I get bored of my hair very, very quickly. I am pretty sure I was putting semi-permanent colours on my hair in primary school and got braver and crazier as I got older. I am a wuss when it comes to hair cuts (I have had the same hair cut FOREVER since I managed to grow out The Fringe of 1994). I have been blonde, brown, black, red, blue, accidentally green (twice), purple, streaked, ombre’d and everything in between. I’ll feel too Goth being a brunette, try to go blonde, lose most of my hair and have to go dark again to give it chance to grow back. I’ll opt for a bright colour when I feel “boring” then either get sick of the upkeep or want to look “normal again”. Basically, I don’t know what the f*ck I want.
One of my faaaaavourite hair colours is BRIGHT RED a la Ariel The Little Mermaid. I have to bleach my hair to a nice orange colour which means my (naturally nearly black/brown) hair doesn’t become too damaged and manages to grooooooooow. BUT if you sweat, it rains, or you so much as look at some water... It. Will. Run. All over your clothes, bedding, towels, husband’s shoulder (if you dare cuddle him with wet hair) and dye them a lovely shade of pink or orange (depending on the brand of colour you use. Mine was Crazy Color – Fire).
I follow a lovely lady called Helen Anderson (www.melonlady.com) who has the most beautiful pastel colour hair and changes it up all the time because it just washes out eventually. Perfect for someone who gets bored easy, right?
As previously mentioned my hair is naturally VERY dark brown. I had been dying it a box colour in medium brown for over a year to get my hair healthy for my wedding (oh I now have greys too so I dye my hair to cover them. I know, I’m old). Plus the theme was black and white so I thought it was best to match :D
So here’s the big problem... To have pastel shades you need white hair. I had my hair a white blonde around 10 years ago and had to have my roots done at the hairdressers every 4 weeks and it took FIVE HOURS to get my hair light enough. But for some reason I thought “yeah, I can do it myself!!” Idiot *shakes head*
So I bleach shampoo’d to get rid of the red (after washing it a few times to get most of the excess out). A mix of blue bleach powder, 30vol (9%) peroxide and shampoo. I wet my hair first. Applied, rubbed it all in and waited around half an hour.
And it went ORANGE! Eep!
Soooooooooooooo I bleached it again. Properly this time (i.e. no shampoo). And it went yellow!
I lost most of the length and thickness of my hair (and I didn’t have much to start with). I toned with Fudge Violet Toning shampoo but it wasn’t enough to get rid of the yellow so I thought I’d try a bit of purple hair dye. I mixed some La Riche Directions – Violet with conditioner and it turned out like this:
Very patchy but definitely looked better purple than bright yellow. And I looked pretty cool :D
I wore my hair up for 2 weeks and conditioned it every day without washing and let it dry naturally over night. I didn’t use any heat on it for all that time. I also gave it a cut to get rid of all the damaged ends. Once your hair is this far damaged (to the point of snapping off) you’re really best to just get rid. You’re not going to save it. This is the third time I have done this to my hair now (stupid) and the same has happened every time (double stupid).
I always wore extensions anyway because I haven’t been happy with the length and thickness of my hair in years (it is super fine) so I bought some from Paul’s Hair World in #613 bleach blonde (which looked the closest to the yellowy blonde my hair was before the purple). I dyed them to match my hair (and added more purple to my real hair to get rid of the patchiness) and they ended up like this:
Before
After!!!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay purple hair!
Purple hair problems:
1. The purple in my real hair washes out to blue faster than my extensions so I have been adding some Crazy Color – Pinkissimo mixed with conditioner to counteract the blue.
2. I have to add a little dye to my hair pretty much every time I wash it to keep it bright. If I didn’t have extensions I’d let it wash out loads more but it needs to match.
3. If you try and bleach the colour out it goes bright green. I did this. I sh*t myself. I put the purple back on. It was fine.
4. Not entirely sure what colours to wear with it.
5. People comment on it all the time which, if you’re an awkward, anti-social human like me, makes things extremely uncomfortable.
6. I’m already bored of purple and want to go pink.
Thanks for reading!
Zoe xxxxxx
