Disclaimer: This post is going to be huge, I have a lot of things to explain and at least 23 photos for you to be able to fully accompany my hair evolution, so bear with me! I'm also going to divide this post by colours to be easier to explain chronologically.
Natural
My natural hair colour is this warm shade of brown that you can see in this photo above. This photo is about 4 years old so excuse my baby face.
I had my hair this colour for most of my childhood until a couple of years ago. The only thing I did to my hair during this period of time while it had it's natural colour was highlights and a subtle ombré. I remember having copper highlights that quickly faded back to my natural colour and the ombré lasted me quite some time until I had my hair cut past the ombré. The ombré I had was very discrete in a copper shade as well that matched my natural reflexes perfectly so it looked very natural. All of these procedures were achieved in a hair salon with the help of my hairdresser.
Reds
This was the first time I ever did dye my hair completely a shade different from mine.
I had always had a fascination for redheads and red hair and I even remember wanting to dye my hair orange (nowadays orange is my least favourite hair colour on myself) so on my birthday I went to my hairdresser and asked for a dark burgundy shade of red that had some pink and purple reflexes. I was very pleased with this result but I wanted it stronger so I bought a box dye from the supermarket (huge mistake) in a similar shade that gave me an intense and bright red with purple and pink reflexes in the sun as you can see in the picture above.
It soon faded to this weird warm brown kind of shade, remaining considerably darker on the ends.
I remember having this for quite some time and my hair was huge.
By the time, I was dying my hair with professional hair dye mixed with 20 volume developer at home (list of dyes will be in the end).
Blues and blacks
Then I decided that blue was a better option and I had my friend Catarina bleach my hair and dye it blue but surprise! it turned out horrible because we didn't bleach it enough. I had a green mess with blue and brown patched on my hair and I completely despised it so I bought some blue, blue black and black dyes and gave myself an ombré. The roots were very blue, then most of the hair was blue black and the ends were just black, as you can see in the photo above. This photo was taken about a year ago in the month of July, approximately in the 6th of July.
The blue soon started to fade and, displeased with the result, I dyed it all black. It was a huge mistake but yeah. Here's a photo.
In this photo I am back to the blues and blacks. What happened was I dyed the top part of my hair with a purple hair dye mixed in with 40 volume developer, which lightened my hair enough to dye it blue again. The purple didn't stick around too long so here's a photo of the blue.
Pinks, Reds, Purples
When the blue faded it turned a horrible colour of green so I bought this pigmented conditioner that said it would maintain purple hair longer but it turned out to be bright pink and so I applied that to the top half of my hair, achieving again an ombré effect. The photo above was taken in November of last year.
That colour faded quite fast if you didn't apply the conditioner at every single wash so then I gave up and in the photo above you can see my hair was considerably black at the ends and a weird shade of brown on the top.
This photo is from last year's Christmas. I had this weird brown colour with black ends.
Transition from warm tones to cool tones
At this point I had made up my mind about the blue hair. I wanted it but I wanted it to be perfect and without patches, just blue throughout.
I knew that to achieve my goal I had to get rid of the red shades I had in my hair as much as I possibly could without bleaching it just yet, so I went to the hairdresser to cut my hair shoulder length to get rid of the black damaged part and had her give my hair a "gloss" of a colour that was similar to my natural shade of hair. I did this because I didn't want to walk around with stripes across my hair marking where my regrowth ended and the dyed part started.
My hair was like this since February till June.
Bleaching process and final goal
I had set, in my mind, that I had to get my hair blue by July of this year and so I thought: I'm probably going to have to bleach my hair at least three times, because it was so dark and had so much history in it colour wise. Since I had exams I thought I could bleach my hair after prom, let it rest for a week, go in to bleach again, rest another week and bleach one final time and by the end of my finals I'd be done with my hair.
But I went to a different hairdresser for this bleaching procedure and it did not happen like that.
I had my hair bleached three times, as I thought I would need, but they bleached it three times in one single sitting. I went in at 9 a.m. and I left the salon at 2 p.m. with very light bleached hair.
They bleached my hair the first time and the bleach was on my hair for about 30 minutes. The photo above shows the result of the first bleach.
Here you can see how much regrowth I had, the yellowish part is the regrowth and the rest was the pieces I had dyed with a million colours before.
Then they bleached my hair a second time and this time they applied the bleach to the roots as well.
At this point the two hairdressers working on my hair realized that they weren't going to be able to bleach my hair to white as I thought I needed because I had so much colours applied to it before.
The photo above shows how it looked during the third and final bleach.
After removing all the bleach, the hairdresser applied a blue tinted protein mask to my hair. She said the light blue in it was going to help tone the yellow down.
 |
| Snapchat: argoma |
This photo shows the end result. This is what my hair looked like when I left the hairdresser.
I felt a bit like Kim K when she bleached her hair.
It was almost white at the very roots, a very very light yellow shade through the regrowth and a light orange in the rest with some white pieces.
Goals achieved
When I arrived home, that same day, after lunch, I dyed it blue.
I had the remnants of a blue hair dye I had used before and I thought that if I diluted it enough it would be enough for my whole head of hair but it wasn't. I freaked out and called the only person I knew could help me. I called Catarina and she had some blue/green colour, from when she dyed hers that colour, that she borrowed me to finish the rest.
 |
| Snapchat: argoma |
This was what it looked like after that first wash of colour. It was a bit greener that I would like.
Until my dyes arrived I probably washed my hair about four times and it faded to a very light pastel blue and turquoise. It always looked darker on camera so yeah..
My hair was so damaged that I went to my hairdresser and asked her to cut off most of the damaged parts and it turns out the person that bleached my hair (in another salon) broke my hair a lot more on the left side than on the right side and for that reason I had a lot more volume of hair on the right side than on the left side.
I believe this happened because, since my hair was so bridal, when she was brushing it right after bleaching, she pulled too much on the hair and it broke.
And that's how you learn not to visit a hairdresser again!
When the dyes arrived I asked Catarina to dye my hair again and this time the shade that I really wanted. The two photos above show how my hair looks like right now.
I am so so happy with the end result!! I've wanted my hair to be blue for a long time and I waited one painful year to get it to this beautiful shade so I am just so so happy!
I've gotten a lot of compliments on it since I got it but also some stares, which was expected. My dad doesn't particularly like it too much... But oh well!
This has been my hair evolution so far!
In the beginning of August I'm thinking of changing it a little bit again, we'll see!
List of dyes used since the beginning (chronologically, at home treatments):
- Garnier Nutrisse Ultra Color 5.62 Bold Red
- Karisa 77.62 Intense Iriside Auburn
- Violett60 F/51 Blue
- Shot 1.10 Blue Black
- Shot 1 Black
- Shot Viola Toner
- La Riché Directions Midnight Blue
- Karisa 77.62 Intense Iriside Auburn
- Shot 6.2 Brilliant Dark Blond
- Garnier Olia 4.6 Red Brown
- La Riché Directions Midnight Blue
- La Riché Directions Ebony
- La Riché Direction Midnight Blue
I'll have a post about my hair care next week or so where I will talk you through the products I use and how I got my hair to be healthier than it was when I bleached it.
A post about the look of the last two photos will be up on friday.
I hope you liked this huge post!
Obs I: Title of the post inspired by Guy Tang.
Obs II: Most of these photos were taken with my phone and are unedited or taken from my personal Instagram.
Love,
Anna
