Blonde Becka (aka, don't do what I did..)

So finally I am some sorta normalish semblance of a blonde shade.  Lol.  I'll give you the story in pictures as I took pics pretty much every step of the way.  Keep in mind I did all this today between the hours of say...10:30am and 4:00pm.  I don't suggest you do this all in one day, but I am a stubborn girl and I have kicked the crap outta my hair before and so I know sorta how it handles...but even I shouldn't have done all this (I could've gone without one of the steps I did...)

Remember the brown hair before?

well, it is no more...it has been replaced with this crazy lady.

That is so strange.  I don't notice too much of a difference when I just look at it with no comparisons, so I am glad there is actually a dramatic change between the brown and blonde.


So I started with removing the brown hair colour using L'oreal color remover.  I am pretty sure that it's just basically bleach and isn't specially formulated to remove only artificial dye or anything like that.  It said not to use it on natural hair, but it removed the colour of that as well cuz I wanted it even.  Haha.  It did it FAST too.  I had applied to my ends up until about an inch away from the roots and by the time I got through my whole head that way the back was yellow already so I went and applied throughout my root areas and then when I was done that I waited about...3 mins while I gathered stuff for a shower, and hopped in.  Probably less than.
Here's the colour remover doing it's job. 

It was actually kinda freaky because it got HOT.  I would go and grab the stuff I had already applied to to add the stuff I just applied to keep it all together and it would be quite warm to the touch.  And it made my hair super knotted and super thick (all that alkalinity swells the cuticles right up). So I rinsed it out, shampooed with Shimmerlights to help remove some yellow/brassiness, and then conditioned with my leftover hairdye conditioner they give you for the "6 weeks of treatments."

So this is how that turned out.  Lovely shade of yellow-orange-gold.

My dad laughed at me.

So I let that air dry for the most part, I didn't wanna blow dry it just to get it all done cuz that's unnecessary damage.  But I did have to blow dry a bit because the top/back is always so thick and stays wet longer.  Then I mixed up the permanent lightest ash blonde I got with some 30 vol I picked up today as I thought 40 vol would be waaaaay too harsh.  Honestly, I don't think this dye did anything really.  Maybe lightened a touch.

So I kinda got annoyed and was like, "well, I'll just add some more of the shimmerlights to this to let it sit" so I did...

Purple Hair!!!
And then that turned out still yellowy, but somewhat more of a normal blonde tone than before.  So I decided to venture out of the house to pick up a semi-permanent dye to get rid of more yellow.

Going, out...lol.

My mom said it looked okay, but I still thought it looked like I tried to bleach my hair and freaked out at the orange stage and then tried to pull it off as what I wanted originally.  Lol.  (I see a lot of ppl with that and I shake my head at them...)  So I was determined to get it better.

So I was gonna get some Natural Instincts, but they didn't have the one I wanted and it was expensive at Shopper's Drug Mart, so I bought the Herbashine line instead in the Medium Ash Blonde.  I did a strand test and then forgot about the strand test mix and when I came back like 30 mins later I was glad I didn't leave it on my hair that long because it was practially brown again.  Lol.

I left the mix on my hair for just under 10 mins (it called for 10).  I could've probably gotten away with even less, but I wanted to be sure that it was going to take care of the  yellow.  I then rinsed it in the tub while I was on my knees leaning over (lol), and then towelled off a bit and applied a lot more of the Shimmerlights shampoo to help get rid of more yellow.  I let that sit while I waxed my eyebrows and cleaned up the counter (yay multitask!) And then I took a quickie shower and applied the Ion deep conditioner packet to my towelled off hair.  That needed to sit for 5-10 mins so I shaved my legs in the meantime.  Rinsed that off again and emerged!

Oh, and I also did a lemon-sugar scrub thing on my face while waiting and brushed my teeth really well.  Lol.  So I was kinda scared that this would just be brown again because it was looking kinda dark...but it dried to a nice medium/dark blonde.

And my ends are feeling a bit fried, but nothing horribly so.  I think a few more deep conditions and a mini trim and they'll be okay as well. 

So, once again, DON"T DO THAT!  Lol.  Three processes with H2O2 in one day.  It was getting kinda painful on my scalp at the end and I'm glad they each went by quickly. 

- Love, Becka.