#probably better that prices are a lot higher here. if i could buy everything i'd wanted at a reasonable price?? i'd have no money left lol

[raskies456]

Okay prepare for Long Ask I'm gonna tell you hair dye instructions/tips??? I keep my hair dyed at almost all times so I've got some knowlegg

Step 1: you're gonna have to bleach your hair. I've got light brown/borderline blond hair naturally and I needed to bleach to be able to dye my hair. You can do this at home, it's much cheaper than salon, but pay close attention to instructions because it is after all bleach.

1a before you bleach you should do a hair test. Most home bleaches you have to use all at once though, so maybe see if someone else is bleaching and ask to have a little pinch of it? Basically just put it on a tiny bit of hair and see how it reacts after the recommended time. Some people's hair cannot be bleached without breaking, and itll give you a good idea of how long your hair needs to be in the bleach to get pale.

1b your bleached hair will look yellow most likely. This is normal, not something to worry about. I'll say more on it a bit below (sorry for the length of this aha)

2, it's luckily much easier to dye a full head of hair than partial! And if you were to get it done professionally youd notice its usually cheaper too. Thats because it's just easier to dump it all on and do everything. You might miss a spot, esp your first try, but if you have a way to check the back of your head you should be alright.

For this I'd honestly recommend temporary/washout dye, it last for quite a while but gradually fades as you wash it. Once your roots start growing back they will be your natural colour, but that is honestly a good look imo. Temporary dye is also much better for your hair, especially if you bleach it. You can re-dye it once it fades, or not, as you choose. It should last several weeks. Permanent dye iirc doesnt have the fading effect, but your roots will still grow back in, so in my onion temporary is just. Generally better.

Also: if you get your hair permanently dyed, give it a day or two after bleaching before you dye it. If you use temporary dye, you can do it on the same day if you want. Its bc temporary is much easier on your hair in general. You can still wait if you prefer to though.

2a for a test of dye, put a small amount on a little back of skin to make sure you don't react to it. You can also do a stand test like with the bleach where you dye just a small bit to see if you like the end result or not, but it's not really necessary. Just as an extra precaution if you want to.

2b it is super easy to dye at home, and I'd honestly recommend it over getting a salon job. They just tend to be overpriced. It's up to you though of course if you prefer someone else doing it for any reason, I just only have experience doing it at home after I saw salon prices.

2c also, dyes should all come with instructions, and again, you just follow those and you're golden. (Or silver in this case haha sorry) the only thing I'll say is the time to leave it in on temporary dues is usually really short. If you're using temporary dye, at the end of the time it tells you I'd just wash off one small bit of the dye and see if you like the colour yet. If not, use the surrounding dye to cover that spot again and leave it in for longer. Basically the longer you leave it the better the colour will come out.

3. Once you've washed your hair off, you're basically done! Depending on how light your hair could get and what colour dye you went for, you should have a good string colour that'll last quite a while.

Some additional tips:

If you have problems with your hair looking yellowish, most places you can buy shampoo should have some kind of anti-yellowing shampoo which is basically for people who bleach their hair. It makes you hair a little more grey in colour, which might be good for you.

The kind of bleach you use will determine how light your hair can get. They should have a number on the box, some have for example "9 levels of lift" and some have "20 volume" and I dont know if those two things are on the same scale but the higher the number, the stronger the lightening effect. If you go to a salon, you can ask about how strong their bleach is, they should have a good idea of what to use (but remember I dont go to such places so I'm not 100%). For reference my usual bleach is a 9 lift schwarzkopf, and that gets me from light brown to white-blond really well.

If you bleach and/or dye your hair at home, do it in a room with lots of ventilation. The dye is less bad, but for the bleach, absolutely.

The colours of dye that'll show up depends on the darkness of your hair. If you tried to dye it without bleaching, you could basically only go black from there. Maybe dark blue, depending on how dark your hair is now. If you bleach it and it doesnt come out completely blond, it's okay! You might have to go for a darker grey than you originally wanted, though. If you want a light silver-grey you'll probably need to get your hair bleached to completely white-blond level which I really wouldn't recommend for your first try. Better to get a handle on it first and make sure you hair can deal with it.

Your hair if bleached will probably feel a little crusty and not very soft. That's normal. A good conditioner should clear that up pretty quick. If you don't usually use conditioner, just look for something cheap, trust me it's worth it.

So. Sorry again for the word wall but I hope that the information here is helpful! I just wanted to get it all into one thing. If you have questions feel free to message me and I'll tell you everything I know

Good luck with your hair!

