It is quite exciting when one of your favorite Korean stores you have been shopping at for years all of a sudden release their own line of skincare! And this is exactly what happened with Roseroseshop. A few months ago they announced their new line of serums which I was lucky enough to get to try. I have tested the snail and the tea tree serum but today I will just talk about the tea tree one.

Unlike what some people might think this is not an exfoliating type serum. The BHA content is used for its anti-inflammatory properties to soothe spots and damaged skin. Together with the tea tree extracts, panthenol and allantoin this serum is meant both tho fight the spots and also soothe the skin at the same time.  

I didn't have any spots at the time but I still wanted to test the serum to see how it reacts with my dry skin. I am happy to say that it didn't dry my skin out. It didn't really give me any moisture but it is not meant to do so. I did also feel the soothing properties but I did not get any miraculous results either (Which ones anyway?).  Then I gave this serum to Johnny since his skin was being a little irritated at the time. He was also getting 1-2 new spots every other day and thus the opportunity to test the serum was perfect. One thing that I noticed immediately is that it didn't irritate his sensitive skin. That is always a huge plus in my book (if it would irritate his skin he wouldn't use the product anymore of course!) since his skin is even more fickle than mine and one never knows how it reacts. The next thing I noticed is that he did indeed get fewer spots. The ones he had looked less inflamed and smaller and the ones he might have gotten seem to have fled before even setting up shop on his face. After a few weeks, his spot count went down to only about one to two a week. I think the reason he even got any at all was the fact that the moisturizer wasn't entirely suitable for his skin. But he stopped using it and we shall see.

So basically if you do have spots this serum will likely help you to either diminish them or soothe the ones you have to become less visible. If you have no pimples the snail serum is better suited for you and I will talk about how that went for me next time.

I am definitely happy with the results I saw in Johnny's skin and together with the paired down ingredients list it is a product that I might get him again. The bottle actually lasts forever though so he might still have enough serum for the next four to five months!

Ph: 4.2

Available at Roseroseshop

Available at Jolse

I have been wanting to write hair reviews for years now.  I have been saving packages and taking pictures for so long my hard drive started getting clogged with all this unused stuff.

The reason why I haven't written any is probably because I have never written about hair (besides this one post here) and that it is quite hard and complicated to do so. Also, I am not a professional hairdresser and giving people advice about bleaching and dying hair is a tricky subject. 

I get asked about my hair so much though and instead of repeating my methods and experiments over and over I thought I should just write about them. So these are not necessarily instructions on what to do but explanations of what I have done. I like experimenting with hair and have been doing so since I was a teen. I usually have great results but making mistakes is part of the project. So I will share those mistakes with you as well so that hopefully you don't have to.

There will be quite a few posts which I will announce below in case you are interested in one but not the others (aka it saves you some reading time!). 

Today I will ease into the subject by simply having hair color swatches. I say simply since it is less complicated than the other posts but describing hair colors is anything but simple.

The reason I bought crazy colors in the first place was that I was not happy with Directions. They were much more expensive in Germany than the US and their lasting power is not too good on my hair. Besides I wanted to try out something else and Crazy Colors has a shade selection that I found more appealing than Directions. 

I really liked working with this brand but I confess that my favourite Vegetable based dye brands are Special Effects and Stargazer. The reason why I didn't use them is that they are either too expensive or too hard to find. Also, thy are so excellent since both brands are so pigmented that you can get a good color result on darker hair and they are also the most long lasting vegetable dyes I have ever used. Since my hair is bleached to an 11 base (the lightest you can bleach your hair to) I really didn't need/want a strong dye.

I wanted my hair to be white most of the times and occasionally color it in powdery hues. TO achieve that you need very very light dyes that also wash out relatively fast (not after one wash though) so that I can switch the colors around and not stain my super porous hair to the point where it won't go back to a clean white.

Now you may wonder why I have stronger colors in my arsenal. Well, first off you can mix the colors with conditioner to create pastel hues and secondly I also dyed Johnny Clyde's hair who had stronger colors for a while.

So here are the swatches and my feeble attempts to describe the colors and the results.

Unfortunately, I don't have any strand test to show you since I never used the colors straight on our hair and have thrown out the strand tests I did myself ( I know how could I!), the other reason is that I also don't have enough dye for some of them to do a strand test. 

These shades can be used on a medium to dark base (6 - 11)

More of a blue purple than just a purple. I really like this color and when mixed with conditioner it creates a lovely periwinkle shade.

Sky Blue

Looks practically like Capri Blue and I honestly did not see much of a difference. It is meant to be lighter but I thought it was more or less just as bright. It also looks to be quite purplish but fades to Aqua green as well. Both these shades do not wash out ever once they get to the Aqua stage.

Is a medium to dark bright blue. Even though it looks to have quite a bit of a purple hue it has a green base and fades to an Aqua color. 

These can be used on a medium to light base (8-11)

Candy Floss

A bright pastel pink. I bought this after I realized that Marshmallow was too light to mix. It is a pastel shade but is definitely bright when freshly dyed. It is not suitable to be used for a powdery hue unmixed. It is a neutral pink shade. 

Honorable mention Lilac

I don't know where my Lilac color ended up so I can't swatch it here. But I had it and used it quite a lot so I thought I should include it here. It is a bright pastel purple shade with a string blue base. it is very pretty and does not fade to green. It is a good shade to use when your hair is a little too yellow since it can counteract some of the orange, and counteract the yellow without going green. 

These have to be used on the lightest base (11)

Platinum

It looks grey on the website but I found it to be almost like a white toner but a little stronger. Depending on your base shade it can go either white or silver but it is a very light faint silver color. 

Silver 

To me, this is their white toner. Even though I have had completely white hair I was never able to achieve an actual silver (aka light grey) color with this. It only works as a white toner for super duper light hair only.

Marshmallow