Summer Breeze Hair Tutorial with Percy&Reed - Win the Look!

We've teamed up with haircare extraordinaires Percy&Reed to create a series of hairstyle tutorials perfect for all occasions this summer.



Look One, Summer Breeze, is a soft and bouncy, loose textured look that is perfect for festivals and wedding guest hair - in fact any occasion where a floral crown is appropriate! To create this look, the Percy&Reed stylists used Percy&Reed Abundantly Bouncy Volumising Mousse and It’s So Cool Heat Protect Styling Mist, topped off with our Whole Lotta Rosie headband in Burgundy. We hope you love this super easy tutorial!

What's more is that we've teamed up with the awesome Percy&Reed guys to allow one lucky winner to win the products used to create this look. There are loads of ways to enter below - good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

With thanks to Rhubarb Martini for the tutorial video and Ky Wilson at Percy&Reed East Salon for creating the looks

DIY - Studded Boucle Jacket

As soon as I saw this little boucle style jacket from Primark (£19) I just knew it had oodles of DIY potential! My personal style mantra is pretty much 'I'll like it if you go and put some studs on it' which is exactly what I decided to do.


I've seen similar style jackets with a measly line of studs down the lapels but this was nowhere near badass enough for me. I wanted Balmain esque. A vertible butt-load of studs, if you will. A quick squizz on eBay found me this seller who ships from London - probably more expensive than the Asian sellers, but I'm an impatient soul and I wanted my jacket NOW. I bought 5 different styles and sizes of studs (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) for a total of around £15 and I still have a LOT left over for other projects.

As well as your studs, especially if you are using the screw-back cone type, you will need a braddle to make small holes and a flat head screw driver to bend the spikes down.


And that's really it, you get studding! You could sort out a pattern but I pretty much randomised it, creating little blocks of patterns I guess - I just made sure they were nice and random.


The beauty of doing it this way is if you go a bit wonky, it doesn't matter as much as if you were following a particular line or something. I also ensured the cone spike studs were placed evenly apart as there wasn't as many of these and I didn't want to run out.




Once I'd finished one side, I mirrored my random pattern onto the other lapel and then added two final studs on each pocket.


What do you guys think? This took me around 4 evenings work while watching movies on my holiday last week - I've always got to be doing something, even when I'm meant to be relaxing!

DIY - Tie Dye Dip Hem Skirt

Dont you guys just hate it when a magazine publishes a photo of a product and then you can't find it anywhere? This exact scenario recently happened with me and a tie dye dip hem skirt from Zara. There it was looking all grungepretty on the pages of August's Company magazine but was it online? No. Had the shop assistants even ever seen it? Heck no.

So of course being the stubborn impatient type that I am, I decided to make my own version. And freaking cute it is too.

Tie Dye Dip Hem Skirt - How To

You Will Need:

Dip Hem Jersey Skirt - £15 from boohoo.com
Marbles
Elastic Bands
Dylon Hand Dye - mine's Velvet Black
Dye Salt

Use your marbles to tie the elastic bands round your fabric really tightly. If your fingertips start to go numb, you're on the right track.

Mix up your techniques- working your way across the fabric, try using lots of elastic bands on the same section, or for the ring effect keep tieing it up through the same column like below

Vary the patterns that you use for your ties. I mixed it up with different thickness elastic bands, varied the space between each tie, had some bands with just one elastic tie and some with multiple like above.

It does take some patience to complete the whole skirt, so I suggest sitting outside with a cuppa one afternoon (or in front of the Eastenders omnibus like me above!) And now for the exciting bit - dyeing!

Marigolds at the ready, be sure to prep your area well - use a washing up bowl or stainless steel sink (your bathroom sink will probably get dyed) and newspaper the around area. Make sure you're wearing old clothes too.

Prep your dye as per the packet instructions. The salt is really important as it will set the dye - especially necessary when you're using a blend material like this skirt.

