Pastel Blue, Green, Pink, and Purple Opal Galaxy Hair

Hey, all!

So, I changed my hair. I’ve been rocking various shades of pink for a few months now and loving every second of it. Dyed hair is incredible. I adore being able to essentially wear my crazy, bright, artsy personality on my head.

I’ve been wanting to go blue for a while. It started with listening to a friend talk about his once-incredible blue do and intensified when my brothers (see www.edventureproject.com) set off on an epic sailing adventure and started posting mind-blowing water photos. I started researching. I spent way too long looking at ocean photos on Pinterest. Ocean photos evolved to photos of girls flipping their blue hair around and looking way too excited about it. After a week of deliberation, I knew. It was time to go blue.

The photo that ultimately inspired my hair colour:

But could I? I mean, blue is a big transition from pink. And from what I’d read, pink sticks to your hair fiercely. I did some research, shrugged, and decided to give it a shot.

I do my hair myself. Sometimes it’s amazing (and it certainly helps the bank account) and sometimes it’s a disaster. There’s a learning curve, for sure. My first bleach-dye process was quite the adventure. I’d thought that I’d made a horrible, horrible mistake. It turned out ok in the end, though.

And of course, the first time I dyed my hair (no bleach), I ended up dyeing my entire body purple. Read the story here.

This time around, it wasn’t quite so bad. Because I’ve bleached my hair before and touch up the roots regularly, stripping the pink dye out was very damaging. I did my best to keep the damage down by fading out the colour as much as I could first. I took hot showers, did the Vitamin C treatment that’s supposed to work colour-stripping miracles (I can testify that it doesn’t do much), and used dandruff shampoo. At the same time, I made an extra effort to get my hair in great shape by spending a bit of extra time on conditioning treatments, protein repair treatments, and hair masks.

Unfortunately, the dye I use is absolutely incredible and will last for months without fading more than a little bit. Plus, my hair had been a dark pink. The stripping process didn’t take me far enough on its own. I had to go for bleach. Ack. I have to say, this was not a good moment for my hair. It came out of the bleaching session dry and angry at me. Worst of all, it was still pretty vibrantly pink, and I looked like a peachy Draco Malfoy. I sat with a repairing treatment in my hair and thought over my next step. Either I could bleach again to get out the pink (a terrible idea at that point) or I could dye over my hair and hope for the best. I was going for a pink – blue mix anyway. I went for the dye.

Dyeing short hair is insanely easy. I could do it alone. I wasn’t slinging dye to all four corners of the bathroom. I used a third of the product I would have a month ago. Doing my roots and separating the hair into segments was easy and achieving a layered look was a piece of cake. If you’re thinking of doing this on your own at home, short hair is key. Maintaining the look is going to be so much cheaper and easier with this new haircut. Check out the final result: