Hair! Hair! Everywhere! Coloring my hair is no simple task. It may look pretty tame straight, but it is very thick. Curly, it is even worse. I always said it’s like little Orphan Annie vs. Scary Spice on crack. Sure it looks great wet and start slowly starts drying nicely. Then it just turns into chia pet that exploded. It just grows and grows until its just a frizzy mess of craziness. I can hardly tame it though I try. I have to put tons of hair products in it just to make it semi-work. But I make due. By just leaving straight which not so easy to do either. A lot of determination and sore arms. My friend, Shawnakay, that I met through my cousin, has bravely went on this journey with me and making my hair color what I wanted it to be.
I always wanted to dye my hair blue but not just any bright blue, a dark blue that it was almost black, navy blue. But I still wanted that brightness to be there. Also, my favorite color is purple and I def wanted to add that in there. So the first time around I dyed it blue and the bottom purple. This time. I just dyed the front blue and the rest of it purple. It’s sucha pretty purple and I love experimenting with the color. I even made a little of the bottom pink as another experiment. So here’s long painstaking journey into looking making my dream hair a reality.
Before:
Step 1: Bleach- My hair is naturally dark brown and as you know colors will basically show up as a rinse on darker hair or just not at all. So I have no choice but to bleach. I was very scared that all my hair will come off my head like on the that episode of Family Matters, when Laura, Harriet, and them tried out some new shampoo and woke up completely bald. Thank God that didn’t happen. Or that my hair would start falling out in clumps like I had some feral disease. Thank God that hasn’t happen either. Apparently my hair is healthy and I have no clue how I managed that. I really don’t take care of my hair the way I should and my hair is the type that you want to nurture. I have what I call mixed hair. It’s not not white girl smooth but it ain’t black girl nappy either. It’s pretty thick and def has texture to it but not a coarse one. I get mistakened for Dominican all the time because of my hair texture. But no I’m Belizean and that’s just my hair. My mom has very fine hair and it breaks easily. She says that one section of my hair is her whole head. But thank God it managed to stay stubbornly healthy as I do nothing to help it grow or maintain it whatsoever.
Step 2: Rinse, Dry, and Apply Toner- Me and Shawna have a theory that because we put the toner in and don’t let the bleach sit in my hair for as long, it’s helping to reduce the damage to my hair. That and I don’t go get my roots done when I should. I wait a whole year, I have no clue why. Anyway, we rinse the bleach and then dry my hair. We don’t completely dry because ain’t nobody got time for that, but enough that the toner can take hold. We put toner to take the yellow out of the bleached hair. Yellow and blue and makes green and as much as I’m up for experimenting, greens not on my radar yet. Also the toner just makes it really really white and the color shows up even more stunning.
Step 3: Rinse and Dry Again- We have to rinse the toner out and dye only goes onto dry hair. So we rinse and dry my hair again.
Step 4: Section Off and Dye- Because I want my hair three different colors, she has to section off my hair into the parts I want dyed. I want the front of my hair to be blue and the back part to be purple. Last time she left a little pink in my hair that was a result of bleaching my hair. I grew to actually like it in contrast with the dark blue and purple and decided to experiment more with that. So I just did a little section pink.
Step 5: Wash and Dry- Then after we let everything set for however long, we go and wash everything out as much as we can and then we start the painstaking process of drying my hair to sleekness and making me look beautiful.
Voila! Magic has been preformed! Doesn’t it look amazing? I know I totally love my hair. I get a lotta complements when I go to the city, on the Island…. I just get some stares. But I’m used to that cause I’m weird. But whatever love it or hate it you gotta admit it’s pretty fucking awesome.
After:
That’s my hair looking crazy curly. I told you it can’t be tamed. I hate it cuz some curls just look so amazing and I want my whole head to be like that one curl, but of course it isn’t. I just look like some sort of sea witch.
The back of my head. Isn’t that purple just amazing? And I love that peekaboo of pink. You can see it a lot more when I have my hair up.
That’s just me enjoying my hair. Loooove it!
Ok, here are the products I use. I just get them off of Ebay. I use Special Effects hair dye. For the blue I use Blue Velvet and I had a little of that and they had no more when I went to order so I had to buy Blue Haired Freak and mix. But I feel like the blue is a lot brighter so I might just keep buying both and mix it. The purple is Pimpin’ Purple and it’s such a great purple. It really is a nice rich purple and the dye even has glitter or something super sparkly in it. All I know is that it’s amazing and we really love this color. For the pink I mixed Atomic Pink and Virgin Rose. I wanted it pink but not too pink and that’s why I decided to mix them. Virgin Rose is a nice purple pink and it just looked so amazing with the other pink. I might just mix it with the purple, too. The toner is also Special Effects tho I have used Manic Panic’s Virgin Snow. I use Manic Panic Bleach Lighting Kit 40 Volume. It really bleaches fast and very well. I like Special Effects because it really last long and the color fades so nicely. I think that’s the other reason why I take so long to touch up my hair. I just like seeing the different colors it turns until my hair is mostly brown again and I want rip it off my head. Then I’m always wondering why everyone’s color always looks so good and lasts so long… It’s because they get their roots done! I don’t know why I wait a year to do it but I guess that’s a good thing. Keep my hair healthy.
Anyway, I hope this has inspired you guys to go out and experiment or gave you some useful tips. Have fun and happy dying!
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