Tag Archives: hair color

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I Made a Redhead

Photos from my model yesterday:

Redhead dye hair color

See my earlier post for details on what the model came in with. I put on a level 6 red, with a liberal dose of pure red concentrator demi, and weaved some lowlights through the interior with a level 4 red/auburn.

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I Live in a Blue House With a Blue Window

So after lightening my hair a whole bunch (see I Am a Big Hypocrite), I dyed it blue. I used Special Effects dye, and so far it’s done a lot better than the other brands I’ve seen people use. It went on very intense, washed off my scalp really easily, and took a long time to start fading.

Here it is after I put it on:

Special Effects - Electric Blue

And after a two weeks-ish. I wash my hair almost every day, in hot water. (Why? BECAUSE I’M A REBEL!)

Special Effects - Electric Blue

Special Effects - Electric Blue

The color is still vibrant, though not as dark. There is a purple tinge to the top now, that only showed up after I washed my hair with Head & Shoulders instead of my usual Joico Reconstruct. (Why Head & Shoulders? I wanted to see what would happen – I hear people use it to help fade color, and it is very alkaline and harsh.)

I have no idea if this contributed to how well the color has lasted (through at least 10 shampoos so far!), but I tried to be a smartypants with the household items I had at hand: I washed my hair, towel dried it, then put Head & Shoulders on it and let it sit for 10 minutes. Figuring that since it’s very, very alkaline and would perhaps open up the cuticle a bit. Then I rinsed in hot water, towel dried, applied the color, put a bag on my head, and let it sit for a few hours. Then I rinsed and shampooed with my regular shampoo, which has a PH of 3.5 – below the 4.5/5.5 of hair’s natural PH value. Figuring maybe it would close the cuticle and hold some of the color, even though semi-permanent color doesn’t work in quite the same way as permanent. Whether or not this actually did anything I have no idea, I just felt like experimenting!

Another little experiment I did on my hair:

Special Effects - Electric Blue - Bleached

That’s a swatch of my hair after putting a powder bleach with 20 vol on for about 20-25 minutes. I was expecting it to look muddy, or faded, or blotchy, but it came out very nice! The scanner sucks the life out of the hair, in real life it was very shiny and a very pretty shade of blue/green.

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I Am a Big Hypocrite

I just bought some shampoo and conditioner from Superstore. *gasp*

But…but… CosmoProf was closed and I needed something ASAP! Curse the big brands for selling all their stuff in consumer stores!

Why did I need stuff? Well, my hair was in need of some serious conditioning… Here is what I looked like on Friday. About a level 3 or 4.

At A Robert Cromeans Salon

And today:

Blonde

Blonde

Bleach powder + extra blonding creme + 20 vol for 45 minutes, then a bit of 9n + 9.01 (ash) to tone. I looked like Brig Van Olsten’s long lost brother before the toner.

Going to go blue now, with Special Effects Electric Blue semi-perm. Should be interesting!

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Travesty

No, not that kind...

Today was a debacle of a debacle. A travesty!

A young girl came in (I’m guessing 16-ish), and she wanted the top half of her hair entirely blonde, and the bottom half dark brown. She had a natural level 7 color, on almost virgin hair. (A hint of highlights from 4 years ago were left at the tips)

She wanted it cut like scene girl hair, but with shorter layers on top. She had a picture, which of course showed only a girls face, with some of her fringe in the shot – but I knew the style she wanted. I told her it wouldn’t be exactly scene girl hair, because they usually have extensions, or just have a LOT of hair.

So, my formula was 5n for the dark bits, and 9.01 high light (01 is a hint of ash in our line) w/ 40vol for the blonde.

Enter Ms. I-Don’t-Know-Enough-To-Be-An-Instructor-Yet-I’m-Subbing-For-The-Instructor. She, through her own perceived mastery of hairdressing (and her age), starts changing things by leading my client (a confused teenage girl who’s communication skills were already a bit iffy) towards what the instructor liked. So my 5n goes to 5n + 5.43 (violet base).

The instructor leads her with more questioning, and changes the cut I was going to do from a very layered scene girl cut, to a long uniform cut.

Scene Girl / Emo Hair

So off to the color room for the color, and she’s nervous. After it’s all applied, the 5 I put in her nape is turning visibly purple and alarming the client. I tell her we’ll wait and see when we wash it out, the color solution can look different than the color it will put in your hair.  After 45 minutes, we wash the color out and the blond turned out great. The girl loved the blond, but as for the darker color: “It’s purple. I wanted brown. It’s purple. o.O”

Grrr.

