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| Blame it on My Little Pony, but I love my hair this way! |
Pastel hair everywhere! I´m sure you have seen the pictures lately. I came to the idea after seeing the fishtail rainbow braid tutorial at the freepeople blog some months ago with the wonderful highlights. I adored it. I needed this in my own hair, without fake extensions. Real pastel highlights that go with me every day. So I make an appointment at the hair salon, but since they obviously never did such a thing before, I became a bit unsure if I really wanted somebody else to do my hair. Don´t ask me why, I don´t trust hairdressers. I cut my own hair and I will dye my own hair, ha!
Are you ready to do it along with me? What does a brave and colorful girl need to do this at home? Here comes the list:
Hair White Toner from Directions I used the Schwarzkopf Platin Blonde Extreme XXL, but that was not enough for me....and I am blonde. So when you have dark hair you should really go for the white toner.
Hair Dye from Directions I used the Carnation Pink, the Turquoise, the Lilac (I said Violet in the video, oopsie!) and the Lavender. They really have a wide variety of colors to choose from.
Tin Foil You need it to cover your hair with it, otherwise the color or bleach will bleed out to the rest of your hair. Not so yummy.
Scissors For cutting the tin foil and stuff.
Hairclips and Rubber Bands For getting your hair out of the way.
Conditioner You mix conditioner into the hair color to get the pastel color. I did about 1/3rd of conditioner and 2/3rds of color. Just make sure that the conditioner is white, you´ll never know what the color particles do when mixed together.
Brushes For every color that you use you need at least one. And one for the bleach, but please don´t use one with plastic hair, otherwise it´ll melt during the bleaching process.
Glass bowls I never use plastic containers for the colors because they tend to make funny stuff (like getting leaks) and they are easier to tip over.
Protective Gloves Unless you like colorful pastel skin too.
A Good Friend Or Family Member Pretty please? You´ll probably need some help with the back of your head.
The Process
1. Preparations: Cut the tin foil into stripes. Put your hair up like I show in my video, so that you are able to reach the lower layers of your hair.
2. Bleach: Take strands of your hair that you later on want to be colorful and clip the tin foil behind your hair strand. Apply white toner with the brush and make a little package of tin foil around your hair.
4. Wait and rinse: After checking on your hair constantly and deciding that it is now light enough, you rush to the bathroom and rinse your hair with somewhat warm water. Wait until your hair is dry. (if you can´t wait, you can also blow-dry it, but that might bring even further damage to your hair.)
5. Mix the colors: Take your conditioner and your glass bowls, take 2/3rds of color (I used 2-3 teaspoons of each color, but that might differ, because I have long hair) and add 1/3rd of conditioner. If you find that your color is still too dark, add more conditioner. This is a process of learning, once you´ve done this, you´ll quickly find out what works best for you.
6. Apply colors: Search for your white streaks, seperate them from the rest of the hair (start from the bottom, just like when bleaching your hair) and work your way upwards. Make sure that you do not put the same color above each other when working on your layers.
7. Wait and rinse: I waited for about half an hour, but I really constantly checked my hair. I took a piece of makeup tissue and removed the tinsiest bit of color from the hair to see how much of it has already sunken in. Don´t be afraid when you remove the tin foil: the color might look a bit too intense. Once you rinse and dry the hair, it get´s a lot lighter. Rinse your hair with COLD WATER! This is important, otherwise too much of your color could bleed out.
8. Enjoy! Have a good time and go earn some compliments!
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| The Rainbow Braid by freepeople |
Tips
If you find that the color is too intense, go and make your hair wet, put in some conditioner and leave it there for about an hour. Then rinse with warm water.
Try to wash your hair as cold as possible. Warm water will always let your hair bleed a lot more than cold one.
Once you started experimenting with your hair, you will always make little re-colorings to see how colors match together. I have strands that go from light pink to purple to turquoise now. I keep an old t-shirt for this use that I always wear when I dye my hair.
Ok, I hope that I could help you a little on the process. If you have any further questions, leave them in the comment section and I will try to answer them as best as I can.
5 things I am thankful for today:
- Norman Crystal slumbering at my feed in his dragon costume
- waking up from a bad dream and finding that reality is so much better
- watching how organic farmers care about their chickens, moving their stable/tent around so that the animals always have fresh grass and a natural surrounding
- Mr. DomDom cooking dinner :)
- enjoying the Lost In Translation Soundtrack
Rainbow hair hugs and sunshine sundays to you,
love pastel hair! too bad my hair is WAY dark :( love your tutorial!! xo
ReplyDeleteThank you Lee Lee! The white toner turns even the darkest hair into bright white, it´s just a matter of time :) I´ve done it on a friend and she was very excited that it worked out.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you just wanna give it a try on a small strand (only the tip part) on one of your lower layers of hair, so that you can figure out how it works without showing your tiny experiment to the whole world. ^___^
One thing: toner wouldn't turn dark hair light - only bleach does that. Toner is a purple/blue coloured very very light hair dye which neutralises the yellow tones in your hair which gives the illusion of it being 'white'. Toner won't turn the darkest hair bright white, but a combination of bleach and toner will. I would recommend using toner on bleached hair though to make sure yellow tones in the hair aren't influencing the final colour of dyed hair.
DeleteThank you so much for the tutorial. My friend and i were wanting to do pastel hair but just couldn't work out how to do it. Now we can't wait!!
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. :) X
Thank u for this tutorial <3 btw, u are so cute.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aimee! I'm glad you liked it! o(^▽^)o
ReplyDeletehi(: i was wondering, how long did the colors last? i have regular blue and purple but i'm not sure if using conditioner to make hem pastels makes the color fade in fewer washes. i also heard that using a toner/mixer to mix with regular colors makes it last a little longer?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your tip! Since my hair is blonde to start with, it´s always good to have another input on dark hair too.
ReplyDeletehi, thanks for the tutorial! i already have blue hair but it's too dark.. so i'm thinking about using a conditioner but i don't know which to choose.. is it a normal conditionier or something special? could you tell me the brand name? xxx
ReplyDeleteI used a conditioner by Schwarzkopf that you normally would use after shampoo. It´s somewhat cheap, I think it was around 7€. The only thing that I watched out for was that the conditioner was white or had no color at all because I read online that conditioner with color in it can turn your colors into some nasty result.
ReplyDeletei am for sure doing this when i have an entire day off. My hair is very dark, and every time it has been bleached it turned an ugly yellow. To fix that should I use toner after the bleach?
ReplyDelete