Glitz Glamour and Grunge: Orange is the new black!!!

So I'm one of those people who gets bored really easily, especially when it comes to my hair. I have literally been around the colour wheel and back again so many times. I want pastel hair so badly but last time I had platinum hair I ended up nearly bald so I thought I'd make a compromise and try for an orange shade, which is a colour I've only very briefly had before. I also thought going from black this is probably the colour it would achieve as soon as bleach touched it anyway. I was wrong, I tried to strip it and bleach it a couple of months back and it didn't touch it. I went to a salon and after doing a strand test they refused to touch it. So I was left with no option but to do it myself. I don't have pictures of all the stages unfortunately as I wasn't planning on doing a post on it, but here's a step by step guide of what I did.

I tried colour removers again a couple of times on the lower half of my hair a month or so ago and although it was starting to do something the results weren't as good as I'd hoped. I gave it a couple of weeks rest then decided the only way was bleach!! I wouldn't recommend doing this from black as quickly as I did, unless you have strong or thick hair. Surprisingly I must have better hair than I thought to say it's so thin, as its not too damaged. Also be prepared to have to have a couple of inches cut off.

I was originally going to try to just get to a brown shade and gradually lighten it, but the first bleach took better than I thought, the colour removers must've helped this. It went quite gingery in places so seeing results and me being me I got impatient and decided to bleach it again and try and achieve the orange shade I wanted. I only did the lower half of my hair when I bleached it as I knew the roots and top would take a lot quicker and I wanted to try and make it as even as possible. I did a third bleach but did the top for the last 15 minutes. It went immediately yellow on my roots and looked so patchy.

I knew the roots would be alot brighter so I did a root touch up with a light ash brown as I was dying my mums hair at the same time and had some spare, so put that on for 10 minutes just to try and tone it down a bit. I thought that putting a copper dye on would maybe even it out but after using a superdrug homebrand copper dye it was still really patchy.

After 8 hours of doing my hair I left it for the day, then in the morning I did one last lot of bleach but only on the darker areas. It did help a little but still needed more work. I thought I'd give it a little rest till the next day then I put on an ash blonde to try and even it out, as I have used that before when going from red to blonde and it worked really well. But to be honest I don't think it made much difference this time, it might have been better to try it before I put the copper on. All it did was make it a more gingery shade rather than copper and it actually made it feel more dry. Finally I put on 'Garnier olia intense copper' it did go a nice coppery colour but was still really patchy and my roots and top of my hair were still brighter than the bottom. I got it cut that day to try and avoid my hair splitting and to get rid of as much of the dryness as possible and it did feel a lot better afterwards.

My hair has took so differently that I think it's going to take a while to even it out which is quite annoying, especially as I'm so impatient. I got a couple of boxes of semi permanent 'live colour xxl fiery copper' it only lasts 6-8 washes but I have been putting a bit in a conditioning treatment and leaving that on for a couple of minutes every time I wash it to try and brighten it up, as it has faded quite a lot in some places. I've gave it a couple of weeks then used a whole box of the live colour at the weekend, I only left it on for 20 minutes as it looked so red on my head. But when I washed it out it had just brightened it up a bit and is actually closer to the colour I'm after, although the top is even brighter than the rest now. As this is only semi-permanent it will probably fade out really quickly but it worked well to freshen it up and is not damaging.

I'm not going to lie it's been a really stressful process and I'm not happy with the colour yet, it's still very uneven and patchy but it's getting there and I'm hoping I'll get there eventually. I've done a lot of research and asked a lot of people with the colour I want how they achieved it so I'm hoping it will work next time. I'm going to give it a couple more weeks then give it another go as I've got slamdunk and my birthday coming up so would love to have the right colour for those events.

So I've blabbered on far too much about my hair but if you're thinking of going from a dark colour to this kind of shade I hope it's helped. But I'll do a quick outfit post to go with this as I took these photos just after I'd used the xxl live colour so this is what my hair looks like right now. I was having a lazy day so have gone casual with my denim dungaree dress and a tartan crop top. I've kept it simple with my 'A' necklace, tassel backpack, white socks and Bethans, totally getting school girl vibes from this outfit! Finishing off the look with some of my fave sunglasses.