2nd Bleaching Adventure

Just like this time last year, I woke up one day and decided to go blonde. As I've said before, blonde is my natural hair color, but because of my dark eyebrows I tend to lean towards darker colors on myself. Since it it summertime though, I decided I would try for blonde again, and this time strove for success. 

Indeed I did succeed, yet not the color I strove for, but it's ok. I did research this time before jumping right in. I read articles online and watched many YouTube videos. My hair was dark purplish red with random black throughout it. (Please excuse the goofy look on my face, haha. I was at Lowe's.) Just in case anyone wants to know, the colors in my hair then were Ion Color Brilliance Permanent Creme Hair Color 1V Jet Black and I think 4RV Medium Burgundy Brown.

As I said, I watched many YouTube videos on how to bleach dark hair. These two are by far my faves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nRhhRPI4p4

Please excuse her voice. Yes it is kinda distracting, but she is very helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3cXcCmi6wM

I didn't see this one till a few days ago, but she a had a lot of helpful tips other videos didn't have.

I really recommend watching these if you want to bleach dark hair.

So, my goal was to reach Ion's HL-V Hi Lift Cool Blonde, which I didn't get, at least all over. I started bleaching my hair on a Monday, and reached my current color by Wednesday. I don't recommend doing what I did, just because it is so damaging to your hair, and I knew this going into it, but I have very strong hair so I knew it would survive. I bleached my hair twice on Monday, and once again on Tuesday. My hair went from orange to a lighter orange, so I went to Sally's and asked for a toner, but the rep said I should bleach again and use purple shampoo. I went home and bleached the third time and it still wasn't as pale a yellow as I would have liked, but was close enough. That night I slept with my hair drenched in hydrating conditioners, which made a big difference.Wednesday morning I went and had my hair cut, and had lots of layers put in to get rid of the fried ends. They weren't splitting or anything; just really dry. After I got home I applied the Hi Lift. After the third bleaching I had a few random orange streaks, which turned pink since I added a bronze corrector to the Hi Lift mixture. It pretty much just stained my hair.

Here's a list of the products I've used and their original prices. They're all from either Sally's or WalMart:

• Ion Color Brilliance Powder Lightener 1lb Tub ($20): I have a lot of hair and this tub didn't last me all three bleaches. It's got 5 stars on the Sally's site, but I read reviews for another which would have worked better I think.
• L'Oreal Quick Blue High Performance Powder Lightener 1oz ($4.79): I told the rep I have really thick hair, so she gave me two of these. Two of these didn't get through all of my hair. But I feel like the lightening process went a lot smoother with this one, esp when heat was applied.
• Ardell Red Gold Corrector Plus .125oz ($.99): I added this to the color mixture (not the bleach) and this turned the mixture pink, and thus stained my hair. Would not recommend if coloring hair really light. On the bright side, my hair was not brassy.
• Ion Sensitive Scalp 30 Volume Creme Developer 32oz ($5.69): I used this for each bleaching and color
• Ion Color Brilliance Permanent Creme Hair Color HL-V Hi Lift Cool Blonde ($5.29): I love Ion hair colors. They are super easy to apply and I've never had disasters with the outcome. The colors are very pigmented and bright. I did not achieve this color, but I think it's because I didn't bleach light enough. I would recommend Ion color to everyone!
• Biotera Ultra Moisturizing Shampoo ($7.39): I never thought my hair could feel too moisturized, but this one does it. Idk what it is, but when I use this product I can't brush my hair when it's wet and it takes forever to dry. But once it's dry my hair feel amazing.
• Clairol Shimmer Lights Shampoo and Conditioner ($12.49 and $8.49): I loveeee these. I use this almost every time I wash my hair and my hair becomes more platinum with every use. It's amazing. Because it's a purple shampoo it cancels out the yellow tones in blonde hair. I've recommended it before and I would in the future.
• TRESsemme Nourishing Rituals Rejuvenating Mud Masque 8oz ($3.97): I use this every other time I wash my hair and leave in for about 5 minutes to help prevent any breakage.
• TRESsemme Nourishing Rituals Protein Renewal Creme 8oz ($3.97): Because bleaching hair strips your hair of its proteins, I bought this to replenish them. I like this product so far, and use it when I'm not using the masque.

This is what my hair looks like now (next to KettlePopped, who's not being cute or serious at all -_-;). I'm very happy with the color and I get compliments ALL THE TIME. When my roots grow out I plan on just using the Hi Lift color, since my natural color is a dark blonde, so I should be able to just use it by itself. That's what it's made for anyway.

I hope someone found this useful, but like I said I don't recommend bleaching three times in two days. If you do, make sure you don't bleach your roots but once, because that's what makes your hair fall out.

