Tuesday Tidbits on a Thursday

I've had an interesting couple of days. First I dyed my hair and then my car decided to throw a conniption fit while I was driving it. But my car is being taken care of with a new radiator and my hair is ridiculously fun.

For those of you interesting in my hair dying experience, here's what I did:

I started with dark brown hair. A little darker than this photo but I'm too lazy to hunt down a more recent one. Then I bleached it for the first time.

It came out sort of yellowish/orangish red. So I bleached it again this time I used a highlighting kit from Revlon called Frost and Glow. I highly recommend that if you have dark hair, you get the Honey colored one. It gave me excellent bleach results.

However, I still had an orange cast from the first bleach job so I use Wella Color Charm T14 toner to get rid of the orange and help even out the color it turned after bleaching. It worked fantastically and I now had normal colored hair. Blonde. Which I've never been before. I'm mad I didn't take a picture of it for you so you could see the difference.

Then came the dye...

I used Splat Hair Color in Ombre Violet Storm and Pink Mist. My friend Erin came over and helped me. This is exceedingly staining. It will stain everything. I covered everything in painters plastic and wore my junkiest clothes and used the ugliest towel to dry my hair with.
The first time, the results weren't too great. As you can see. It wasn't very bright, the pink was a mess and there was brown where it should have been transitioning into purple. Turned out that the biggest problem was not enough dye.

I read up a LOT on the internet about how to really get great color and I redid it. I used a total of three kits on my long hair. And I'm glad I didn't listen to the ridiculous girl at Ulta who told me to go to a professional. Pfft.

Results!
These were the results I was hoping for! I was so afraid that even with the bleaching, my hair would be too dark to get a really vibrant pink. Instead it is practically GLOWING it's so pink and awesome.

When the tow truck guy came to pick up my car, he stopped in his tracks and said "Wow! Your hair looks good on you!" Like three times. Haha! Not that the tow truck guy is the pinnacle of expertise although he did tell me his dad was a hair stylist and his sister used to do colors like mine.

My husband loves it. LOVES it. Really loves it. He's so happy about it he wanted to go out to dinner to "show me off." Which makes me feel good but I'd made dinner already.

Tips:
Leave the color on a very long time. It's not damaging so I'm thinking five hours would be a good number. I left mine on for one the first time, and four the second time. It's a direct dye and won't damage your hair like a regular hair dye will.

Get extra kits unless you have short hair. Glob it on. You want your hair to be wet and stay wet while you're applying it.

Use vaseline. Put it everywhere you don't want your skin to be stained. Slather the back of your neck. Your face. Your ears. Your forearms. However there is a caveat. If you slather it in your hair, it won't take the dye. I know this because my hairline didn't want to change color and it was because I had really mooshed the vaseline on and it went up too far into my hairline.

My hair looks so freaking good! My scalp does not. Try hard not to get it on your scalp. If you do, use a q-tip and nail polish remover to try and get it off. It actually works.

This isn't permanent and it's a pain to take care of. Since it's a direct dye, it washes out. Every time you wash it. You're not supposed to use shampoo, only conditioner. You should only use cold water. It will stain if it gets wet. If it rains and I don't have an umbrella or hood, I'm in trouble. I definitely have some flaws that I will try to avoid next time. The first one being not getting it on my scalp. It'll sluff off in a couple days but still.

This is my very first crazy hair color and I love it. I'm going to keep it as long as possible. Especially because the colors suit my cool skin to perfection. I think that's why I like it so much- my skin looks great next to it. Forty? Who me?! NEVER!