Hairapy

As the season's change, people begin to look for ways in which to spruce up their look. Some buy new make-up and try out a new look. Others kick up their wardrobe a notch with new duds. I dye my hair.

Since I was a wee ickle thing, I've always had a weird preference for non-traditionally colored hair. When I drew, I drew girls with purple and blue hair. As I got older, I longed for all of the fun colors in my hair that my parents would never let me have. Especially pink. I wanted pink hair so bad, I could taste it.

My mom, a hairstylist, allowed me my first adult haircut and highlights when I was 13. It was a clunky, unsophistocated bob with brassy highlights and I hated it. This didn't stop me from begging, though. Slowly I worked my way towards red highlights, then red tips. In between colors, I kept my hair dyed a glossy blue-black, because it just couldn't be 100% normal. Finally, my junior year of high school, I was allowed an all-over strawberry blonde, which then became a raspberry red for 6 months.

Then college happened. Rules about my hair color suddenly didn't apply to me and I made a point of dying my hair in whatever way and with whatever colors I wanted. I found out lots about my particular kind of hair, what it could or couldn't handle, and where it's snapping points were.

Then, a year ago today, after years of dying, damage, dying, frying. breakage, and more dying, I made a scary decision. Convinced by my cousin, I cut off almost all of my hair, leaving only about an inch and a half all over my head.

In the African American community, women who transition from chemically treated hair to 100% natural hair will often do what is considered the "big chop"; they will cut off all of the damaged and treated parts of the hair, leaving only the natural strands behind. This is what I did, with the intention of growing my hair out naturally.

The problem was, I just really was not pleased with my natural hair. I didn't have a problem with the texture or anything, it's just that the color was soooooo boring!

So earlier this year, I bleached out my hair and went full-on blonde again!

(no pictures of the fresh blonde, because I'm dumb and forgot to take them as I often do)

The thing is, I went blonde with the intention of dying my hair another color, only to find that I couldn't decided on what color I wanted. This led me to being blonde for months before finally finding my color inspiration:

Having considered Kelly Osborne a style icon since before I even really had a sense of style (and when her's was just as gritty as mine), I loved seeing this look on her, and seeing it pop up more and more as it started trending, I needed it on my head. I needed that specific color on my head. I wanted lavender and I wanted it NOW! However, I knew that there was no way I'd get the color to come out on my own, even having already bleached it. I inlisted the help of my beautician friend Sarah to do my roots, lift the rest of my hair another level or two, and create the lavender.

(I'm a Pikmin! Or a unicorn! Unicorn Gundam!)

Lavender proved tougher than we both thought. Since there are so few medium/light purple dyes, we had to dilute a violet, and the original result was grey that faded out within a week. Two weeks later, we tried again using a different violet dye and increasing the amount of dye in the mixture. The results were perfect!

It was a perfect lovely lavender, with some darker streaking in the front and it is magnificant! I am so in love!

The next day I went to the mall with Katie and I got a fair number of complements on the color. The best parts about the trip were finding purple bobby pins (I had to buy them, I had literally just been complaining about not being able to use black bobby pins in my hair about an hour before), and having like three of the sales girls in the MAC pro store try to convince me that this beautiful lavender lipstick from the Nick Minaj Viva Glam collection would DEFINITELY not clash with my hair. Their convincing worked.

And that leads me to today. My hair has been trimmed up and the damage from the extreme bleaching has been cut out, but I believe I've grown about eight or so inches of hair since my big chop. My hair is by no means perfect and more often than not I will simply resort to wearing a wig because my hair isn't tidy enough to wear out, or it doesn't fit the occasion, but I'm trying to learn to be more accepting of it. I'm trying very hard not to cut it anymore so that it can grow out to the length it used to be (and longer) so that I can enjoy my natural, beautifully colored curls in more ways than just "afro-fluff".

But most importantly, I'm learning to love it for what it is. Soft, fine, curly, and awesome.

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

Dreaming of the Disney College Program

I'm excited to share that this fall I've decided to put my full efforts into applying for the Disney College Program, Spring 2014.

Believe me, I understand that the program is an opportunity for Disney to get extraordinarily cheap labor (considering we'd get paid nearly minimum wage and from that Disney pulls out their criminally expensive rent for the half of a room you are staying in on their property) and I get that they often work CP's more than 40 hours a week, every week (not unlike my current job), but I still want to do it. I've been kicking the idea around in my head for years and it turned from a "why should I?" to a "why not?" I mean really, as long as I'm at least breaking even financially and I still manage to have a good experience, what's wrong with me doing it if it'll make me happy?

