Raegan Went Blonde

On the theme of hair... I talked about how I'm not opposed to letting the kids experiment with their hair. Raegan died her hair red last winter, and it's been sticking to her hair ever since. She has dark brown hair naturally, so as the hair lightened from the sun, and her dark brown roots came in, it was looking pretty bad. I decided to buy her a brown hair dye kit last week. It was close to her natural shade, and my hope was it would even things out before school starts up in 3 weeks.

After my hair turned bright red, she loved it, and wanted hair like mine. Nick and I talked about it, and decided that it's just hair, and she's hardly the youngest kid in her school to go with an odd color. We decided to let her make the decision on just what color she wanted.

Well, she wanted black hair, with orange tips. I vetoed that, and explained to her that black dye is the hardest to get out, and that it would likely have to grow out completely before she'd be rid of it. When she realized just how long her hair is, she agreed that we would skip black dye. Black dye's are the only natural color shade I've never used on my hair, for that reason.

After some talking, and looking at websites online with funky colors (I love Manic Panic- or did in HS), we decided to have her go blonde. When school is closer, what we'll do is go ahead and get some bright color (or markers- actually, probably markers), and streak her hair with some funky colors.

For now, though, she's blonde- very blonde. Because her hair was so dark, I decided it might be best to go ahead and bleach it first, then dye it. The bleach kit worked great, and while some strands were left darker than others, it wasn't bad. Not good in a way I would allow it to STAY, but it got her hair a lot lighter.

While she was bleaching, I ran to CVS and got a hair dye kit. I had a requirement- when you bleach, you almost always end up with orange undertones. My requirement was a kit with "ASH" in the name. Ash colors neutralize the orange undertones very nicely.

I found a pale ash blond, and picked it up. After sitting for 90 minutes, her hair was finally ready to be rinsed. I helped her rinse most of it out, then sent her into the shower with the instructions to wash & condition her hair twice after rinsing it through. It came out super soft, I was amazed! I've only bleached my hair twice- once was just high lights, the other time was an all over bleach at a salon. After the salon one, my hair was not soft. But, I had highly processed hair to begin with.

Once we were done with that, I applied the dye. Another 30 minutes, and she was done! Because the bleach left some darker streaks through out her hair, the dye kit came out looking natural, and high lighted. The blonde doesn't necessarily look natural on her, but the shade is a natural shade, with built in high lights now.

She loves it, though, so yay!

Before the dye- her hair was much more copper toned than it shows in these photos. The flash made her hair look a lot lighter than it actually was. Her dark roots were showing though:

After we put the bleach on- this was a process that took me 30 minutes. The bleach had to be checked every 30 minutes, and more added to sections that were not lightening as fast as other sections:

This was during the process, early on still. I was checking the bleach to see how it was doing. It's important to rinse as soon as it gets to the point where it can be dyed over top of, or as soon as it's the color you want, otherwise, you can seriously fry your hair:

These were taken after the bleaching process was done, but before the dye was added:

And last, but not least- the end product!