(my hair before)
(note: I am not an expert, take my advice at your own risk!)
About 2 months ago I decided to go blonde realizing that going blonde is a long and expensive process, especially if your doing it yourself. You have to go through long period of time where your hair is orange, dull and should not have any heat applied to it. But I really wanted to go blonde.
I have wanted to be blonde since I was a child. As a teenager my fascination with old 1960’s stars like Edie Sedwick and Bridgett Bardot, my love of early 90’s Kate Moss and my thoughts that everyone was hotter as a blonde still stick in my head. My other reason is that I love the look of blonde hair on sweet/fairy kei lolitas and my favorite visual kei stars.
(image from www.hello-reimei.com)
Firstly I went though an initial bleach where I bleached my dyed black hair with 30 vol. for 20 minutes and went over it with a red rinse. This looked quite nice and worked really well. I deep conditioned my hair everyday and I rarely applied heat to the lengths of my hair, only my fringe and side pieces which I keep out. I relied on twists, braids and plats to keep my hair in place, I only every straightened/curled my hair for special occasions like a wedding.
(My hair after the first bleaching and dying it red)
My second stage was bleaching my hair again once the red had faded a little. This was a little bit of a problem. Because I had previously dyed my hair red with a semi permeant and my hair has a lot of red pigment, I still had a lot of copper pieces in my hair. Not wanting to bleach my hair I have toned my hair and continued to use a deep condition treatment nearly everyday, because my hair is so thick and naturally dry I have been using the treatment to slick back my hair and mainly using pretty hair accessories to make myself look presentable while my hair goes through this phase.
I am not going to apply heat or bleach to my hair until I can get it in good enough condition to to do so. I would prefer to have partially orange hair, which is only in the ends anyway, than have white ugly dead hair that I can’t do anything with. One of the problems is that once your hair is dead, in my experience with helping my asian boyfriend go white, its nearly impossible to get in near normal condition again.
(see cute hair accessories take the focus away and cover it up at least a little!!)
So here are a few trick and trips that are helping me during this time;
1.Condition, Condition, Condition- I can’t say this enough!!! It helps your hair feel normal and healthy. I tend to think that bleaching strips your natural oils that help protect your hair, so now you need to put them back in. Use treatments that are made for this kind of damage, invest in the right products.
2.Be willing to look a little strange for a while-really you can by pass the orange/yellow horrid phase but you will kill your hair.
3.Saying that, invest in some cute hair accessories-cute and well placed hair accessories can distract people from your hair. I usually place my hair in a bun and then put a pretty headband or big bow in front of it. Since only my ends are orange/copper and my roots are ash blonde this is ideal. The other this is that if you don’t style your hair, with the color so patchy it looks a lot worse than it actually is.
4.Get a good haircut-Cut out your dead ends, get lots of layers and be willing to loose a few inches. This will make your hair look healthier and less dead.
5.Tone, Tone, Tone-Learn the chemistry of hair color to get the color you would like. Use semi permanent toners to tone down the orange, or at least remove the orange out of your roots.
6.Don't go red over the top of it-this was my mistake and why I still have copper pieces left in, it was the biggest mistake I could make made!
Good Luck!
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