Have a good day! =]

A Nerd's Bday: Chapter 2 StarCraft

Now, if you don't know StarCraft very well, like myself and almost all non-Koreans (haha, jk) you may not know what you're looking at. This was the cake we made for Greg's older brother, TJ, who turned 20 this June. We were sitting at work together on break and he said he wanted a StarCraft cake. I asked KettlePopped for help on design on this one since I had no idea what to do, and since he plays SC with TJ online.
The cake is a 13"x9" chocolate cake layered with different colors of buttercream icing. I bought flavored rock candy for the blue crystals which represent minerals, which is like money in the game (i guess).

The little dudes go out and mine, bringing back to base their findings. The base and these little dudes, along with the tank were made from chocolate. KettlePopped told me to add space animals which could be anything. So I made a little walrus and black beaver (I was too lazy to make brown when I already had black), representing Greg and my brother. The story was to be TJ was the commander and was gonna hunt down our brothers. He thought it was funny.
First, when he arrived at our house KettlePopped set up a new cake board with candles "20" lit on it and said his cake was a cloaked banshee (game thing). TJ loled. Then I brought out the real cake. His mom was like "question mark", but TJ went off rambling what each thing was which was all that mattered. As long as he knew what it was, even though the rest of us were completely lost, she was happy.

Note: This cake took from June 10-11th.

A Monkey's Graduation

This May a lifelong family friend we've known for sixteen years graduated high school. His mom asked me if I would make him a cake for his graduation, and of course I couldn't say no. I knew that because our families have known each other for so long that I could have some fun with this cake. Greg, the graduate, asked for a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. His mom asked for me to incorporate a monkey in somehow (her nickname for him is Monkey). So, I did some research of graduation cakes and fell in love with the book theme. I asked his mom what his three worst subjects were (Greg wasn't the greatest student and his worst subjects I felt would be more memorable than just any old class). The cap on top is of his school colors, green and gold with "2012" on it. The diploma is one of my favorite pieces. Wait, you didn't see a diploma? That thing that looks like a banana....yea! It was a brilliant idea KettlePopped and I came up with. To have a banana peeled open to reveal the diploma. I loved the idea, and still think it was quite clever. The monkey was KettlePopped's idea, to use the evil monkey from Family Guy. Greg and his family watch the show as well, so we knew they'd get a kick out of it. 

The cake, as I said before, was red velvet filled with my cream cheese icing and covered with a thin layer of my buttercream. They were covered in two layers of fondant, one for the pages and another for the covers. The spines of each book were decorated with white chocolate letters and bindings. The cap was a red velvet cupcake turned upside down and covered with chocolate. The tassel and "2012" numbers were also chocolate. The evil monkey was modeled out of modeling chocolate by KettlePopped. I made the diploma as well from modeling chocolate.

I was not able to actually attend Greg's graduation since I had to work, but I met them afterwards at Olive Garden and sat with his family until my family and KettlePopped arrived with the cake.

While at the restaurant I heard other tables around us talking about the cake and asking their kids if they wanted a cake like his. I gave some cake to the waiter, who was awesome and super polite during our entire meal.

This cake was fun to make and I hope Greg liked it (his mom loved it).

Happy Graduation Greg,

YOU DID IT!!!

Note: This cake took from May 24-26th.

A Nerd's Bday: Chapter 1 DragonAge

May 8th was my best friend, Becca's 21st birthday. Knowing she is a huge Dragon Age nerd, I decided to create the perfect cake for my friend. I did my research on the game: what each character wore, weapons they carried, and which dragon should rock as the centerpiece. I also researched Alistair's rose speech, and incorporated the rose into the cake, yellow because it's Becca's favorite color. Now because the dragon was the main event, we didn't spend much time on making the people: Oghren (dwarf) with his axe/hammer, an archer, Morrigan (mage) with her staff, and Alistair with his sword. I wanted the cake to be as realistic forest-y as I could possibly make it. So I layered three colors of icing then added foliage and stone. The dragon would be adorning the top, wrapped around the tier, staring the characters in the eyes, except for Alistair, who was at the bottom daydreaming about roses. The dwarf was climbing onto the second tier, trying to reach the action.   

