Glowy accidents.

So a week or two ago I dyed a friends hair. I mixed special effects devilish and special effects nuclear red just because I didn't have a lot of either ( but ended up having enough for half my head left over).

I'm not sure if either of these are uv reactive, but now that I've plugged in my black light I've discovered something amazing. My hair glows bright orange. 

It's red in normal light. 

Fairly normal red actually. 

Now, it's a bit faded at the moment but still pretty red but bam. Glowing. 

I'm overjoyed and amazed and if you're ever around black lights its fun to blow people away when your hair that isn't a neon color does this. 

Split decisions

So I did a thing to my hair. 

And I thought I'd explain the pains of keeping this baby nice looking. 

First off, don't do both sides at once by yourself. I effed up the blonde part so bad the first time. It was orange in some places. And I missed some altogether. I missed a little black dye in the bangs too but I naturally have darker hair so it's not as bad. 

When parting the hair, make sure to get it right the first time. Once black is in the hair you won't get it the same blonde as the rest. I liked it straight down the middle. I took my time (a good hour and a half) to make sure I was happy with how I parted it. I had the parts furthest from the middle in bands, and the rest clipped with various types of hair clips to make it easier to alter the part. 

Now, if I could go back, I'd do what I did when I touched it up. After meticulously parting it again (it's better to miss a few blonde strands than to accidentally bleach a chunk of black. It'll be orange until you touch the black up, okay?) I put some conditioner down the black side of the line. Don't get any on the blonde side. Have a friend help if you can. 

After this it's simple. Just carefully dye it. When dying the black it's also very very important to not get black on the blonde. It's fucking hard to get out. Conditioner. I'd put it on more of the blonde than I did the black just because my experience with black dyes have always been messy. 

Now like I said, I have darker hair. You can't even see the roots of my black side. This is partially because my hair's color and partially because the dark black dyes fade to a nice natural looking black after maybe a week of being washed with my shiny silver shampoo (which helps keep the yellows from my hair). It looks good and there's no need to dye over it for me.

For the exact same reason though, I've had to touch up the blonde only a month and a half in.  And just as I'm lifting the last if the yellows I can see a thin line if dark roots poking out. I give it 2 weeks before its irritatingly noticeable. 

Don't get me starred in upkeep of these bangs though. Just styling them is a pain in the butt and I remember why I let them grow out now. 

Getting Rid of Unnatural Colors

I've had Voodoo Blue hair since October now. I touched it up a little about a month ago since it had faded a little, but I didn't feel like bleaching my roots sooo I didn't. I'm trying to be good to my hair. Trying.

Since I've applied to a new college and it's a technical school I figured I may be needing to have a more professional appearance. They may not care, actually, but before deciding on the big university I went to I had taken a tour or a different tech school and they wanted you to dress in business casual at all times (which is actually why I didn't go. Fuuuuck that).

So, I'm working on getting orange hair. I settled for some L'oreal Paris RR07 Intense Red Copper. If I do it over lighter hair it should turn out less of an auburn. I don't fucking want auburn hair again. I've done that a million times.

I actually couldn't find a good orange though. I'll live. I'll probably end up getting Manic Panic's Electric Tiger Lily once my chosen color fades, like all reds do. However, there is a reason to this rhyme.

I can't get this color out of my hair. It's actually REALLY hard to remove an unnatural color that isn't at least halfway faded. You can TRY to dye over it, but unless your choice color is black, it ain't gonna work. Going from a cool color like blue to a color like orange? Yeah, this is going to be an adventure. So, I can't just bleach my hair kinda light and put Tiger Lily over it. It won't work. My hair would have to be blonde first. The boxed dye will lift SOME of that blue out when I put it on, but I DO need to get most of it out first. After that my hair will eventually fade to a gold blonde (since it's bleached) that I can put the tiger lily on.

I just got done with my first attempt to bleach it out, since I want to lighten my roots anyway to make the color less auburn and more orange (as stated before). My hair is a pastel aqua.

I left the bleach in for about 50 minutes, which is longer than I normally let it sit. I'm really not wanting to bleach my roots again so I'm going to look into a color correction type deal to see if I can lift a bit more so that to ensure my color reaching the proper outcome. I still can't be putting red-orange on this much of a blue-green (at least not without getting some weird unwanted color as a result).

This was jumbled and lacked pictures. I just want to point out that while I love doing these types of colors it's really hard to do a lighter natural color if you can't let it fade on its own.

-s