Hair Adventures 3: Green Hair, Purple Fringe

I completely forgot about doing the conclusion to my hair adventures, so I'm sorry for not putting this up months ago!

As you may recall from ::Hair Adventures 2: Feeling Blue::, I previously dyed my hair pine green with a violet fringe, and while it was pretty freshly done, it rapidly faded to two-tone blue, which while it wasn't objectively bad, was just not what I actually wanted. The picture on the right shows the colours in my hair when it was done the first time around, and you can click the link above to see what happened when it turned blue.

As I mentioned in that previous blog, I had a plan to turn the blues back to greens and purple - put in very vibrant yellow green over the aqua blue, and neon pink over the royal blue fringe! I used Stargazer UV Green and Stargazer UV Pink over the faded blue hair, but before I did that, I made sure to fade it out as much as possible, to pastel turquoise-blue, and a bright blue for the fringe. To help it fade as quickly as possible, I used original formula dandruff shampoo, which strips temporary dye much quicker than ordinary shampoo, and does help as I can get dandruff in summer. 

My hair fixed with lime green and pink!

The bright lime green alone wasn't quite enough to get my hair a colour I wanted, so I put Directions Apple Green (a staple for my hair for ages, my favourite green dye) over it, to get it REALLY green! To keep it green, once every other week or so, I was mixing up some left over green dye (including some of the Crazy Colour Pine, and lots of the Stargazer UV Green) in with some conditioner and leaving it on my hair to deep condition it (it gets pretty fried with all the bleach and styling) and to make the hair more vibrant. I'm not sure this is the best method, but it was recommended to me by a friend, and it seems to be working for me - of course, 'your mileage may vary' as they say, and I am not a professional hair-dresser or stylist, so whether leaving conditioner on for the time it takes my hair-dye to usually set is a good idea or not is not something I am qualified to say. 

Slightly more Pine Green in the mix this time!

Putting more of the Crazy Colour Pine green results in a slightly darker green, but it also does fade bluer (I think it is more like a blue dye with yellow dye mixed in, rather than a green dye, and the yellow tones wash out faster). The Stargazer UV Green dye does fade pretty quickly, though, and when I'd run out of Pine and was just using UV Green to touch it up, it was fading to a more minty green. I was using Stargazer UV Pink, mixed with a little of the left over Violette to keep the fringe bright - and still am, as it doesn't take much dye and I still have some of that first bottle of Violette and a third of a bottle of UV pink!

Slightly faded out

If you have my Domesticated Goth account followed on Instagram - viewable in browser ::here:: - you will have already seen the 'Moon Child' makeup picture, and Birthday M.U.O.T.D (make up of the day) picture - I'm more active on Instagram than I am here, and I put content on Instagram that's more about my make-up, fashion, artwork and aesthetics, as I feel that Instagram is a better platform for primarily visual blogging. For wordy blogging, thoughts and even posts that are nearly articles/essays, then I will continue to blog here. I have been busy renovating my house over summer, so hopefully in the near future I will do a room-by-room account of my decorating ideas and inspiration, what still needs to be done, etc. However, I am back at college, so that might take a while!

This isn't actually the conclusion of my hair saga; there's going to be a Hair Adventures 4! On Friday night I stayed up most of the night dyeing my hair a more interesting way... why doing my hair took all night, and what I've done with it will be revealed in the next (and final) instalment of my hair adventures for this year (although those on my FB page will have had a sneak preview yesterday). I'm not changing my hair drastically again until at least next year - which I have a specific plan for, as I am aiming for a rather radically different change in about a year's time. 

Hair Adventures 2: Feeling Blue

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, my new hair was meant to be a purple a pointed fringe, but the rest pine-green. The hair-cut, done by my friend Melody, turned out well (even if I am still learning to manage it), and initially it seemed that the dye - which I did myself - had worked out, too. I was really happy with my hair for a short while...

Violet fringe, pine-green hair... all seems well

I liked this colour combination - I had gone for a bluer, more violet purple and a green with cool tones so that together they would look better than a yellow-green and a pinkish purple, and I used a different dye for my hair than I normally did - the green was Directions Alpine Green with streaks of Crazy Colour Pine Green. I liked this, and I liked the Crazy Colour Violette. I didn't like how it washed out, though! After a couple of washes my hair was two-tone blue! 

My hair turned blue!

I don't actually know why this happened, either. Before I re-dyed my hair I had bleached my extensive roots, and had spent a while washing (not bleaching) the faded green from my hair until it was very pale mint. My fringe had been bleached to nearly white, and most of the top of my head bleached to pale blonde, so it wasn't from there being a lot of blue underneath. I did, however, dye it in two stages, as the first time was a bit patchy, and I did notice that after the second coat the colours seemed bluer. With the second coat I had also mixed conditioner in with the dye to try and deep condition my hair as I dyed it - something one of my friends recommended to me, and she has had no problem with it, but she uses Arctic Fox rather than Directions dyes.

Freshly done

I have had green dyes fade to bluish before - when I had my multicolour hair, which included actual blue, it definitely faded more towards the blue tones, and the greens became bluer. The picture on the left is how my multicolour hair started out - note that I used actual blues in the middle sections, and only green at the top  - and then it faded to mostly blue. 

After a few washes

However, this took a few washes, and didn't dramatically change colour the first time I washed it. It was also clearly a case of the green at the top fading to turquoise, still with hints of green, as well as blue from the middle section leaching into the purples. The blues remained pretty constant, and just faded a little - not dramatically.  

I don't actually know what has gone wrong with my hair, or how best to fix it. I don't want to bleach my hair again, as it's already brittle and a bit fried - and it needed quite a bit chopped off the bottom to deal with how much I had already damaged it. I'm trying to wash out as much of the blue as possible, and I've bought both some of my usual Directions Apple Green, and some Stargazer UV Green to re-coat the bulk section of my hair. I've also bought some Stargazer UV Pink to put over my royal blue fringe, hoping to make it look purple.

I don't know how well this is all going to turn out - the dye is ordered, but I have an exam on Tuesday, so I probably won't get any dyeing done until Wednesday - after which I will post a 'Hair Adventures 3' instalment to show you all how it turns out. 

Shiny blue lipstick.

I don't think the blue is an objectively bad colour - it's just not right for me. I don't even think I look necessarily bad with it - it suits me a lot better than my natural brown, and a lot better than that time I tried to have lilac hair, and I think it's better than the mint colour my green fades to, but it just doesn't seem right on me - I've had green hair, or at least mostly green hair, for so long that I just can't get used to my hair being a different colour. I look at my reflection and it just looks off - like I'm wearing a wig when I'm not. Plus I just like the colour green more than the colour blue. I think if it had been on purpose, that might also have given me a different outlook on it, but it being unwanted, some mistake I made in the process, really doesn't help. I've tried to make the most of it, and used it as an excuse to play around with blue make-up, but I definitely want it green again.