, I think this rule doesn't apply to me!

Anyway I don't want to ramble on too much but the point of this is to show that if I am able to post pictures of myself without make-up and exposing all my blemishes and imperfections then maybe other people will think "Wow, I would never think of doing that. Maybe I'll give it a go..." and gain more self-confidence if that's why they wear make-up. I don't only wear make-up to cover myself up and "hide" but I do it to make me feels good about myself and because I love to try new products out. I'm in the process of changing the way I feel about myself and the way I look to be a positive thing and eventually, I hope that I don't hide behind a mask but feel so confident, that I don't need to wear make-up all day, every day to just nip to the shops!

P.S- I wear glasses permenantly but took them off to show you better! xxxx

Catch up :)

Just wanted to let you guys know that all my friends from Uni have come back (finally) and I'm now looking forward to MASSIIVE catch ups with them all :)

Finally had a long awaited catch up with a couple of my best friends Claira (not on here!) and Grace (Fashion Cabaret Girl!) this afternoon and it was amazing! I have missed these guys so much since they've been away and was so excited to have them back again!

Please check out Fashion Cabaret Girl's blog if you haven't alreadyl She writes amazing blogs and she's just started out like me too :)

Love you all! xxxx

Why is hair colour so hard to change?!

For as long as I can remember, I have pretty much always hated my hair. Everyone always says how horrible their hair is and I thought it was just a thing everyone complained about, but you haven't met anyone who complains more about theirs than I do! Looking back to when I was young, I used to have very lovely thick blonde hair but like most others, I got bored of my natural hair colour and decided to dye it. Red.

Now I know what you're thinking; she obviously went for a semi-permenant colour or a wash in wash out one. Well....I did at first! I decided to get a Wella wash in wash out and it went orange! I had to go to school with orange hair (like the phone company logo shade of orange!) and nipped down to the Chemist, after the humiliation I had to endure by my peers, to buy another type. I went the whole way and got a permenant dye in a bright red colour. And I mean RED! It was wonderful at first (this was a good 3-4 years ago!) but then it became too much hassle as I had to keep re-dying it every month at least to maintain the red and not go, well, ginger! I got pretty bored of having to dye red on top of red so decided it would be much easier to go back to being blonde. Oh yes, you've guessed it; being the fool that I am, I decided to try and dye blonde straight back on top of the red and it turned a very vibrant shade of orange; once again!

To cut an extremely long story short, I eventually ruined my hair by trying to go back to my original blonde (which I should have mentioned before was a fairly light shade naturally) and after a few months of various shades of orange, I decided to do the sensible thing and put a cool brown shade on to tone down the gingery bits! I enjoyed being a brunette for a while and kept it up for a good 4/5 months but I was still wistfully hoping I could go back to my natural colour. Unfortunately for me, I still had orange understones even under various lots of brown dye and I thought it would be safe to try to go blonde again. I got my friend to help me and I'd even bought a very dark ash blonde to tone down any orange that might occur. Unfortunately again, it went very very orange and I completely gave up and gave in to the professionals! 6 months later and still no sign of being blonde :(

The good news is, I was given very good advice and I'm now going to attempt to build the blonde up gradually by getting highlights put in every few months. I had my first lot back in late February so I'm long overdue some more! Hopefully in the next few months I can keep you updated and I should be fully blonde by the end of the year. Fingers crossed anyway :)

R.I.P Glitterati Manson 2007-2010