Becca's cake was a chocolate cake, Devil's Food if I recall correctly. Once again I used my home-made buttercream icing to fill and ice the cake. The boulders adorning the bottom border of the cake were marbled fondant, as I did on my mom's cake. The people were made from white modeling chocolate. The dragon was created from a wire frame made by KettlePopped (that in itself took a few hours because he kept breaking it using his awesome man strength!!! *said in simonandmartina's epic booming voice*). The frame was then covered in cereal treats (home-made) with a layer of white modeling chocolate covering it. Then the fun part came. I colored the chocolate different shades of purple (I chose the high dragon in the game, honestly just because purple is my favorite color and it would pop off the greens of the icing). I rolled the chocolate very thin and cut very tiny bits from the log and rolled each piece individually into spheres....
This took hours. I had watched Fred 2 while doing this. After creating these hundreds of tiny chocolate balls, these became the dragon's scales, each individually placed on. This process in itself took from about 10a.m. to about 5p.m. Needless to say, I never want to do a dragon again (j/k! I totally would! =]). While I was working on this, KettlePopped worked on the head, spines, feet, and wings.

We took Becca's cake to O'Charley's where she thought she was meeting two friends for dinner. She had no idea there was a cake, and a surprise party (late decision) waiting for her. It went from three girls to nine friends and family (eleven if you count the awesome waitress and bartender, who loved the cake and said it tasted great). Becca walked in and was shocked; she loved her cake. Yet again, we made a cake no one wanted to cut into.

I have to admit, Becca's cake is my favorite cake we've made so far. I'm very proud of us.

Happy Birthday Becca, and I hope you loved your cake!

Note: This cake took from May 6-8th to make.

A Beautiful Cake for a 50th Birthday

This cake was for my mom's manager's 50th birthday in March. It didn't have to be special, just really pretty. This cake was a strawberry cake filled with home-made cream cheese icing and covered in chocolate ganache. The piped scrolls (which I know isn't perfect, but it was my first time) was from my buttercream icing, as was the roses' leaves. Finally the blue roses, which KettlePopped made, were fondant. This cake was by far the easiest, and only took about 10.5 hours from baking the scratch cake to putting the roses on. 19 blue roses adorned the cake, which took KettlePopped about 7 hours to make. The dimension of this cake were 9" and 6".

This is KettlePopped smoothing out the chocolate ganache on the bottom tier.

Top tier added with borders and scrolls piped on.

Side view of the scrolls.

I have to admit, for my first time doing scrolls, and doing them vertically, I think I did a good job =]

My dad and I took it to my mom's work (KettlePopped was working as well) and everyone thought it was beautiful. I received hugs and pictures were taken. Later my mom told me everyone thought it was delicious and not too sweet. I'm proud of this cake; it's so simple, yet so pretty. <3

How I Spent My 21st....

First off I'm happy to say I didn't have to make my own cake. Second, I'm happy to say I had cinnamon rolls instead of cake. Third, my birthday was horrible. =[

On my actual birthday I had class from 5:30pm to 9:10 pm, so we decided to celebrate my birthday on that Friday instead. However, I had to make a cake for another kid's birthday also. The cake was for one of KettlePopped's coworker's grandson who loves Bakugan. We later dicovered his favorite color was green, and so we decided to create a green dragon Bakugan cake. 

This was a yellow cake with a home-made chocolate icing, covered in a chocolate fondant (which is why this cake ranks #1 as biggest pain in butt), complete with the Bakugan in its ball form and the actual creature which adorned the top.The ball, and what was supposed to be the Bakugan sunburst were made from my home-made fondant, and the dragon was modeling chocolate with sugar sheet wings.

The chocolate fondant was pretty much made of fondant and modeling chocolate and put together, but the problem was it hardened like a rock once we let it set. I was finished with everything on my part, but KettlePopped had spent hours fixing the fondant before we could even move on. 

Once we delivered it though, the kids and parents loved it. The parents thought the dragon on top was a toy, but in fact KettlePopped had modeled that all by himself. As soon as the cake came in the kids sat the table ready to dig in. Later, KettlePopped's coworker told him it tasted as good as it looked.

What made this birthday suck, was right after we delivered the cake and walked out to my car to go home, change, and go out to dinner with my family, my car wouldn't start. Somehow from the time we went in the house (for about 5 minutes) and came out my car had died. No lights were left on and I had about half a tank of gas. So we had to wait for my dad to come over and jump my car. What made things worse was at the restaurant, I got bits of metal shishkabob sticks jammed into my gums. It pretty much ruined my night, because it hurt and scared the crap out of me. Oh well, better luck next year.

My Brother's 16th Prestige

Haha, I know, I know, a 16th prestige isn't possible, according to the game that is (MW3). In my brother's case, however, it did in fact happen. January 14, 2012 was my brother's 16th birthday, and I figured since 16 is considered a big birthday that I would create a cake for him. Originally my plan was to go Ghost Adventures with this, because it's his favorite TV show and we bond over it. But what he asked for was a Call of Duty cake, and I was not about to disappoint a birthday boy.