Cut to a bit later, I’m halfway done the cut. I started with the perimeter to get the length, and then I just worked my way up one side of her head so I could show the girl what the cut I was doing would look like, since I knew it wasn’t what she wanted. And I was right (Grrr….), the hair from the apex of her head went all the way down to her chin. She wanted the topmost layer of hair to terminate between eye and nose level. So I start over and cut my way.

At this time, the salon is closing! All the staff are leaving, and my regular instructor comes back. She’s like “I’m soooo sorry I wasn’t here!” and helps me finish the client.

The girl left with something that looked ok, but was not what she wanted. Sigh. I feel like I should have done more. I did argue my point with the sub instructor (I’m not exactly timid when it comes to opinion… I got marked down on one of my practical exams for arguing with the instructor. lol), but she wasn’t having it. I know there’s nothing I really could have done, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

On a side note: That very same instructor, within the last month, turned a client’s hair green by changing another students formula to triple ash. Geez.

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Adventures in Coloring

A lady came in today with some seriously lightened hair. She had about an inch of regrowth, and her hair was about a natural 6 (on a 1-10 scale). Her lightened hair was this color:

Straw

Off the charts, and yellow tinged. She wanted lowlights to ease the transition while she grows her hair out (as she’s not going to continue to lighten her regrowth). I started from ear level and weaved horizontal highlights all the way up her head, right up to the top, and it looked great when it was done – but boy oh boy was I off in my original color formula!

Of course, the instructors look over your formulas on paper before you do anything, so it worked out in the end. Here’s what I thought would be best:

1/2 8N (8 natural, in our color line) + 1/2 8.01 (8 Soft Ash in our line) & 10 volume developer.

The instructors saw that and said that it would turn her hair green! I thought ash was what you use to counteract yellow, but apparently it’s more for reddish colours. I need to learn my color wheel better.

So what the instructors decided on was:

3/4 5N (5 natural) + 1/4 5.3 (5 Gold) & 10 volume.

Which is totally not what I would have thought of. Especially since the client didn’t like how yellow her hair was, I would have thought putting any kind of gold color in would be aweful! And a 5? Surely they’re mad!

But of course I kept my mouth shut and trusted they knew what they were doing. (And I do trust them, they’re quite good)

So after all the weaving, which took forever because I am so slow, we went to wash out the foils and I started freaking out a bit. (On the inside! The outside is always all smiles and “Hmm, everything is exactly how I expected. No surprises here! La-dee-da”)

It looked like halloween colours! Dark streaks of level 5 brown, light yellow streaks of her original hair! Oh no! Where my weaves too chunky? Where the instructors wrong about the color formula?

I hoped it just looked halloween-y because it was wet and brought her back to my station, and started drying her hair. As it dried the worries faded, because it looked surprisingly good. The lowlights weren’t actually big thick streaks, they were fairly natural looking, mild lowlights. It turned out ok! I was so surprised by the result, I would not have put a level 5 on her, or used anything yellow-based. But if I had put a level 8 on her it would have been invisible, judging by how light the level 5 looked. Just goes to show that the porosity and condition of the hair plays a huge role in coloring it.

It took a really long time (All afternoon…), but she left me a $10 tip. :D

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Cool Things I Learned Today

I was talking to the lady who runs the college I’m at, and she is a walking encyclopedia of hair stuff. I like her. She’s really into technical things, techniques, details, and doing everything perfectly. Just like me! (Except she can actually do everything perfectly haha)

And I learned some interesting things. For instance, compound henna dyes (I.E. henna + other chemicals or metallic salts, which are often not listed on the package of commercial henna dyes for hair) can react violently with peroxide. Someone who has henna with copper in it having something with peroxide in it applied to their hair, in a worst case scenario, could end up having their hair spontaneously boil, on their head. Lead will cause funky color changes, and silver will cause a greenish hue in the hair and make it not absorb things very well.

Crazy, huh?

Ps. Here’s a pic of me playing with the cool floating dryers in one of Robert Cromeans’ Salon, for no particular reason. I think I may have been about to sneeze or something. I hope my face isn’t like that all the time!

ARCS - A Robert Cromeans Salon