Step One: Lightening
I had to do two bleach sessions to get my hair light enough to dye over. For the first round I used a lightening kit from Splat. My hair was quite pink after that (thanks to the vampire red dye still in my hair) so my darling boyfriend went to Sally's to get me two packets of blue bleach, which I mixed with 20 vol. developer. I left each batch in my hair for about an hour and conditioned inbetween, which may not have been a smart idea since conditioner creates a barrier on the hair. I think the second bleaching could have been more effective if I'd only shampooed but oh well.
I didn't take a picture of my hair after the bleach, but it was white at the roots (where my hair hadn't been touched by dye yet) and it was a very light shade of orangey-pink along the lengths. Not perfectly white like I wanted, but still light enough to dye over.
*NOTE: my hair was in extremely healthy condition before I did this. I hadn't used any harsh chemicals on it in over two months, I use sulfate free shampoos, I wash my hair only twice a week, and I'd just given it a trim. I take very good care of it which is why I decided to bleach it twice. It's not advisable to do so if your hair isn't healthy enough to take the damage.
Step Two: Dying
I decided to use Manic Panic dyes, they have a good reputation for vibrant color and they're super gentle on hair, and I definitely did not want to use anything harsh on my hair after all that bleach. I mixed some After Midnight Blue in a bowl with a lot of plain white conditioner (I used Tresemee but the brand doesn't matter). This dye is really dark in the jar, and diluting it with conditioner will give you a pastel version of whatever color you choose. I mixed in enough dye to make the mixture look darker than the results I wanted, since using too little dye would barely affect my hair. I used a brush to apply the dye, popped on a shower cap and left it in for an hour. When I rinsed it looked like this:
It came out really bright turquoise with really green undertones thanks to the funky undertones left in my hair after the bleaching. Since this is not the look I was going for, I needed a plan of attack. I went to bed to give my hair a break and started with the damage control in the morning.
Because I'm such a smart girl, I also had a bottle of Shimmer Lights shampoo on hand. Shimmer Lights is a purple shampoo that helps to get brassy tones out of hair. It has saved me through several unfortunate home lightening adventures. I dumped some Shimmer Lights and a little hint of the blue dye into a bowl to help tone down the turqoise and left it in my hair for half an hour. I specifically used the shampoo because shampoo helps to strip out Manic Panic color faster and the turquoise needed some serious lightening before moving on.
The next thing I did kind of failed. I just put more blue dye and conditioner in my hair and it came out a slightly less greenish turquoise but still not what I wanted. Then comes my best friend Vampire Red. I had a whole bottle of the amplified version of this dye left over from my previous attempt at red hair (hallelujah).Since my hair had green tones to it that I didn't want, the red tones of this dye theoretically would cancel those out. So I mixed another batch of conditioner and blue dye and added a little red until it was a nice violet color (still mostly blue).
It looked really purple on my hair but when I rinsed it had done the trick!
It's much darker than I wanted it to be, but since I couldn't get my hair white in one day, it'll do. Next time I bleach I shouldn't get too many funky undertones and I'll finally be able to reach my goal of ice queen blue hair. One day my hair will look as perfect as this:
I'm no professional, but if anyone would like to ask me a question about dying hair, feel free to give it a shot :)
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