Making my hair a galaxy
Feb. 3rd, 2021 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo I have semi-successfully dyed my hair blue! I'm going to describe how for my own reference as much as anything, since I didn't quite follow any one technique. Also I was started on this journey by a post years ago by rachelmanija where she posted her cool oil slick hair, so maybe this will inspire someone else :)
So here is my hair bleached, and then dyed. You can see the half-bleached purple streak in the top right photo.
I did a combination of oil slick (dark blues, greens, and purples, blending to the natural hair colour at the roots) and galaxy (blue and purple jewel tones) Other similar styles are peacock and mermaid.
I like the colours of galaxy hair more, but what I like about oil slick hair is the way it smoothly blends in with the natural hair colour, so you don't have to put any bleach on the scalp, and there (hopefully) isn't a stark regrowth line.
I looked at a bunch of tutorials on youtube for both techniques.
Bleaching (balayage):
Materials:
Hi-Lift bleach powder
Hi-Lift 30 vol developer
Tint bowl
Alfoil, shower cap, gloves, 'salon style' hair clips, comb: the supermarket
A guide to all the terms used in bleaching hair
The first step in oil slick type dyeing is balayage: bleaching most of the hair, with a smooth transition to unbleached roots.
Balayage as a stand-alone technique involves a lot of scattered highlights and small unbleached portions to create texture, which looks really nice in uncoloured hair but is less necessary when you're just going to dye everything. So after watching a bunch of tutorials I started out trying to do proper balayage but ended up aiming for something simpler and more uniform. Now that I've dyed the hair I feel like proper balayage would make it look even nicer but it's so much effort, so, we'll see if I can be bothered.
I didn't find any one tutorial I loved, Brad Mondo's has some nice diagrams of how to divide the hair as you go, but says you can go right to the root which is BAD ADVICE because it will cause bright spots where the scalp heats up the bleach (something HE HIMSELF taught me in a different video)
What I did:
First round was the tips of the longer parts of my hair at the front, with some scattered highlights going up higher. This came out WAY more uneven than I liked (also I accidentally re-bleached my purple streak which went pale turquoise at the ends)
Second round I did everything, dividing the hair into roughly 5x1cm sections (as in Brad Mondo's diagrams) I brushed bleach down the whole section of hair up to like 3cm from the roots, softening the edge near the roots and then adding more saturation on the ends. Then I put the section in foil. Since I ignored the back of my hair last time I started there and just processed everything for the same amount of time, since it took me like 15 minutes to do everything, working as fast as I could, that means 45 minutes for the back and 30 minutes for the very front. I started out using a mirror for the back but I couldn't see what I was doing very well so just went by feel.
It's not entirely even and I have a few bright spots near my scalp (THANKS BRAD) but it looks ok now I've dyed it.
It was all a bit of a hassle though. So what I think I'll do next time, assuming I wait until the current bleach has grown out a fair bit, is just do the second round technique, but in multiple sessions so I don't tire myself out so much trying to be quick. As long as I do neat partings I will hopefully be able to divide the hair consistently and make sure it all only gets bleached once.
Post-bleach care: You're supposed to use special shampoos/leave in conditioners etc to replace all the oil stripped out by the bleach. But most hair products annoy my scalp, so I used my usual shampoo and conditioner (making sure to condition everything that got bleached) then used my usual skin moisturiser as a leave in conditioner. Which seems to be working ok! The hair does still feel kinda crinkly but it's not too awful.
Dyeing:
My natural hair colour is a very dark brown, the underlying shade is orange-red. The colours I used were Manic Panic amplified from Beserk: Violet Night (dark purple), Rockabilly Blue (medium blue), Pink Warrior (magenta), and Atomic Turquoise (bright turquoise).
The plan was a gradient which goes up the colour wheel while increasing in brightness: dark orange-red (roots) -> dark purple -> medium blue -> bright turquoise, with scattered locks of dark orange-red (roots) -> dark purple -> magenta
It is VERY HARD to do this by yourself when your hair is chaotic and gets everywhere. I ended up leaving a bunch of gaps I coukld only see once it was rinsed and dried. But this was useful because I realised I liked the medium blue more than all the other colours, and used that in all the gaps.
The dark purple wasn't as dark or blueish as I thought it would be, especially over the reddish half-bleached parts, and is hard to tell from the magenta. I'm thinking a darker blue like After Midnight might work better as the root shadow colour, and a brighter pink like Cotton Candy Pink would contrast more with the other colours. That or I just used too much magenta, it all got a bit haphazard.
Another possible pretty gradient would be to go the other way up the colour wheel: dark orange-red (roots) -> deep red -> bright orange -> pale yellow, basically increasing the saturation of the colours it goes when bleached. But I like blues more :)
Some useful dying tutorials:
Galaxy hair on bleached hair with purple root shadow
Peacock hair with balayage and multiple colours per strand
Some pretty galaxy hair examples
rachelmanija where she posted her cool oil slick hair, so maybe this will inspire someone else :)So here is my hair bleached, and then dyed. You can see the half-bleached purple streak in the top right photo.
I did a combination of oil slick (dark blues, greens, and purples, blending to the natural hair colour at the roots) and galaxy (blue and purple jewel tones) Other similar styles are peacock and mermaid.
I like the colours of galaxy hair more, but what I like about oil slick hair is the way it smoothly blends in with the natural hair colour, so you don't have to put any bleach on the scalp, and there (hopefully) isn't a stark regrowth line.
I looked at a bunch of tutorials on youtube for both techniques.