Let me first say this cake was a pain in the butt. Not the biggest one, but second biggest.The cake is devil's food, because my brother loves chocolate cakes, covered in the same home-made icing I made for my mom's cake. What made this cake such a pain was because my boyfriend and I tried new things, modeling chocolate being one of them. I must admit though that it was a little dried out because I did not ice over where we cut the face out (oops!). The helmet itself was the biggest problem for this cake because I wanted to try a marshmallow fondant this time. I had read great reviews on it and thought it would be a good shot. My boyfriend feels like it was the biggest lie ever and never wants to even hear the name "marshmallow fondant" again. Just to be clear, I followed the instructions exactly, and it came out horrible and was a bear to work with. We have no clue why.

From what you can see in the picture, the only thing actually cake was the soldier's head. The accessories on the helmet and around the head were cereal treats (home-made) covered in modeling chocolate (also home-made). I, myself, had created everything except for the pistol and the goggles worn by the soldier.

So, I started off by baking two cakes (from the pan you'd use to make a doll dress from). Then my boyfriend (we'll call him KettlePopped) leveled both cakes and started shaping the face.

While I worked on the grenade, flashlight, headset, battery pack, C4 package, and random helmet gadget (pictured in front), KettlePopped worked solely on the pistol and goggles. He wanted the pistol to be as detailed as possible, knowing my dad is a veteran and would have been looking for such details.

I made sure to add extra details to the soldier's helmet, such as number of kills, patches, and blood.

I decorated the kitchen in BDU cups, plates, napkins, and also had little planes and helicopters hanging from the ceiling. My brother loved his cake, and didn't want to cut into his either. Just as my mom does, to this day he compares every cake I make to his, thinking his was best. Silly boy.

Note: This cake took from January 12th-14th. Also, it took 19.5 hours of non-stop work and no sleep.

Mom's 49th Birthday (The Cake that Started it All)

Happy birthday, Mom! Well, actually this picture was taken back when it really was her birthday, as shown in the picture above. My brother and I had been planning her cake early in 2011, because she pointed out to us that on her birthday the year prior (2010) we forgot to get her a cake. So last year we wanted to go all out. Honestly though, we forgot all about it until Veteran's Day, a couple weeks before her birthday. I knew I wanted a koi pond cake, because my mom has two koi ponds with a total of 28 fish (all Japanese koi except for one comet). And yes, each has its own unique name.

 This is the pond in our back yard next to the deck. When you step outside it's its own tranquil paradise with a waterfall and beautiful koi. Some of them are even tame enough to eat out of your hand!

Here are the koi from our front yard pond. The larger black and white fish on the right is Domino, the largest in the pond. He and is sibling, Jewel, are the tamest in which you can actually reach your hand in and pet them. They are scaleless, which may feel weird, but they are very fun. They will even give you fish kisses!

Anyway, back to the cake. My mom loves her koi and her ponds, so I wanted that to portray into her cake. Sadly, I don't have the "making of" the cake pictures, because they were on my Samsung Impression, which fell in the toilet.... sad day. The cake, though, was a white cake and consisted of 7 cakes. Yes, 7. I made my own icing and filled each layer and wrapped it all in a thin layer so the cake itself would not dry out. Then the piping began, first with the water feature, then the grass. While I was doing this, my boyfriend created the water lilies, koi, and foliage.All of these were created from fondant, which I had made myself (none of that Wilton ready-made fondant I read so many bad reviews of).

The flagstone and random rocks that decorated the edges of our pond were created by my brother and myself earlier in the project. I created the marbled stone, and he created some of the grey stones and all of the baked beans looking ones, haha. Those too were made from my home-made fondant.

To make sure this was a surprise to our mom, my brother and I didn't text or call her all day on her birthday. We didn't say anything to her period until after we delivered the cake to my parents' house (my mom was away with a friend who was in on the whole thing), my dad had come home and we all left for the restaurant. She was irritated with us, but we knew we'd be forgiven later. My dad, brother, boyfriend, and I beat my mom home and set up the cake with candles (we decorated the kitchen in Hello Kitty before we left). My mom came in yelling at my dad about something but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her cake.
"Where did you guys get this?!!?" she first exclaimed.
"Buy it? We MADE it!" I said.
She loved it even more. She didn't even want to cut into it. While we all sat and ate cake, everyone told me how delicious it was. There was so much cake though (remember it took 7 cakes to make this), my dad had actually take majority of it to work with him (truck driver). When he came home he said everyone had devoured it and said it was great.
So, all in all I think my first theme cake was a success. Everyone loved my icing and said my cake was very moist, and everyone said it was beautiful. To this day, whenever I create a cake, my mom compares it to this one, most of the time saying hers was best. =]

Note: This cake took from approximately November 17th-20th to create.