With this being my last possible opportunity to do so, I'm going to spruce myself up and prepare to make the best impression that I can in the hopes that in January I'll be flying down to Florida, ready to take on Disney. I'm hoping that with all of my experience, I'll be offered a job somewhere that actually pertains to my potential future job opportunities. Here are my top choices:

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique/Pirate League

This one is almost exactly up my alley. It combines my years of experience in sales and customer service with my almost equal time spent working with children. It also doesn't hurt that most of my sales experience has been in cosmetics, so I'd think that that would be a bonus. Basically, to play dress up with child guests and turn them into princesses, princes, and pirates. Plus, in the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, I get to be a Fairy Godmother-in-training and I get a wand that deposits glitter everywhere. What's not to love?

Merchandise

Again, puts my years in sales and customer service to good use. It's an environment that I'm already very familiar with and unlike at previous sales jobs that emphasized speed over customer service, I assume Disney will have a better appreciation for my ability to please guests and help them get exactly what they need with the treatment that they deserve. Also, I'm sure that it'd be easier to pick up extra hours here because being able to work a cach register is probably an important skill across various places in the park. Plus, on slow days, I can "shop" while I work XD

Vacation Planner

Again, sales and customer service. Unlike merchandise, however, vacation planners get to be more focused on customer service and satisfaction and while I assume upselling is still a job requirement, I imagine it's more important for park guests to have a great experience and vacation planners are vital to making that happen. This one would probably be the most useful to my potential future goals as well, since it will require levels of book keeping and customer service that translate better than customer service in retail to jobs involving guest relations.

I'm also interested in being a character attendant, a photopass photographer, working in attractions (I think I'd do marvelously on a spiel-ride), and hospitality. If I get offered a job in any one of these areas, I'd totally accept. If they offer to put me somewhere else, I'm going to have to draw hard line and decline, because these are the only areas I can see myself working so many hours over so many weeks. Just because I want to do the program, doesn't mean I'm desperate and will take anything that they will offer me. Besides, I have almost an equally as satisfying consolation prize: if I do get turned down, that means I can immediately move out to Portland, OR after receiving my degree and get started on building my life out there.

Both plans are ones that I can accept and be happy with.

The application process opens up in September, I'll be posting as I get more information and things start moving forward. I promise that this isn't going to turn into a DCP blog, I will continue to post about everything that's going on in my life, even if I do go and work for the Mouse.

Until next time,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

Making the Most of My Days Off

My life has slowly been driving me insane.

Tomorrow will be the sixth Sunday in a row that I've had to work overtime. When I first started my current job last year, we were on a four day work schedule working ten hours a day. Now we work on a more traditional five day schedule working eight hours, with weekends off (before our weekends rotated, but every other weekend was a three-day holiday, almost. This new schedule has the benefit of being very reliable when we aren't running sales, but it also allows for less time off.

Before you math my face off, yes, I understand that I'm still working 40 hours a week (except lately it's been closer to 48), so work, itself, isn't taking up more of my time. However, spreading it out over five days instead of four give me less of a break and even though our shifts are shorter and less brutal, we now have an extra day of having to deal with the hard work to make up for the time shaved off of the rest of the days. Often, on days when I do have to work, I don't want to do much else that isn't relaxing or fun, because I know any stress or fatigue I incure is going to be compounded by my grueling job.

To combat this, on the days that I do have off, instead of being incredibly chill like they used to be, I try and cram in as much fun stuff as possible, so that I can still have the opportunities to do the things that I want to do, without knowing that it has to end because I have to go to work in a few hours. Yesterday was a perfect example of this. 

In the morning, I woke up around 9:30, got dressed in some frills and headed out to get some unnecessary and probably unwise shopping done, because dammit, I deserved it! I wore an outfit inspired by my favorite Sailor Scout, Sailor Mars, pairing a t-shirt with a cute Annahouse skirt and flats. I know the coord isn't perfect by any means, but I liked it and might wear it again if I'm jonesing for some casual lolita:

I even had Sailor Moon's star locket! We started selling these little gems at work and while they don't play music or even open (I didn't know until after I bought it), it was still a cute piece for my outfit. I still want Mars's henshin wand from Kuma Crafts someday, but that'll have to wait until at least after AWA.