Bleaching (balayage):
Materials:
Hi-Lift bleach powder
Hi-Lift 30 vol developer
Tint bowl
Alfoil, shower cap, gloves, 'salon style' hair clips, comb: the supermarket
A guide to all the terms used in bleaching hair
The first step in oil slick type dyeing is balayage: bleaching most of the hair, with a smooth transition to unbleached roots.
Balayage as a stand-alone technique involves a lot of scattered highlights and small unbleached portions to create texture, which looks really nice in uncoloured hair but is less necessary when you're just going to dye everything. So after watching a bunch of tutorials I started out trying to do proper balayage but ended up aiming for something simpler and more uniform. Now that I've dyed the hair I feel like proper balayage would make it look even nicer but it's so much effort, so, we'll see if I can be bothered.
I didn't find any one tutorial I loved, Brad Mondo's has some nice diagrams of how to divide the hair as you go, but says you can go right to the root which is BAD ADVICE because it will cause bright spots where the scalp heats up the bleach (something HE HIMSELF taught me in a different video)
What I did:
First round was the tips of the longer parts of my hair at the front, with some scattered highlights going up higher. This came out WAY more uneven than I liked (also I accidentally re-bleached my purple streak which went pale turquoise at the ends)
Second round I did everything, dividing the hair into roughly 5x1cm sections (as in Brad Mondo's diagrams) I brushed bleach down the whole section of hair up to like 3cm from the roots, softening the edge near the roots and then adding more saturation on the ends. Then I put the section in foil. Since I ignored the back of my hair last time I started there and just processed everything for the same amount of time, since it took me like 15 minutes to do everything, working as fast as I could, that means 45 minutes for the back and 30 minutes for the very front. I started out using a mirror for the back but I couldn't see what I was doing very well so just went by feel.
It's not entirely even and I have a few bright spots near my scalp (THANKS BRAD) but it looks ok now I've dyed it.
It was all a bit of a hassle though. So what I think I'll do next time, assuming I wait until the current bleach has grown out a fair bit, is just do the second round technique, but in multiple sessions so I don't tire myself out so much trying to be quick. As long as I do neat partings I will hopefully be able to divide the hair consistently and make sure it all only gets bleached once.
Post-bleach care: You're supposed to use special shampoos/leave in conditioners etc to replace all the oil stripped out by the bleach. But most hair products annoy my scalp, so I used my usual shampoo and conditioner (making sure to condition everything that got bleached) then used my usual skin moisturiser as a leave in conditioner. Which seems to be working ok! The hair does still feel kinda crinkly but it's not too awful.
Dyeing:
My natural hair colour is a very dark brown, the underlying shade is orange-red. The colours I used were Manic Panic amplified from Beserk: Violet Night (dark purple), Rockabilly Blue (medium blue), Pink Warrior (magenta), and Atomic Turquoise (bright turquoise).
The plan was a gradient which goes up the colour wheel while increasing in brightness: dark orange-red (roots) -> dark purple -> medium blue -> bright turquoise, with scattered locks of dark orange-red (roots) -> dark purple -> magenta
It is VERY HARD to do this by yourself when your hair is chaotic and gets everywhere. I ended up leaving a bunch of gaps I coukld only see once it was rinsed and dried. But this was useful because I realised I liked the medium blue more than all the other colours, and used that in all the gaps.
The dark purple wasn't as dark or blueish as I thought it would be, especially over the reddish half-bleached parts, and is hard to tell from the magenta. I'm thinking a darker blue like After Midnight might work better as the root shadow colour, and a brighter pink like Cotton Candy Pink would contrast more with the other colours. That or I just used too much magenta, it all got a bit haphazard.
Another possible pretty gradient would be to go the other way up the colour wheel: dark orange-red (roots) -> deep red -> bright orange -> pale yellow, basically increasing the saturation of the colours it goes when bleached. But I like blues more :)
Some useful dying tutorials:
Galaxy hair on bleached hair with purple root shadow
Peacock hair with balayage and multiple colours per strand
Some pretty galaxy hair examples
no subject
Date: 2021-02-03 02:46 pm (UTC)I love Brad Mondo, and he's totally right about the bleach lifting the color from the root of the hair due to the heat from the scalp. When I was getting my hair professionally done at a salon, they would always start with the shaft of the hair first before working on the root. But since I started doing it myself at home, I find it's more convenient to cover the entire length of hair.
I'm not sure if you're interested, but NamiiCho has two videos on not washing her hair for 1-2 weeks to see if her hair heals itself after going blonde.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj3Bl-MPyFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1DMTYWmRdo
Personally, having gotten my hair professionally bleached and toned platinum blond, and have for the past 2 years been doing my own touchups, you really don't need deep conditioners if you can afford to not wash your hair for 1-2 weeks. When my hair was really fried after trying to bleach it with 40 volume Manic Panic bleach and developer, I stopped washing my hair for 1-2 weeks (and only used conditioner when it got really musty) and it eventually healed itself. (I later switched to 20 volume developer using the Schwarzkopf line because they specialize in platinum blond hair, and their products actually condition the hair as it lifts the color.)
I mean, it does help to invest in a shampoo that isn't too harsh, a good quality conditioner, and a leave-in conditioner that you can just spray and comb thru your hair as it dries. But not washing your hair really helps a lot with healing it imo.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 12:58 pm (UTC)Oh, thank you, I didn't realise not washing could make such a difference. I don't think I could manage as long as a week before my scalp got annoyed at me, but I'll try and stretch things out as long as possible.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 12:37 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 08:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 12:34 pm (UTC)Ooh, nice! I've enjoyed seeing all your different hair colours, thank you for the inspiration!