updaaaate

I started a new job over the summer and it's sucking the life out of me. Basically my life is this: wake up, get dressed, go to work for 10 hours, come home and eat dinner, shower, go to bed. My work commute is long and just adds to the exhaustion.

Now I am job hunting, trying to find something closer to home with a more steady schedule so I can have some sort of life outside work. This unfortunately means I have to tone down my hair. I got rid of the pink at the end of summer by fading it and applying Manic Panic Electric Lava which gave me a lovely orange ombre and I would've left it alone if I wasn't trying to find a new job.

Any way, I wanted to stick with red and wanted it to still be bright. I took my inspiration from L'oreal Feria Mango Intense Copper. I'm allergic to PPD used in permanent dyes (and did not want the extra damage) so I could not actually use the Feria dye. I created a similar shade with Adore colors. I used Ginger, Orange Blaze and Paprika. Next time I dye I will use less Orange Blaze and Ginger and more Paprika because it took 3 attempts to get it to look more brown and less traffic cone orange.

The color on the Feria box looks more muted than pictures of it on hair, a quick google search shows how bright it is.

Ombre Hair

Been working towards lighter ends and making a red-orange-yellow ombre instead of going Napalm Orange. Special Effects STILL is not producing or shipping colors regularly. I make my own neon orange by mixing Sparks Orange, Sparks Yellow and N'Rage Bubble Gum Pink.

I'm not sure my ends will be able to go as light as I'd like due to the hair being old and possible staining from all the red and orange dyes used previously. They are down from a level 4 to about a level 7 now so I think that's pretty good.

Hair Update

I love playing around with different dyes. Right now I currently have a mix that is about 70% Adore Orange Blaze, 20% Sparks Orange Crush and 10% Manic Panic Electric Lava. These pictures were taken after one wash.

The Adore and Sparks dyes don't quite have the sticking power of Electric Lava, but EL is one of those dyes that stains hair and doesn't like to budge. The fade is a little patchy because the front section of my hair has been dyed a zillion more times than the back but it's not too bad.

My work place had a policy change that allows us to have visible tattoos and piercings and have any color hair we want so I am tranistioning to a more "in-your-face" bright orange. I plan on doing a bleach bath to lighten up my ends a bit more and get everything brighter.

I'm not totally sure whether it was Special Effects Fish Bowl or Manic Panic Atomic Turquoise used on the clip but I'm thinking it's most likely the Manic Panic. This poor clip in extension somehow wound up stuffed in my junk drawer and became a horrible matted mess. I was able to salvage it but so much hair fell out of it I was sure it was destined for the trash. Neutrogena Triple Moisture mask is a god send for extensions both human hair and synthetic!