I stopped by Hot Topic and Sephora and picked up some things that I don't need, then I dropped by Nashville Anime Day for an hour or so to shop a bit and hopefully meet up with some new lolitas in my community. Maybe it's because I'm getting old or because it was such a small event, but I felt really out of place there and when I didn't find the lolitas I was looking for (lol!) I just decided I'd meet them another time. Here's my haul!

Most of it's from Hot Topic because of my employee discount, but I got some nail polishes from Sephora and in the dealer room at Nashville Anime Day, I picked up some pins for my girly punk vest (including this awesome "vintage" pin from Magic Knights Rayearth).

After shopping and a trip to Smoothie King for a King-sized Green Tea Tango, I met up with the ladies for our Sailor Moon tabletop RPG (because I am that much of a geek) and PIZZA! After the game, we went out for froyo at Sweet Cece's (today was a bit of a food binge for me) and went to our second viewing of Pacific Rim.

Over all, it was a very full and very fulfilling day. Today, I am cleaning up my room a bit and trying to stay as relaxed as possible before working another Sunday that will become overtime on my next paycheck. Hopefully next weekend they will let us have our full weekends back, but until then, I'm making money and making the most of the days that I have to myself.

Until yonder 'morrow breaks,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

So what's up with me?

So if you're reading (and you probably aren't because who wants to hear me literarily flail on the internet [but I'm gonna do it anyway]), you're probably wondering where the heck that last post came from (you're not) and where I've been (but I know you don't care).

You see I've been busy. Like, really, it's not laziness, or anything, I've just been stupid busy. I know I've been AWOL for a while now, but I'm working on cutting out the parts of my life that are forcing me to do that, I promise. It's not because I've been lacking things to talk about either, it's just because I've been lacking the time to sit down and write about them.

So here's an update on how I'm doing and what's going on in my life before I dig into all of those drafts and half-finished pieces of finery for you fine folks (that I'm imagining exist).

First, Artscubed. I finally made the decision to step back from this organization that's been a very important part of my life for many, many years now. While I've had my complaints, the reason why I'm quiting is actually because my plans for next spring will likely not even allow me to be in the state to physically attend the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. This has been one of the biggest changes in my life recently, because I've been attending MTAC for nine years now, and it was my very first anime convention back in 2005. Though we fight and quibble and argue, the staff of Artscubed are my geek family. It was the decision to resign that has pretty much lead to me being able to accept and be happy for the opportunities I have available to me in the future.

Speaking of the future, my boyfriend has moved across the country to Portland, OR and though I've been avoiding talking about just how excited I am for it, I am OBNOXIOUSLY excited to be joining him next year when I finally get my degree. I'll finally get to live on the West Coast! Hippies and public transportation and liberals and nudity, yay! I'm especially excited for the opportunity to meet new lolitas and expand my friend base.

Also WEST COAST! Sakuracon! Anime Expo! PAX! PMX! Comic Con! I could go on and on.

So yeah. Those are a couple of the most important changes in my life, currently. I've been in classes all summer and I've been working a lot of overtime, so things have been a tad boring, but I know I've got some fun stuff coming up in the next couple weeks and I've got a really exciting line-up of fall events to share! So whether or not you are there and reading, I'm still going to post.

Lots of love and hugs and kisses to you all,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

Sephora and the Little Mermaid: A Tale of Bad Customer Service

Warning: This is a rant. A very thorough rant, because that's how angry I am with Sephora at the moment.

Ok, so Sephora has (had?) a negotiation with Disney that they would release a make-up line inspired by the Disney princesses, appropriately titled the Disney Princess Collection by Sephora. Each section/release of the collection was inspired by a princess, the first one being Cinderella, the second being Jasmine, and the final being Ariel.

As you can imagine, having missed out on the Cinderella collection and being unimpressed by the Jasmine collection, I was pretty excited to see what they would pull out for Ariel. Ariel isn't my favorite princess (though for a very, very long time she was), but she was by far my favorite princess represented in the collection and knew that I at least had lots of greens and blues to look forward to in the color palettes. When I got my first glimpse at the large eyeshadow palette, I was not at all disappointed:

I was looking forward to this palette. I found out about it the day after the first customer service snafu where they had an "accidental" release of a few of them to "select" VIBs, leaving lots of other VIBs and card holders irritated that they weren't notified. Sephora at one point said that it was an accident and at another point said that it was an intentional prerelease to VIBs. The erroneous information (because one of these situations has to be a lie told to somehow help cover Sephora's ass), has created a bit of a backlash, but most were satisfied knowing that it would at least get another release with more stock of the product and ample warning to everyone in July.