Carefully submerge the skirt into the dye. It needs to be in here for around an hour so keep manipulating it every 15 mins or so. When your hour is up, carefully remove the skirt from the dye and begin to rinse. Keep rinsing the skirt (still tied up) until the water is almost clear. This takes around 10 minutes so by patient :)

And now for the grand unveiling! If you've tied your elastic bands tight enough you'll have to cut them off the skirt - make sure you use blunt ended scissors so you don't accidentally catch the fabric and end up cutting that. Advocating wasting elastic bands after just one use is probably frowned upon, but tell that to the postman that keeps leaving piles of them at my door. I'll recycle those ones, promise.

After a quick machine wash (with other dark colours!) and dry, ta da! My new favourite skirt. I wore this at the weekend with a simple black vest, leather jacket and studded sandals - effortless!

Will you be tie dying your own dippy hem skirt?

Decoden Phone Case Tutorial

Recently I took the decision to enquire about upgrading my crapBerry to an iPhone. Mostly for the sake of my blood pressure, I hit the highstreet with some admittedly delusional expectations that despite having 6 months left on my Blackberry contract, there was a phone company waiting to give me a shiny white iPhone 4S for the same plan I was already on. I'm a valued customer, Goddamnit!

My current provider, O2, essentially laughed in my face. Apparently it's acceptable for an 18 month old, £200 value smart phone to crash on a regular basis, struggle to perform even the most basic of commands and don't even talk to me about it's inability to receive text messages in full. No early upgrade, £100 for the handset even in 6 months time when my current plan expired and a minimum contract of £36 a month? They made absolutely no attempt to stop me when I walked out that door.

Undeterred, I ended up in Phones 4 U - who not only wavered the £100 handset fee, they bought me out of my remaining contract and I left with cash in my pocket for the old phone. I nearly bit their hand off for the deal! The moral of the story here, kids, is to shop around. Had o2 made me feel even slightly valued as a long standing customer I would have been much more inclined to wait the remaining 6 months and stay with them, because I'm a pushover like that. There was no offer to attempt a service or system reset on the old phone, no offer to look into upgrading early at all. Customer service goes a long way people, and they've just missed out on getting £700+ of my customer guaranteed for another 2 years.

Anyway, I divulge. Naturally the first thing I did after downloading Instagram for my iPhone was look into purchasing the tackiest, blingiest case I could get my hands on. Having been hugely ashamed of my Blackberry before, spending any more money of it seemed daft, but as I love my new iPhone more than most humans I was willing to spend a fair whack on getting my kawaii on.

But heavens above, Decoden cases are expensive. Like everything, you get what you pay for, and I am not one to belittle someone's craft at all, but given the following tutorial took me a total of 30 minutes, from my sickbed while drinking tea, £60+ is somewhat steep.

So without further a do, here's my easy peasy tutorial to get a totally kitsch-tastic decoden phone cover for around £20.

You Will Need:

- cabochons and charms. There is an absolutely huge choice of cabochons on eBay and Etsy, but I purchased a rainbow set from this Canadian seller for around £15. Delivery took about 4 days which is pretty fast even for impatient old me.

- E6000 Jewellery/Craft Glue - this is specially formulated to adhere most surfaces together - wood, metal, plastic, leather, textile to name a few. Unlike superglue, this dries totally clear and is also more maleable before it dries allowing for a little shifting around. I've linked to a small tube here because my only quarm with it is that it is soo difficult to store, despite using a airtight seal it still manages to dry so I end up cutting the corner off the tube to get mine out of my big one!

- clear phone case just 99p with a screen guard from this seller

- old paintbrush and tweezers

Step 1:

Lay out your cabochons in your desired pattern. I had about 15/20 pieces left over and tried to ensure there were some of each colour left over for repairs in the future.

Step 2:

The glue does dry quite quickly so ensure you work in small areas at a time. Either pipe straight from the tube, or use your old paint brush to spread the glue onto the case quite thickly. Remember this glue will dry 100% clear so you can be a bit more generous with the glue here.

Step 3:

Press the cabochons into the glue firmly. Remember to position them so that there are minimal gaps in between each cabochon. I started around my camera position. Don't panic too much if you get gaps though, the glue stays maleable for a little while so you can always have a little shift about later.

