The long road to fancy hair

[alias_sqbr]

I have finally successfully gotten my hair approximately the way I want it! Getting it into an asymmetric cut with a purple streak has been a long term project since my hair is very dark chaotically frizzy waves that insist on a centre part.

Next: a neater and less aggressively asymettrical version of the same cut, letting all the other dye attempts grow out (my hair is usually slightly darker than this), and maybe oil slick style dark vibrant streaks in multiple colours.

Below the cut, how I did it, for anyone who might find that useful.

The haircut:
Mine is longer on the left side, if you want it the other way around swap 'left' and 'right' in my instructions.

1) Pin the front left front part of the hair to follow the forehead (and thus be as long as possible)
2) Part hair horizontally at the ear line.
3) Tie back to top half, gathered towards the right. The more to the right you gather it, the more asymmetric the final shape.
4) Clipper the bottom half (Cam does this part, he starts at a number 4 and then smooths out the hair at the nape of the neck down to a number 1)
5) Readjust the top half to make sure it's sitting at or below the horizontal parting.
Cut the top half off at the hairband tying it back.
Done!

I forgot to adjust mine to be lower than the parting, so it's a bit weird at the back.

Streaks:

So! The short version is that I bleached a streak, waited ten days, bleached it again, and then applied colour. I had a few false starts on the way there which I'll go into at the end, it was a learning process.

Background:

Tree has a great tutorial on bleaching and dyeing short hair which gave me a good place to start.

A key skill for making a streak turned out to be foils: using aluminium foil to separate out thin strips of hair to apply bleach/colour. I started with this wikihow article and a few other similar text descriptions, but didn't really get it until I watched some videos on youtube. The most clear was Placing Color Streak In Hairstyles.

(The least clear was the woman whose "doing a streak at home" video said "Bleaching your own hair is a bad idea so instead I'll show you how to use extensions" :/ I mean if you have straight smooth hair they seem great but I Do Not)

A lot of people on Youtube refer to "Brad Mondo's method", I'm not sure if this is the specific video they mean but it's a nice summary of all the key concepts: Hairdresser's Guide To Coloring Your Own Hair And Not Ruining It. One extra thing I learned from this was to do the roots last because they bleach faster due to head heat.

How Long Do I Have To Wait To Bleach My Hair Again? Having read a few discussions the short answer seems to be 10-14 days, depending on how damaged it is.

I've linked to where I bought the materials since some were a little tricky to find for delivery in Australia.

Materials:
Hi-Lift bleach powder
Hi-Lift 30 vol developer
Tint bowl
Manic Panic Amplified 'Violet Night'
Gloves and shower cap: came for free with something I bought
Alfoil: the supermarket ;)

Method:

Stage one: Pin back the rest of my hair aggressively so it stays out of the way. Use a foil to bleach a streak for 40 minutes, waiting 15 minutes before applying bleach to the roots. Put a shower cap over the top to keep the bleach warm and prevent drips. Wash all of hair and body thoroughly.

Stage two: Wait ten days, making sure to apply lots of conditioner when I wash my hair. Repeat stage one.

Stage 3: Apply colour with a foil, leaving it for an hour and a half because I fell asleep and it doesn't do any harm to wait.

Results:


The difference between stage 1 and 2 is pretty subtle, but it did get lighter. I'm not sure if it would have worked ok if I'd dyed after just stage one.

The streak feels a bit more dry and frizzy than the rest of my hair but has been behaving ok so far.

My hair is so thin I just used one foil, it made the roots a bit uneven but they're covered anyway.

Failed attempts:

My first attempt at bleaching I somehow applied the bleach incorrectly (not enough use of the brush?) and also didn't wait to bleach the roots, leaving me with a small band of yellow-orange at the roots and the rest orange-red. Also I screwed up applying the foil and semi-bleached the surrounding hair.

I applied dark purple box dye to my whole head hoping the ugly streak would turn into a subtle highlight but it became entirely invisible. The resulting colour was a nice if subtle dark burgundy, but when it faded it left my hair subtly lighter, which is now growing out and looks a little odd. I used something from the supermarket, I forget what brand, but something like Schwartzkopf Dark Amethyst.

Once that purple faded the ugly streak was back, if a little less ugly. I tried dying it purple with the Manic Panic violet dye and it became brown with a very faint purple sheen. It's now faded to a moderately pretty dark red-brown that's hard to make out in the photo (it's at the front of my hair on the short side).

I tried a highlight cap but even the large size was way too small for my head, making it very difficult to use, and the hook was very small so I only managed to pull through a little of my thin frizzy hair. The final effect was way too subtle considering how much trouble it was. I'm pretty sure the hook is just a crochet hook, so it would be easy to replace with a larger size, and I can see this method being fine for someone with paler, thicker hair and a smaller head. I never fit hats from the women's section, my head is quite large!

It turns out "Failed attempts at bleaching hair" is a whole subgenre on youtube to the extent that it kinda drowns out videos on how to do it successfully. Bleaching my hair at home | BLACK to BLONDE is a whole series where someone slooowly gets black hair to white, involving several weeks and some major mistakes, it wasn't super educational but is certainly proof of how much work bleaching dark hair can be /o\

But we both got there in the end :)

Even with the screwups, I've been enjoying playing around with my hair, both for the final result and as a sort of art project. And while the initial setup cost wasn't nothing, I would have spent WAY more getting this done professionally, especially when you include all the upcoming touch-ups.

Comments

[sylvaine]

Oh my, it looks delightful! :D

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you!

[delphi]

Very nice - and highly educational!

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you, and I'm glad!

[pebblerocker]

Congratulations! It looks great, the colour came out nice!

My sister tried an asymmetrical cut recently and got frustrated because whenever her parting changed around slightly, she ended up with a little bit hanging way down on the short side. I helped her trim the bottom straight again yesterday because the reality of the style didn't quite live up to her dream. Is yours doing that?

[alias_sqbr]

It did the first time I cut my hair asymmetrically, since I gave myself a side part when I cut it and after that it settled into its usual centre part and looked weird. But the advantage of my hair being doggedly centre parted is that it is fairly consistent, so now I let it fall into it's natural position (which is actually very slightly to the right) before cutting and it looks ok afterwards, there's sometimes the odd little lock on the wrong side but mostly it all keeps to the side it started on.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Looks fantastic!! I've been having my wife cut my hair so I'm impressed you've done so much of your own hairstyling

[alias_sqbr]

Thank you! Cam doing the shaving bits helps a lot.