The good part of the few palette's to go out in the prerelease were early swatch tests and reviews from established make-up gurus. The reviews were somewhat mixed, but I was still excited. I still wanted to spend my hard-earned cash on this specific item from the collection and this item only. I immediately signed up to receive an email notification when it was back in stock back in June, and waited patiently for a month.

Then finally, that day came earlier this week. I was in class when my phone beeped at me, indicating that I had an email. Fifteen minutes later, when class was out, I saw that Sephora had emailed me about the palette being back in stock, and I immediately darted home to purchase it (which, considering my commute, took about 30 minutes). By the time I was in front of my computer and ready to order, only an hour had passed since I received my email and the palette was once again out of stock. What gives, Sephora? I looked around and saw that I definitely was not the only one. People were complaining all over their Facebook, the product page in the reviews, Reddit, Twitter, etc. It was not a cute look and Sephora simply responded to every single inquiry about an online restock with "the items will be available in your local Sephora starting in early August". This, to me, was unacceptable. Knowing full well the potential popularity of this product and the hype it has been receiving from both Sephora and it's customers, it makes no sense that they only made enough to sell to a few hundred people who managed to snag them during the hour that they were up.

The day wore on and, of course, I was still fuming about it the next day. I had been considering the potential to get one of the palettes at one of my local Sephoras (I'm pretty comfortable with the manager at the one inside JCPenney and considered giving him a call about the release date and if he'd hold one for me), but I sincerely do not want to reward Sephora for their terrible customer service and game of cat-and-mouse with the release of this collection by hunting down the palette and giving them my money anyway.

Then this morning (well, now yesterday morning) I got another email from Sephora at 7:15am. It told me that the Ariel eyeshadow palette was back in stock. When I clicked on the link, the item had been removed from the site entirely.

My mind has been made up. At least for this particular collection, Sephora will not be getting my money. As much as I can't stand ULTA, I will probably start shopping there again and I will make a point of not ALWAYS going to Sephora for all of my cosmetic needs, because they don't deserve it. I'm not boycotting the company, but I could care less how many points I have/need to get certain perks and I no longer care about being a VIB. Some might think that this is harsh, but I don't have time to be jerked around.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? I'm interested in hearing what other people have to say about this whole thing and I hope Sephora actually addresses the issues involved at some point to the public.

*sigh* Until next time, my dears,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

Photoshoot with the Moderators of Tennessee Lolitas

Hello Lovelies!

This past Sunday, Sarah, Bri, and I went to Opryland hotel for a small photoshoot as the mods of the TN Lolitas Facebook group. I was really excited when we decided to do this shoot because I really love this dress and love making coords with it, and since I wore (nearly) this coord at MTAC and got no photos, I wanted to do it over. Looking at it now, I realize that there's a lot more white in the dress than it lets on (I just think of it as a black dress), so the lack of white accessories definitely leans the coordinate away from perfect, but I love it nonetheless.

I took most of the photos (and in turn, Sarah took my spiffy camera and took photos of me since I'm bad at timed selfies and what not) and we spent an hour and a half just primping and being pretty. And we all looked AWESOME! Seriously, I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to be creative with these ladies, and their shots show just how well we work together. They'll be posting photos to their own blogs, but for now, here are the best of my photos:

More photos behind the cut, if you'll click below:

The Other Weekend, Outfit Post

Just a quickie update (I just finished finals, so I'll have time to post more often) this is what I wore to our meetup a few weekends ago:

It was a lolita meet-up and that is clearly not what I wore, but I got this beautiful skirt from the Snow Field at AWA last year and I never got around to wearing it because I'm derpy and kept forgetting that I owned it. So for a day out shopping with the girls (several other ladies chose to go with other J-fashion styles as well, such as vis-kei and mori girl), I wanted to really go overboard with the space theme and be comfortable (sans crinoline) at the same time. The look was a lot of fun, and I hope that I'll get to recreate it when I finally drag my boyfriend down to the US Space and Rocket Center sometime before I move out of the South.

Additionally, I wore my Laser Cats t-shirt to my astronomy final and made a 109% on the test. Since I missed over half of the classes, did I do so well because I am insanely clever, or because my shirt is insanely awesome? I suppose we'll never know...

Until next time, my dears,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