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.

Hair Dye Primer

This is going to be a brief explanation of the different kinds of hair dye- semi, demi, and permanent. The terms are often confusing and can cause people to choose the wrong dye.

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.

Preventing Hair Color Fade

Adore Paprika dye used here

There are few things in the world that catch my eye like bright freshly colored hair (especially when it's orange). Shiny, vibrant, beautiful... until you wash it then it's a drab murky mess...

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!

Ion Color Brilliance Powdered Lightener and 30 Volume Sensitive Scalp Developer Reviews

Previously when I bleached part of my hair I used a Manic Panic Flash Lightening Kit because it was what was available where I got my Manic Panic hair dye. I was never that fond of the MP bleach kits and I had a hard time lightening my hair with it. Since I had nothing left of it I decided to hunt for something better to do my roots with and touch up the parts of my hair that were still rather dark...

I turned to Sally Beauty this time and picked up two products from Ion, Color Brilliance Powdered Lightener and Color Brilliance 30 Vol Sensitive Scalp Developer in the giant sizes since they were on sale for like $5 a piece. I also got a giant bottle of the Ion Color Defense conditioner, which is a bit silicone-y but does seem to make my hair dye bleed a lot less.

The Ion Color Brilliance bleach and developer work so so so so much better on my hair than the Manic Panic bleach. Instead of being a slightly green light brown after a freaking hour my hair is golden after 30 minutes, roots are platinum in 15 minutes. Ion Color Brilliance makes my root touch ups much less daunting since I am able to be done in about 10 minutes.

These products are safe for on scalp use, but it's still bleach and 30 vol developer and this needs to be done carefully. I try to keep it off my scalp as best as possible because chemical burns are no joke. So far I have done 4 root treatments and I have not had any redness, flaking, weeping, burning, tingling or any other issues. My hair doesn't feel gummy or fried directly after rinsing but it is noticeably dry, this is to be expected with bleach though. After I finish with conditioning Manic Panic dye my bleached hair feels about the same as the virgin hair at the nape of my neck (this hair doesn't get dyed, teased or straightened).

Over all, I can't recommend this stuff enough. My hair typically resists lightening but the Ion products do the job and don't leave me with muddy and patchy results. I widened the red-orange section of my hair and didn't get any greenish or brassy bits down the length of my hair, it was such a pretty bright golden color I almost didn't want to dye over it.

Real Hair- Black Berry Juice

From about the age of 12 I wanted to dye my hair blue but my parents would never allow it. Then, around the age of 16 I wanted pink hair, but again, wasn't to be until I could move out. At 17 I enlisted in the Air Force so even though I was now out of my parent's house Uncle Sam wouldn't allow me to dye it any unnatural colors. Since then my hair has been various shades of dark red and brown and black. BORING.

Cut to last year when my enlistment ends and I'm finally free to dye my hair- or not. My other job won't allow it either! Now in addition to not being able to dye my hair anything fun I have developed an allergy to PPD. I thought I was going to be stuck with my dull brown-black hair for life.

Recently I was struck with an idea- what if the unnatural color was so dark that nobody would notice enough to say anything at work... With pink and blue out I decided to attempt a color I once tried to get from a box dye and failed (it turned candy apple red): black berry juice, purple-black!

But wait--- how was I going to get black in my hair with out PPD!? CRAP! Cue sad face. I began a search for a PPD free black that lead me down a few dead ends, everything just made my hair several shades short of black. I wasn't going to attempt henna and indigo either as a renter in a stark white apartment. Like a moron I forgot about what I knew all along- Manic Panic makes a black dye that's PPD free! 

Here's how I achieved my purple-black hair:
I started with my "virgin" abused but unbleached dry hair and applied a nice thick coat of Manic Panic Raven. I left it on for 30 minutes and then rinsed. I did not used heat or a plastic cap because I did not want my hair to become jet black.

Once my hair had dried I was please to see it was the soft black I was aiming for. *insert success meme here*

The next day I applied a nice thick coat of Manic Panic Ultra Violet, the blue based purple. I originally wanted Special Effects Deep Purple but I just grabbed Ultra Violet when I got Raven.  Any way, I left Ultra Violet on for 2 hours. I was going to apply heat but decided not to since my hair is damaged and I'm trying to avoid heat. My hair did came out the color I wanted with out using heat.

One thing I love about Manic Panic (and similar veggie dyes) is how conditioning it is. Unlike dyes that need to penetrate into the hair and thus rough up the cuticle veggie dyes are basically tints and sit on the outside of the hair. This type of dye is non damaging and really makes my hair feel soft due to the extra conditioning ingredients. One more thing I love is my hair is STRAIGHT again and I didn't need to use a flat iron. Not sure if this effect will last since the "hair gets wavy in your mid 20s" gene runs in my mom's side of the family.

My hair is just purple enough to not be boring black and hopefully not so purple that I'll get in trouble at work.