ANYWAY, I decided after the big chop I wasn't going to color my hair for a while. And I didn't. For two years I did absolutely nothing other than use hot tools. My hair is pretty strong when it comes to heat but obviously with constant use of chemicals, not so much.
Here is a recent picture of my hair before I dyed it. It's about waist length now. This is the longest I've ever grown it.
I haven't cut it since May of 2010 when I got the big chop. By cut I mean, actually cut more than a few inches off. I do have search and destroy sessions every once in a while when I'm sitting in the sunlight in my room because that's when I see my split ends the best. If you don't know what "search and destroy" is, it's when you take sections of your hair and you cut off split ends one by one as you see them. Yes, it is time consuming, but at the same time it also saves your hair length and you can grow your hair faster vs. having the salon hack off like 5 inches like they love to do. I'm never going back to the hair salon AGAIN.
Back to hair dye. I did a lot of research and decided if I absolutely had to color my hair (because I was getting bored of my coal black hair and wanted to go a little lighter) I was going to make sure the dye I used had a lot of good reviews on it and wouldn't completely destroy the health of my hair, which took over 2 years to restore. I came across this dye on youtube and a bunch of other blogs who had written numerous reviews.
Loreal Paris UL61. It's a pretty common DIY box hair dye. You can usually find it at Target and Walmart. I chose this because when I went to the salon they insisted they needed to cut my hair if they were going to color it, and that they couldn't color it much lighter since it would greatly damage it. That was pretty much what the Walmart hair salon told me so I decided, that's too damn bad then, no one is going near my hair with scissors again and I will color it my damn self.
So I bought two boxes of the Loreal UL61 dye and a dye brush and let me tell you the whole process was a pain in the ass to do myself. It was Superbowl day and the hubby was watching the game so I was shit out of luck.
My first thoughts with this home dye: It STINKS. I've colored my hair often but this stuff has the strongest smell. I had to run to the bathroom window every few minutes to get some fresh air. Anyway, I worked as quickly as I could, brushing the dye on the ends of my hair and finally finishing with my roots. I'm thankful I bought two boxes because one barely covered my hair and I needed to do a second coating to ensure full coverage.
Placed a plastic bag on my head and processed for about 40 minutes. Outcome? I HATED IT.......at first. I don't know if I was just not used to seeing my hair lighter, but it looked very ORANGE in the office lighting at work. I was tempted to color it back to dark brown the next day but my husband insisted that he liked it and not to do anything drastic. I sucked it up and left it as is. It's been about a week, but I noticed each day as I showered it faded a little to the light brown I had wanted, and finally I guess the color grew on me. Here's what it looks like now:
I like the way my hair looks in studio lighting. You can definitely tell it's a lot lighter than what it was before. Like I said, the color is still growing on me so I think I will leave it alone for a while and see if it looks bad while growing out. I may either just grow it out till it has that ombre look, or go in and touch up my roots with a level 10 developer so it doesn't come out too bright the next time. Other than that, I think I'll just keep the color and not worry about it anymore. On the plus side, my hair didn't really get damaged at all. It was soft like it usually is when you dye your hair, and a few days later I had to get a deep conditioner to get some moisture back in my locks, but other than that, the damage was minimal enough that I didn't have to go and cut the majority of it off. Sorry this post is so long, I just felt I needed to do an in depth review on this hair dye lol. On Amazon it has mixed reviews, but it's because this hair dye is formulated for people with naturally dark hair. If you already have dyed hair that's lighter than the color on the box than you might want to stay away from this. That is my review for the day.
Besides my hair dilemma, I also have another review coming up on Laser Hair Removal. My beauty goal this year is to get rid of underarm hair, and about two weeks ago I went and had my first session. I will review that after a couple more sessions! Till then, take care <3
