Loving a Bit Of Colour

The thing about me is I can be quite fickle when it comes to my looks and style.
I get bored and use it as a way to express myself. Especially my hair and make up.

About nine months ago I had found a hair style that no questions asked was going to be in my hair. Originally it was for my birthday, but I decided I wanted to wait a little longer and that Christmas time would do, but then it got pushed back again to before the Digital Parents Conference.

I'm talking tie-dying my hair.
I was clear from the start that I wanted pink and green with perhaps a little blue to soften the bold colours up a little. I'm known for not being a fan of blue, so there is only the tiniest bit of blue in there.

The difference between tie-dying and colour dipping is that you take small blocks of your hair, and you colour it, as well as leaving some blocks "natural", so you have a flicker of colour mixed in with the natural looking colour. Just like when you tie-dye a shirt, you have colour with the flecks of white.

Dip dying is when you're taking all of your hair and dipping it into a colour. Like doing all of the ends, or taking a whole section and doing it the one colour. A new and very cool looking trend that I am personally loving is when you do this, but you also add in another colour higher up on the section if you're just doing the ends.

But we are here about tie-dying, and I want to tell you how I got this look!

I've taken you through the steps of me re-colouring my hair. It lasted two months before the colour washing out to a barely noticeable pale pastel look. That's really good in my opinion. I've used fudge hair colours in the past, and whilst looking great they usually last 3 washes before the colour bleeds out and I need to recolour, so I was colouring every other week at the very least.

I've sectioned off my hair using bobby pins to hold the same strands of colour together. When you're doing this for the first time, you won't need to section off, but you can if you like.

I've then mixed up my colour in a dye pot (they're just those little bowls hairdressers use, and they're super cheap to pick up), and grabbed my colour brush (again super cheap).

Then you apply the dye to the ends of your hair. It's entirely up to you how long you want the dye to reach, I have about 2-3 inches in my long hair, but you adjust it for you, and remember that you want it to be abstract so each piece doesn't need to be coloured evenly.
When colouring the piece you will want to blend the colour in. I do this by applying the colour and then squeezing it out using my fingertips at the top of where you've coloured. You can also do this by using your hair dye brush once you have placed most of the excess on the ends, but I find this method to be a bit trickier.
Just remember to blend! It is a very important step. The colour should darken through to the tips.

As you colour each section you need to wrap it in foil. I've done this by tearing some pieces of foil, I lay my coloured hair on top of the piece of foil, fold the bottom up, and then wrap each side towards the other side. This is to keep the coloured sections separate so the dye doesn't mix.

Depending on the vibrancy you want to achieve, leave the colour in from 20-40 minutes. This will work best in lighter hair to darker, so if you are a dark haired beauty having the ends you would like to colour bleached first is a very good idea to achieve vibrancy. I would recommend going in to a hairdressing salon for this because I personally do not like the idea of working with bleach untrained as it's very easy to get wrong.

Once you're happy with the colour I found washing it out in the laundry sink to be the best way to go. Taking one foiled piece off at a time, rinse the colour out until the water runs clear, and then squeeze the piece of hair with an old towel until it's damp. Repeat this for each foiled section, ensuring to squeeze each piece until it's damp so that the colours do not run together.

At this point I suggest spritzing a bit of Moroccan Oil into the ends of your hair before blow drying, and then heading out to show off your new 'do.

Tell me, would you ever tie-dye your hair?
Have you used any bold colours in your hair?