The Journey to Teal Hair

When I lost my job, I thought I would have so much more time to blog and take pictures and practice makeup. What I didn't realize was that I would lose the motivation to do these things.
I found myself in a bit of a funk.

I decided the best way to get myself out of it was to do something I have been wanting to do for as long as I can remember- dye my hair a fun color.

I have always been attracted to fun colors but always shied away due to practicality (of having/finding a job). But I decided to just go for it in this time between jobs, telling myself I would be totally fine with dying it all dark if a job opportunity came along.

I didn't expect to fall so hard in love. Now, I'm really hoping to find a job that will accept my hair!

So let's start with the before pictures. I had my hair done in January and I absolutely loved it. (fresh hair can be seen in the sidebar picture) It was bleach blonde with red underneath and red through my bangs. I really did love it but I didn't love the price. I kept putting off getting it touched up and then money was tight so I simply didn't have the money for the upkeep.

So my hair ended up looking like this:

And this picture is actually a little old. Turns out, when your hair looks like crap, you don't take many pictures that show it off!

I thought I would just grab some dye and throw it on myself, not having any expectations or care if I messed it up. Luckily, my friend Natalie who is a hairstylist stepped in and stopped me from wrecking my hair. She offered to do it for me! So together we started the journey.
This is what we started with:

**FYI many of these pictures have been edited (blurred) for privacy reasons. You can laugh, I'm not a damn photoshop pro**

Here is the beauty from the back. This shows off my glorious (and greasy at the time so be nice) roots, my bleach blonde mid section, and my faded red brown underneath.

So to begin we bleached the hair that needed it

We were trying to damage it as least as possible so we did not leave the bleach on for long. We also wanted some dimension so. This is the middle ground we got!

Also it's not fair of me to say "we". Like I literally did nothing but sit there. But I digress.

We were shooting roughly for a teal color I had seen online, so we got Pravana Vivids colors in blue and green. We kept them separate and we also mixed them together.

We also took a lot of precautions with trash bags EVERYWHERE. It looked like a scene from Dexter, honestly.

Once the dye started going on I was so excited! There was no turning back now.

My brilliant innovation to contain the dye and foils. Can you tell I'm excited?

Finally, we rinsed it out.

We discovered that my hair REALLY liked blue, but not so much green. The green at my roots had a hard time sticking but more than that, Natalie's fears were confirmed about the underneath of my hair.
You see, the color wheel is a real thing. So the green hair dye and the red hair really just neutralized to a lovely brown color.
Obviously not what we were going for. So, we gave it another go! (after a day to give my hairz a brief rest)

I should note that my hair was not damaged at this point, as we did not leave the dyes in for very long and my hair was fairly healthy when we started.

This picture gives you a better view of how BLUE some of my hair was (the parts that were blonde before) and how the bottom was a muddy brown.

We ended up putting some more bleach on the bottom parts to lighten it up to take the color better.

So! Take 2! Isn't that a lovely color?

AAAAAANNNNDD.....

and voila! a more awesome color over all.

Here is a shot from the back! Much more vibrant :)

So as you can see the top is a much better shade of teal/green. There are still pieces of straight up blue but its not as much as before. And finally the underneath is a teal green shade.

Indoor lighting

Here is a before (after take 1) and after- after take 2. You can see the difference in the roots and bottom.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty obsessed!

The first few days, I couldn't stop looking in the mirror and taking pictures of myself. It was a problem.

So, what do you think? I love it!

And one more gem that I couldn't resist including: my beloved cat deciding my face was a pillow:

So let's chat! Have you ever had "fun" colored hair?! I know the more alternative colors aren't for everyone. But I think they are so fun and look good on everyone! What color would you dye your hair if you had no outside pressures?