It's just a sweet, sweet fantasy; Island Fantasy EDT by Britney Spears...

The mandarin is the strongest fruit note on me and, and coupled with the raspberry, gives the fragrance a soft, fuzzy feel. The lemon gives the quieter fruit a bit of bite and energy.

The floral notes used in ISLAND FANTASY remain watery and in the background. There is a breeze of orange blossom, freesia and occasional hint of violet underneath it all, but none of the floral notes are truly strong enough to stand out from the fruits for long. This is definitely a fruity perfume.

There is no strong indication between the heart notes and the base, thanks to the constant trickle of summery fruits. I'm sure there is some sandalwood here, as after a few hours ISLAND FANTASY begins to remind me of J.Lo Love & Glamour, which uses bucket loads of it. I also detect a coconut scent too.

Official Scent notes: citruses, mandarin, clementine, red berries, jasmine, violet, freesia, musk and sugar cane.

 

Overall: ISLAND FANTASY is pleasant and easy to wear. I'll mainly stick to wearing it on casual days, but you could get away with wearing it to work if you wanted to. ISLAND FANTASY does go close to the skin fairly quickly, but a faint woody scent is still detectable five hours later. So yeah; this is quieter and doesn't wear as long as the rest of the Fantasy line, so beware of that.


ISLAND FANTASY is available nationwide and costs around £24 for a 50ml bottle.
There is supposed to be a 100ml bottle sold for around £34, but I've yet to see one.

Dare to bare - almost... Nearly Naked foundation by Revlon.

I'm a tad too fair and fairly cool [leaning towards neutral] toned for many popular brands of foundation, but Revlon foundations in Ivory [sometimes even the yellowly Vanilla] are shades that I find wearable - the base of the foundation leans toward pink more then yellow, but not too much so.

I found that Nearly Naked does look a little dark when swatched, but the formula is made to be highly blendable, so it wears lighter after application.

I keep on banging my head...

You have to work to carve out your own little corner, and I'm certainly smacking my head against the wall trying to make a dent. I just hope I don't get brain-damaged before I get there - Rose McGowan

Lightening Up: Part III

The story so far...

I've stripped the violet out of my hair, which left me ginger, and then tried to tone down the red stains in my hair via bleach. As you can see, if you follow that link, the results were quite patchy.

Bleaching: The first attempt

I didn't expect the store bought bleach [I used Schwarzkopf Live XXL in Max Blonde] to work fully on my previously coloured and stained hair, but I didn't count on the stubborn violet streaks to remain.

I decided that my dark blonde dye would just look patchy applied directly over the resulting mesh of shades of orange, yellow and violet, and so choose to bleach it again...

 

 

 

Ta-da!

 

Much better. My final shade should be nice and even now. I'm almost back to my natural hair colour.

 

 



To be concluded....

Lightening up: Part II

 

So.... I've stripped the violet out of my hair, which left me ginger (my use of various red and purple hair dyes has permanently stained my ash blonde hair cuticles). As I plan on using a dark blonde hair dye I am trying to tone down the red stains in my hair, as they'll show up through the shade that I want to use.


Without further ado I present you with the results of my first DIY bleaching attempt...

 

Now I knew that the store bought dye wouldn't be strong enough to remove my cuticle staining, so I was prepared for the resulting yellow/orange shade, which would still be light enough for me to dye over.

What surprised me was the stubborn streaks of violet - the actual dye didn't show up that well on my hair when I firs coloured it, but now AFTER the stripping and bleaching it finally decides that it's the time for it to shine...


Sigh. I'm deciding if I should re-bleach my hair, or just throw the new dye over it and hope for the best [yeah, I'm lazy].

The bleaching kit I used was Schwarkopf Max Blonde. It will lighten hair up to 8 levels darker then the models on the box. I bought it from Superdrug, where it was on offer for £3.99. Boots and Asda also sell Schwarzkopf hair dyes.

I've included a close-up photo of my roots, so you can see how the product will work on uncoloured hair.