Hair: A History Of

My hair now with Dark Chocolate Brown Casting Creme Gloss by L'oreal

First things first, I am a big DIY-er when it comes to my hair. I would love to be able to afford to get my hair done in a salon or whatever but they are just too expensive for my ever changing needs and I think I have enough experience (once worked in a hairdressers/lots of internet reading) to know how to colour my hair. And I have a had a lot of hair colours. I've been blonde, black, brown, ginger, red, green, had blue streaks, purples streaks, dip dye, pink dip dye and probably some more.

Granted my hair has not been in the best condition all the time, but over the past year it has improved significantly (minus me deciding to be blonde for the summer, again) and I take such good care of it now.

Dark brown/ black hair 2011/2012

My first hair experience was when I was 14 and I in my young emo days, desperately wanted black hair. To this day I don't know how I got away with it, my father forbade me to dye my hair (and hates piercings and tattoos, oops), so I somehow did it at 3am without waking anyone in the house up?

Since then I usually go back to having really dark brown / black hair after I've done something extreme. My hair is naturally a brown colour? So it always helps it get into a good condition when I go back dark. I used to use permanent dye until about two years ago when I discovered the L'oreal Casting Creme gloss range and how semi-permanent hair dye is a lot better for your hair as it contains no ammonia. Since late autumn I've been using Dark Chocolate Brown from this range. Which does come out really really dark.

Something that I wouldn't recommend for anyone to do it bleaching hair. There are so many things that can go wrong with it, hair snapping being one, that only after a lot of strand tests and reading should it be attempted at home. I have gone blonde twice. The first when I was about 16 and second last summer. The first attempt was very trial and error and came out extremely patchy and bright orange to began with and never truly went blonde. 

Blonde, summer 2012

I decided to really give it a go last year as I think that hair should change with the seasons. 

Spring: Mid-light brown

Summer: Blonde

Autumn: Red 

Winter: Dark

Every year you can guarantee that at least two of those rules will be followed. Before I bleached my hair I stripped out the dark using colour b4, to show my natural brown for the first time in years, I dip dyed the ends pink first and then decided to try my hand at green hair. The pink was some brand from superdrug like hi-lights or something, it was years old in my room. 

The reason I chose green is because I wanted pastel green hair, but didn't want to bleach it to get it that way. It ended up really dark, which I loved as it reminded me of Sailor Pluto's hair from Sailor Moon.

But obviously is not pastel! I learnt afterwards to get pastel, you need to mix white conditioner with the colour to make it weaker. After a bleaching disaster and having bright green hair, which I do not have pictures of. (It lasted a week. It was awful)

Yeah right...

Anyway. I used Russell Jerome bleach powder and cream, the powder at 40% I believe. To get rid of the horrid green. Tips I have learnt about bleach. 

1. Never leave it on for more than an hour, this will kill your hair

2. Make sure your hair is in the best condition before you attempt to bleach it. 

3. Don't bleach your hair straight after doing so, leave it a good while, and when you think you have left it long enough, leave it for another week or too. 

4. Use oils to help your hair, olive oil heated up and put on for an hour is a very cheap option.

5. You will have to cut the ends off, do so immediately, leaving it cause the splits to go up the hair making the damage a lot worse. 

6. Do not use any heat styling etc on your hair until it is in good condition again. Be nice to your hair!

I really, really liked my hair blonde and I put pastel blue and purple on the ends, can't find any photos of it though, I just never had the courage to do a whole hair of pastel which I now deeply regret. I'm thinking of going a deep purple for the time being, going to start with the ends first and move the whole of head of hair. I don't really want to bleach my hair, so if it doesn't go as bright as I would like, I'll strip my hair again to rid some of the semi permanent dark chocolate. 

I'll be using La Riche's Directions Violet, I think, I have used two of their green dyes, alpine and apple, lagoon blue and also there silver toner for blonde hair, helps stop it looking rusty. 

I'll put a post up of the process when I do it.

LB