Welp, going blonde has been a journey to say the least. I went to a salon over a week ago now and asked to go blonde. Now granted I should have been more specific about the exact look I wanted to achieve but I didn't and ended up with something that just wasn't me. The first photos are what I left the salon with, which are baby lights. Baby lights are basically highlights but smaller so that the blend better with your natural color. My natural color however is dark brown, which made a huge contrast between my highlights, and it just wasn't the look I wanted. It felt very old school and not natural looking, especially on myself.
So step 1, get rid of the baby lights. I've used a box lightener before when I did my own ombre about a year ago, you can see a picture of my original ombre here. The lightener I use is by L'Oreal, you can get it at Walgreens or CVS. I've used two different shades in the past, both the Super Blonde, and the Absolute Platinum have worked well for me. Personally I like the Absolute Platinum better for myself. I would rather my hair be that white blonde verses the golden.
This time around I stripped my hair all the way to the root which is something I've never done before. But hey it's just hair and I figured if I was successful in lightening half my head for an ombre, then I could figure this out too. I applied the box lightening kit to my entire head, section by section just like a box color. I used foil for this process on my head. To heat it up I just used my hair dryer every 10 min to help move the process along faster. The instructions that come with it in the box are super easy to follow (although there are no instructions on foiling...I would look that step up on YouTube). Last time I left my lightener in for almost an hour, which I should have also done this time around. But I'm impatient and thought enough time had passed. I rinsed and I was definitely NOT satisfied. I was an orangey goldenish yellow, not the platinum I was hoping for. But no worries because I prepared myself that this might happen and bought a toner for this situation.
So now here comes step two...toning!! For myself I used ION high lift ash blonde. This can be bought at sally's and is super inexpensive. I mixed it with a 20 volume developer. I watched a few videos by Elle Bangs on YouTube which helped me choose what color toner I wanted to use on my hair. I ended up choosing the high lift because I wanted to get the lightest shade possible without damaging my hair too much. This is also super easy to apply. I basically painted it throughout my hair, again almost like a box dye. I definitely saturated my hair a lot more with this step and let this sit for about 45 min to an hour. I had to do this step twice so that my hair would get light enough and even then it still wasn't as light as I really wanted. However, I needed to give my hair a few days break before I lightened it even further.
So about 5 days after my first round of bleaching and toning, I toned it one last time. And VOILA....I was finally the shade of blonde I had been going after!!! But it doesn't stop there, because why would it...that would be too easy. I wanted to give myself a balayage, to kind of darken my roots slightly. I again followed another Elle Bangs tutorial for this step. I used ION medium ash brown, which was honestly too light for me and I should have done darker shade. However at this point I had been working on my hair for almost 10-15 hours between all of these steps and didn't want to go and get another brown to go over my hair yet again.
So I did what anyone would have done in that situation and went PINK!!!! If you've followed my insta for a while now you'll notice I have a love for changing up my hair color. I've done Purple, Pink, Teal, Lavender, and Grey, so naturally I have plenty of colors left over at home. I use Manic Panic for my temporary pastel craziness. One of their jars is only $9, and lasts me so long. I mix the bright color with conditioner to dilute it down, which gives my hair that pastel look I love! Also, on the plus side its like giving my hair a mini deep conditioning sesh while waiting for the color to soak in. For the pink above I used Manic Panic Hot Pink, and Raven(which is their black color) with tons of conditioner. I start with just a small dab of color and slowly mix in more until I see the shade I'm going after. A good tip someone gave me a while ago was to mix it a shade darker than the color you want because of the different highs and lows that are naturally going to occur in your hair. This way you'll get better coverage with your color.
The moral of this story is when in doubt YouTube it, and if that doesn't work....dye your whole head pink and call it a day!
In the end my blonde turned out great, but I just love how fun the pink is. Pastel colors fade fast so you best believe I'm going to have a blast this summer switching mine up whenever I can!
xx
KP
P.S. Excuse me for all these embarrassing selfies, like any normal person i document via snapchat. These are those faces you make and send private, definitely not "My Story" worthy. But now they're here for all of you to see.
