[Seattle 2022] Day 5 - Exploring International District

 

Hello again angels, I hope you're doing well. I hope you're ready for some shenanigans because for some reason on this day I made a Choice to dye my hair at the Airbnb in the middle of my vacation. 

At this point we were having a lot of issues with the Airbnb so long story short I had to do this dye job in the kitchen sink (and I still thought it was a good idea) so buckle up it's gonna be a ride lmao

Kohi and I decided we'd have a more relaxed day since we were both really tired from having walked like 6-8 hours every day for the last 4 days, so we weren't meeting until later in the afternoon. This made me believe that day was the perfect time to dye my hair I guess 🤪 I woke up early again, had breakfast and got to work.

I've never used this shade in Iroiro's dye range so I wasn't prepared for it to lean more on the green side of undertones. All the red flags were there but I chose to ignore them so here's me mixing up the color in a bowl with a spatula (bc I didn't buy a color brush or gloves for that matter). 

Alright so just looking at it in the bowl I knew it wasn't going to be blue on my head but I went for it anyways and that's just very indicative of my mental state at this point due to all the problems we've endured so far 🤡

I was of course not shocked that it turned out Miku seafoam green but was still upset about it even though I willingly did this to myself 😂 I didn't hate it but this was not the outcome I wanted. I only used half the color in the package so I saved the rest for when I was home to fix this dye job. It was patchy and uneven but whatever I was going through it so this was the vibe.

Nothing a hat can't solve right 😅

Kohi came buy and we headed for the International district. She wanted to show us the Uwajimaya (grocery store) and Kinokuniya (Japanese bookstore) so that's the first place we headed to. We used to have a lot of these bookstores in my city but over the years they started shutting down one by one so I think we only have like 2 or 3 of them left. It brought back a lot of fond memories for me being here.

The entrance had a cute lil Totoro greeting you as you walked in 💖

The bookstore was two floors, the bottom floor had general stationary and books (kind of like Chapters!). The upstairs was the weeb corner, it had all the anime merch and manga. We spent most of our time up here trying to find gifts for friends.

Kevin found this tokusatsu and Gundam corner so he spent a lot of time in this area in particular 😅

I wanted this so bad but I couldn't justify the price cause I don't
really use cookbooks at all 😓

this was a really cute artbook that taught
you how to draw different foods!

They had a corner full of animal crossing plushes and Kohi took a pic of me grabbing the stuffed leaf. I asked her what kind of furniture she thinks it is and she told me to throw in on the floor to find out 😂😂

Kohi looking really disappointed they didn't have her
horse girl manga in stock (ウマ娘 プリティーダービー)

I saw this gorgeous Godzilla embroidered スカジャン by the register and fell in love but it was $2000 💀 It was really well made though so the price is justified. I hope it goes to a good home!

There was a cute little bubble tea stand on our way out so we decided to grab a drink before exploring the neighborhood. 

We took some more cute pics together here too~ I love these sm I get so happy every time I see these 🥰

There were a couple of hobby stores in the area so we went to visit them for Kevin's sake. This one was really cute and tiny, the owner was very sweet. We chatted with him a little in Chinese.

Once we were done exploring we walked around to find some dinner. We had a few options but settled for dimsum at a place called Purple Dot Café because Kohi and Glenn had never eaten dimsum before. 

The food was surprisingly decent and reasonably priced, everything was delicious and we got a cute group photo as well 😍

After dinner I think we just hung out at the Airbnb. Not a whole lot of things were open late during our trip, most places other than the malls closed at like 7 or 8PM so it was honestly very boring at night.

I think this might've been the day I noticed this funny little display case in the lobby 😅

That's it for this one, thank you for reading and I'll chat with you again in the next one~ 💕

✨ Iro Iro Hair Dye Review & New Hair Reveal 🙈

[Disclaimer]: This review is not sponsored and will be my 100% honest opinion based on my personal experience with the product. I have an education in cosmetology but I am currently not a licensed professional. If you choose to copy my methods or techniques you are doing so at your own risk. I recommend that you see or consult a professional before coloring or bleaching your hair yourself at home.

Hello angels! Today I'm going to be reviewing the hair dye I got in my mini haul from the other day. I bought a few different colors but I will mostly be reviewing the Iro Iro Silver and Neon Pink dye. I'll walk you through my whole process and give you my final thoughts on it as an alternative to Overtone and Arctic Fox.

So I was using the Schwarzkopf BlondMe Blush Wash in silver and strawberry for upkeep recently. I didn't like the strawberry color much but I wanted to use up the product. This is what it looks like kinda faded out:

I thought it would be a good idea to strip out all that first before using this new color so I sat myself for a stripping mask (baking soda, developer, purple shampoo, and dish soap). I let that sit in my hair for maybe 30-45 minutes and then rinsed it out and dried my hair.

This is what it looked like after stripping the color out:

Ideally I would've liked to do another round but I ran out of baking soda so I left it like this.

Now that my hair is prepped, I went ahead and mixed up the color. You don't have to mix it with anything you can use it straight out of the package but I was afraid the pink would be too neon and the silver would be too dark, so I diluted it with some conditioner.

I added a tiny bit of Iro Iro's Purple to the pink because it was feeling a bit warm but otherwise these are just mixed with some conditioner.

I applied it to my hair and let it sit for about 30 minutes as per the instructions.

Pro tip: if you don't have a coloring cape (mine was in the wash from the stripping mask) just cut some holes in a garbage bag and you've got yourself some home salon couture 😂

Once the time was up I rinsed and dried. This was the result:

Here's a before and after comparison that I posted on IG. As you can see the pink part didn't really show up the same way as it did in the pot but the silver was spot on.

I wasn't satisfied with this so I actually did another round of color on the pink to try and make it more vibrant. This time I didn't mix any of the purple in, I mixed in the pink and some conditioner into whatever I had left over in that pot of color and this was the result after letting it sit for another 30-40 minutes:

It's super bright and obnoxious but that's what I wanted! Since I still had a little purple in the mix it didn't turn out too warm for my liking so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Pigmentation: ♥♥♥♥♥ 

The coverage on this was fantastic. Once I hopped in the shower the water basically ran clear after a minute or two and the color was pretty true to what was in the bowl for the most part. I think if you start mixing or diluting it your results will vary but if you stick to just what's in the package & add some conditioner you'll get what you see.

Packaging: ♥♥♥♥♡

I adore that these come in a squeeze package instead of a traditional tube, bottle or tub. This lets you get every last bit of product out without wasting any. My only complaint is that I wish it came in a bigger size because it took 1 package for each color on my head and that was barely enough.

Price: ♥♥♥♥♥

I got these at Sally's for $15.99 CAD each (+tax on top). Compared to Arctic Fox ($26.99 CAD on Amazon) and Overtone ($25 USD + tax and shipping) for the same amount of product, this is a steal and more accessible for me with no shipping times.

Overall Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 

Compared to AF and OT, this made my hair feel the best. OT leaves my hair feeling kind of slimy and AF didn't do anything for my hair in that department. My hair is super soft and silky without needing to condition on top and the color is more vibrant than the other two competing products. I am very happy to have discovered this brand and I'm thankful to all my friends who recommended this to me!

I hope this was a helpful read! Let me know if you've tried any of the other colors from this brand or if you have any hair color brands you'd recommend me trying.

Thanks for reading and I'll catch you around later~