Thank you so much this is super informative!!! Honestly the reason I’m hesitant to do dye myself is just bc I have very little experience with caring for my own hair, I’ve barely learned how to manage a hair dryer, but this definitely makes that option a whole lot less intimidating. And please don’t worry about the word wall, it’s all very good info and exactly what I needed!

[scriptflorist]

How can scam work with florists selling a cheap flower at a very expensive claiming that the flower is an expensive breed. Are there any common types of flowers that get used this way? I'd also need to know how to tell the difference.

Hi there,

Alright, I had to think about how to string this up because… florists don't actually do that? Not in the exact sense that you're talking about because that's incredibly counterproductive and a surefire way for their business to fail…

So why does that not work? For which we first have to look at prices and how florists calculate them. Without getting into the nitty gritty a rule of thumb is that florist take the wholesaler's price times three on average plus tax and that's about what people pay for their average flower. Sometimes it's times four and in very rare cases it's times two. Now, what happens more than often is that florists can't actually do that with all their stock because it would make at least half of it so ridiculously overpriced they would have to move into a richer neighbourhood which of course is counterproductive. So while it can be done for a good two third, the last third actually is calculated rather by the approximate about of money people will spend on the flower in this particular neighbourhood. The cut they take here is then regained by upping the price of something they bought dirt cheap but people will easily pay a little more for. Freesias are a good example for the latter. They usually cost around 20 cents a single and sell for about a Euro. And that really isn't a scam, it's just to make sure the florist either doesn't lose money or actually has some profit at the end of the day.

So do florists tweak the prices a little and maybe sell something for more than it might be worth after an honest calculation? Yeah, sure, but it's never to play somebody a fool. Flowers and especially foliage are costly and a luxury on top that's hard to store for extended periods of time. It's definitely nothing to get mad over. With roses, it's also that the price is influenced by their length and the size of their head. Which a lot of people are confused about until you tell them about it.

Another factor when it comes to prices is, as I've hinted at before, the neighbourhood, the city, the general area of where they live and sell their wares. Because guess what guys, where there's money things are sold at higher prices. Sometimes the difference may seem marginal, but other times it clearly isn't. But that also isn't to meant to scam anybody, especially not when it comes to florists who aren't paid any better than the average retail worker.

All of the above is taken into consideration by the florist when making their prices, after all, stock that doesn't sell is bad stock and sometimes a little cut is worth the while if the florist knows they will at least sell out and have the money to purchase more things their customers actually want. So to say a florist would try to scam their customers in blatantly obvious ways is immensely unlikely because it's actually really hard to convince people to buy flowers because people seldom have any knowledge about flowers. The slightest blemish will have them asking for a discount even though the flowers may be otherwise fine, and they like to buy roses that have barely opened their blossoms… and then they are confused why they don't bloom at all. In short, people got a bit weird standards for flowers in a lot of ways. Some that the plants aren't even responsible for. (If the outer layer of petals on a red rose looks slightly blackish that's fine those are protection petals they're not meant to be pretty.) So needless to say, people don't like to buy flowers that have started blooming and florists who sell them at full price are either very new or very unobservant and certainly not in the scam business. (After all that only results in customers coming back three days later and complaining, wanting a refund – nothing a florist is keen about.)

Expensive plants are usually identified by the fact that they don't grow outside your character's door commonly. Or are generally accessible in the area where they live. So for a lot of regions, those are of course exotic plants that should grow somewhere tropical but of course, this is region specific.

Not even a big company could run a chain of floristries without allowing this at least some price management in terms of marking them up or down. My store has set prices for everything set by corporate but we are allowed to tweak them. Usually, we only mark stuff down cause the things that are worth selling for a little more are few and far between. If corporate didn't allow that they would have run their business into the ground a long time ago because it would not have been worth the profit because there would have been too much waste with everything the customers wouldn't have bought.

And yeah, prices going up before Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and around Christmas and the likes is a bit of a scam because it's been so commercialised that people are willing to pay anything just to have something, but that doesn't make any good drama for a story.

So while not entirely impossible because humans sometimes mess up or do not care or do not know, it is still a very unlikely scenario and someone's probably going to get chewed out for it later. Depending on why the messed up and how the handled it, it might even be no more than a gentle reprimand but still.

Are there any questions left unanswered on your side?

– Mod Jana

Disclaimer

This blog is intended as writing advice only. This blog and its mods are not responsible for accidents, injuries or other consequences of using this advice for real world situations or in any way that said advice was not intended.