Step 4:

Apply glue to your next layer/area and repeat until you have finished your case.

Step 5:

This step is optional, but as I had some spare, I filled in the smaller gaps with some coloured Swarovski flat back crystals

Place it in a cool place for 24 - 48 houes to ensure it's dried completely before using.

And voila! See, told you it was easy. This is a really simple application but just as eyecatching as some of the pricier cases out there. I decided to just deco the back of the case, but you could always apply the same to the sides and even front of your phone for ultimate kawaii style.

I'd love to know your thoughts! Do you like the rainbow kitsch look or do you prefer something a little classier?

Tutorial: Vintage Hair Roles

A little while ago, the gorgeous Laura Clark won a pair of butterfly clips in one of our Facebook giveaways (just proves that they're actually real!) She very kindly sent us some photos of herself sporting her new prize, and I was spellbound my her hair! Amazing! I love a victory roll as much as the next girl, but have never had the guts to pull it off. Laura has very kindly written out a very useful and detailed step-by-step guide of how to achieve the look. Thanks Laura!

Rockabilly Roll Hair Tutorial

Welcome to my first ever hair tutorial!

I hope you all have a go at getting massive vintage bangs in your hair to go with your amazing Crown and Glory accessories!

So, to start with, I wash and towel dry my hair. Then put quite a lot of moose through it. My hair isn't thick, but there's a lot of it, so it needs to know who's boss!

I then blow dry it until it's pretty much dry, but still very slightly damp.

So then this is what I have...a mess in need of a cut and colour! My bedroom could do with lil' tidy too methinks! What changes!

I then take quite a large square section at the front of my hair, you can use your fingers to do this, a tail comb is great for getting nice straight lines too.

How embarrassing, you can really see my roots on this one! But as you can see, there's quite a lot of hair there. More than you might think you need. This way it helps support itself.

I then put two or three large velcro rollers in my hair...

I'm not too fussy about the neatness at this stage, although I try to keep the section as much as I can. This is just to 'train' my hair in to going in the direction I want it to. I try and leave these rollers in for as long as I can. All afternoon if I'm going out in the evening if I can. It just makes it so much easier, and can really cut down the time you spend actually forming your roll. Try to leave them until your hair is completely dry.

Now is a great time for a cup of tea!

Or two..!

Anyway! This is also a good time to attend to the rest of your hair. Today I simply finished blow drying it, and straightened it. When I've left my rollers as long as I can, I take them out, and am left with something along these lines...

Attractive! Be careful here to keep your quiff section separate from the rest of your hair, it might want to wander! A couple of clips can help. A bit of backcombing at the roots is good at this stage, just to give the hair some stiffness.

To get a really tight roll, I then tong the section as a whole...

pulling the section as far forward as you can can help here, so that the roll sits forward on your head. Leave as long as you dare, or until you burn your head!

When you come to remove the tong, don't unravel it. Keep it in the same position, unroll it very slightly, and slide the tong out very carefully, keeping the hair in the same position as much as you can. You should end up with something like this...

Then, if you want a simple roll, it's just a case of grabbing it and pinning it where you want it to be. I try not to comb or brush it at this stage, as that fluffs it up too much. This bit can take some practice, but you can always tong it again if it moves. Pin it well, although two or three is usually enough for me. Spray with some hairspray. Lots of hairspray if your off out on the tiles!

Ta Da! One fabulous roll. For a slightly different shape for the pictures That I took for Sophie I didn't pin the roll, I let the curl fall slightly, then just clipped it up my gorgeous butterfly clip. This gave me a really nice big loose roll.

This is a nice shot of my "Mrs. Morten Harket" thong that I have hanging on my shelves, lovely!

You could curl the rest of your hair...

Or if you really want to 'Rockabilly' it up some more, this style looks fab with a a scarf tied around behind it. Just pin it in place.

I hope you've found my tutorial helpful and interesting. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Happy quiffing!

Sparkling Diamonds,

Tiff x