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All About My New Hair

I have always been quite adventurous with my hair when I was younger, especially in my early teens getting my hair dyed or highlighted quite often. Coming into my late teens and 20's I just left my hair alone so it could become healthy again, and until now it was the first time my whole head had been its natural colour since I was around 10 years old! But, in true style, it wasn't long before I got bored. So I did a thing...

Yes, that is purple you see! Let me give you a bit of background and then I will talk about the process of getting it done. So when I got bored of my natural hair colour, I casually stumbled upon an Instagram post with hair very similar to this, and I just knew that I wanted something similar. Timing for it wasn't great though; I had a bunch of awards nights, 2 holidays where my hair would just get damaged, my graduation, and I was skint! So I have been patient for a good 6 months, and at the end of October I decided I was ready for a trim. But then I found an opportunity; for university I decided to take part in a fundraising event throughout November called One Month One Colour. This means for the entirety of November I would have to wear the same colour every day. So I chose the colour purple and made it my mission to wear purple every day throughout November for St Oswald's Hospice. It soon became apparent that I didn't own many purple clothes, so I embraced the opportunity to finally get my hair dyed purple! So I made an appointment with my local hairdresser back home, who I have been to since I was 14, to get a cut, blow dry and a half head of dye!

Before getting to the hair dressers, I sent the Instagram photo over to my hairdresser so she could get a rough idea of what I wanted before hand and so she could order the hair dyes into the store. When I arrived to my appointment, before she even touched how hair we had a consultation about exactly what she would be doing to my hair, how I would maintain it after the appointment and then exactly what colour I would be getting. Firstly, because my natural hair colour is fairly dark, I needed to have the colour lifted off my hair with a bleach. Because I already had layers in my hair, we decided to only lift colour off the bottom layer of hair so that the top layers would still be my natural colour and then fall nicely onto my new colour which would make it look more blended. I had the bleach put on my hair for about 20-30 minutes as my hair reacted to it straight away, so when that was rinsed out it unveiled a dark blonde colour. While my hair was then still damp we moved onto applying the colour.

The dyes we used were the Directions Hair Colour pots by LaRiche which specialise in crazy colour. It took me a while to get my desired colour as we did alot of pre-mixing swatches as the colour I wanted wasn't available as a single shade. In the end we mixed together the colours Midnight Blue, Tulip and either Violet or Plum (they were both so similar I can't quite remember). Then she simply put the mixed dyes on her hands and rubbed them through my hair and left them for half an hour.

After I had my hair rinsed I was so happy with the results! It was exactly what I wanted and more! I was so glad I went to get this done properly, if I had done it myself I wouldn't have been able to do it anywhere near as good as my stylist did or get the advice I was given regarding taking care of it. Because the Directions hair colour is only a semi-permanent hair stain, unfortunately my colour won't last forever. I have been advised to not wash my hair as regularly as I do usually, using dry shampoo instead to try and maintain its colour, although when I do need it washed to use a colour protecting shampoo and conditioner. Even so, when the colour does fade, I will be left with blonde from where my hair was bleached; the world is my oyster when it gets to this stage! If I really wanted to I could apply a totally different colour to the blonde in my hair (the Directions Alpine Green is calling my name) or to just use a regular brown hair dye on my whole head if I wanted to go back to being 'natural'.

Overall, I am so happy with the way that my hair turned out, especially because it has fallen in time with my charity event that I am doing. If you were looking to do something similar to your hair then I would 100% recommend getting your hairdresser or an experienced stylist to do it for you, especially if you need your hair bleached first. I'm so happy with the way it turned out, I want to say a special thank you to Becky from Image Hairdressers for her hard work! I can't wait until I find an excuse to curl my hair and see what it looks like then!

What do you think of my new hair? Let me know in the comments or Tweet Me @Elisa_A__
Elisa :-) x

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