Some of you may remember my first foray into the world of VIVID hair. Last September (9/30/13) I got a wild idea stuck in my head. I wanted pink hair. PINK. Bright pink – even neon. I wanted something crazy like I had never done before.
      I bought some SPLAT! dye in Pink and a couple boxes of drug store hair bleach. I lightened it twice, and then waited a day or two (painful, because I can NOT pull off blonde) before coloring it pink.
      And it. Was. Epic.
      See?

      Right? Hot!
      Unfortunately, the grow-out was too much for me. I couldn’t find the patience to rebleach JUST the roots and I couldn’t afford to have it done professionally. So the pink was bleached out and I went back to reddish brown. Booooring. But nice and normal and with less awful grow-out.
      Then, a couple weeks back, I got it in my head that I wanted to go with a wild color again.
      Not pink this time, no. I wanted Sailor Neptune teal. After recruiting my dear friend Abbie, I dragged her to Sally’s Beauty Supply and we chose a gorgeous demi-permanent teal, picked up two dye kits, and *boom* it was done.
      Oh wait, except it wasn’t.
      I just wanted to do the under-layer, rather than the whole mess. I thought, if the front doesn’t show roots, I won’t have to re-dye or re-bleach it quite so fast. So for longevity’s sake, Abbie separated my hair with laser precision, about 60% up and 40% down to be bleached. She did a great job.
      The bleach really worked fast and so I rinsed it out and found I had a decent “golden yellow/orange” color to use as a base. Perfect. We applied the teal and waited. It looked AMAZING. But then we rinsed that out too…
      Luckily, like the pink, the teal did not stain anything in the bathroom. Unfortunately, unlike the pink, it hardly seemed to stick to my hair. The blond had turned into this hideous ombre where the top third was blonde, the middle was a weird baby-poop-brown/green/sludge, and the bottom was a lovely greenish turquoise. Ugh.
      See for yourself.

      The actual effect from behind was nice, but it wasn’t what I wanted and the ombre bugged me and I couldn’t even see ANY teal from the front, no matter how I futzed with my style. Okay – that’s a lie. If I pulled all my hair from the back to my shoulder and squinted in bright light, I got this:

      Check out the back-view of the Teal final result. Not bad, right?

      Alas, I was miserable.
      So I waited a week or so and then said, Fuck it.
      I wanted to try turquoise again, but when I checked Amazon reviews for the best “professional” demi-perm vivid dye, the line I wanted to try didn’t have an adequate teal. So I chose the next best – a truly vivid violet. Gorgeous. Jenna Marbles-y.
      I used the second bleach kit we’d purchased originally and enlisted Mark’s help to re-separate my hair. I wanted MORE hair down and less up (we did about 75% down, 25% up this time). He was so kind, but our “separation” line was awful and I couldn’t see to fix it. I never wanted my mom to help me with my hair so bad in my life.
      Okay – except for the wedding.
      Anyway – we bleached the hell out of it. Maybe too long, even. But the package said 60-90 minutes and I did just over 60. I was afraid it was falling out – honestly, I even posted on Facebook that I was afraid I’d scalped myself and that I’d wake up bald.
      When I rinsed and dried it, I woke up to this:

      So soft, so pale!
      Sure, it has the consistency of cotton candy, but at least it was ripe for purple dye, right?
      …haha.
      This time, I bleached on Friday and dyed on Sunday, rather than both on the same day. Maybe that was my problem with the teal – or maybe that brand just blows. Either way, come Sunday night, Mark re-separated my hair (which he finds SO difficult!) and we used the entire tube (dumb. dumb. dumb.) on my bleached hair.
      I am not going to upload the in-progress photos, but the color was even cooler than the turquoise while it was on the hair.
      Then, I wanted to rinse in the sink, because of all the warnings online, but you see – I am short, the counters are high, and I couldn’t make it work. So, since I’ve used lots of demi-perms before (okay, two…) I figured I would be okay rinsing the purple off in the shower.
      I was wrong.
      I was SO wrong.
      The tub is purple/blue. The walls are purple/blue. My fucking BUTT was purple/blue. My legs, my feet, my neck, my back… It is awful. I will be scrubbing bleach into that tub until we move out and praying that it is restorable.
      But for the moment, I ended up with a color I really love. Maybe not quite as much as the pink. But a lot.
      Definitely, next time I will go to a professional though. This was too stressful.
      The final result, freshly washed & dried:

      I dig it!

Note: Image is “ADICH” by (Me)