How To: Change Hair Color With Minimal Bleaching

   I haven't made a beauty post in forever- mainly because I kind of have lost interest in the whole "beauty blogger" gig but this is pretty relevant I guess so I'm just going to proceed on.
   There's no doubt about it. My hair is damaged. Mainly from having an obsession with hair straightening that started off in 7th grade and has gone downhill from there but also partly from dyeing and bleaching my hair since the 5th grade. I had black hair for quite awhile which was a great lifesaver because it requires no bleach and also I barely ever had to re-dye it. Overall, a great decision and four month break. I of course got bored and basically destroyed all hair I had with excessive Ajax and baking soda treatments when the most efficient (and least damaging) thing was Color Oops. I then had an unfortunate incident with trying to go blonde and bleaching my hair three times in one day (REALLY bad idea) just to go back to black. Later on, I color oopsed one half of my hair and went Ash Costello using Adore Truly Red and Kaleidocolors bleach (it was an absolutely disgusting color and consistency- it also didn't work awesome and is about the same price as Clairol which is A+)

I basically had a constant soundtrack of "Death Of The Party" playing where ever I went

It overall didn't kill my hair but definitely wasn't great for it. The red faded quickly though (I also couldn't wear any color aside from black with it) so I ended up color oops-ing the rest of my hair and also bleaching to go to a purplish-pink (using Adore Violet Gem mixed with a bit of Adore Pink Rose).

I've always wanted to do a half and half and Harper (the scene queen who dyes my hair) was leaving for camp soon so I took the opportunity and went half blue half pink because it reminded me of cotton candy. That is currently the hair I have on my head!!

Though one of my biggest problems with hair dye is fading incredibly fast (ex: my purple hair earlier in the year) but to get the blue in and the purple on one side out, this was quite the opposite. I tried about everything- Vitamin C (crush up tablets, mix them up with Head and Shoulders, put on hair and let soak), Over-washing with hot water and Head and Shoulders shampoo, and the worst of all, baking soda (NEVER do it- this treatment does just about the same damage as bleaching and by then it's just worth it to resort to bleach). It wasn't coming out. The purple had faded to kind of an orange tinted purple shade but it definitely wasn't enough to dye blue over and at that point, I was way too over excited for this color and didn't want to wait and do more treatments over the next month (if your hair is completely fried, just keep washing with Head and Shoulders and hot water and you'll be good in a few weeks) and I have a little bit of life left in my hair so I resorted to the bleach bath. 

NOTE: a bleach bath is really the last resort- you don't want to do it unless you really can't wait like me or it REALLY isn't coming out (this mainly applies to darker blues) 

A bleach bath isn't nearly as scary as it sounds- yes it will damage your hair because that's what bleach does but won't hurt it as much as a regular bleach process will. Basically, what you do is take any shampoo you've got (I recommend Head and Shoulders) and mix it with about a packet of bleach (I've got short hair but a TON of it and one worked just fine on me) and developer (really doesn't matter what volume- I used 40 because I'm an idiot and that's all I had)- there's no real ratio. Whatever feels right I guess. Then, apply to hair as you would with regular bleach. I mainly focused on the side I wanted to do blue but since I had some mixture left over and wanted to go a lighter pink, I put a bit of it on the other side too. 

Even though I used to bleach my hair and used to have blonde bits all the time when I was younger, my locks are basically done with me at this point, their big "fuck you" to me is to never get to a decent blonde. This was surprisingly the only time in months I've gotten a good blonde!! This picture was taken because Sam thought the horrible bleach job on the pink side of my head was really funny but look how actually blonde it is!!

Since I was really worried about horrible damage on my hair (I'd bleached it fully a couple weeks before), I used two Not Your Mother's Intensive Hair Renewal Treatment packets I'd gotten from Ricky's the day before. Though my hair didn't feel better than before I'd done the bleach, it definitely wasn't as disgusting and unbearable to touch as last time. After letting my hair dry (no heat!!), Harper applied Adore Pink Rose on one side and Adore Baby Blue on the other. The final product was this cute thing:

I'm super duper happy to finally have half and half hair and feel like the emo Melanie Martinez. I'm real excited for it to start to fade and look a little more pastel-y- I've had it for a little over a week now and have taken around three showers using room temperature water and the blue has turned slightly teal which is pretty cool. Overall, I'm #livin #lovin life and my mom is questioning wether or not she wants to be seen in public with me.