By Tindara
Readers, I’m having a mid life
crisis. As I write this there is a glinting sheaf of pink visible at
the base of my Sunday morning top knot. Yes, in an effort to stave
off middle-aged boredom I have dip-dyed my hair pink, and it took
some doing. I have very dark hair, with little white or grey. Very
lucky at 43, you might say, but since my somewhat failed teen
experiments with bleaching, dyeing and straightening, I had resigned
myself to my natural black-brown frizzy curls. Until earlier this
year, when I started getting Keratin treatments on my hair.
Now I don’t love poker straight hair
at all, like most people these days I favour a natural looking wave
and after a week or two this is exactly how my keratin treated hair
behaves. There is less body, definitely, but it has a nice shiny easy
wave to it. And even better, I don’t really have to do anything to
it except comb it and put a tiny blob of serum on it every few days.
So far, so easy. But then I kept seeing people with great colours on
their hair, marshmallow and pomegranate and mermaid blues and minty
greens. A close friend dip-dyed her blond bob deep pink and purples
and I was introduced to Bleach London by a friend on a forum. So pretty soon, I was dreaming of rainbow tresses, mermaid
stripes, blue tips, pink and apricot waves, I wanted pastel colour,
dammit.
I was due to have a keratin treatment
in a few weeks and had done some research and knew I had to bleach
and dye before the treatment. When I bleached my hair, I realised
that pastel was going to be a bit of a task. I used Bleach London’s
DIY dip dye kit. It was really easy to use, I recommend it, the
blending lotion that you apply before the bleach really helped get a
gradual effect from lighter to dark. Since my hair is so dark
though, my first attempt made the ends a lovely auburn. This look
great on it’s own, but it didn’t satisfy my need for bright
colour. And when I put Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL Purple Punk over
the auburn, it turned the ends a bright but deep cherry red, which
was lovely but not exactly what I wanted.
After a couple of weeks letting my hair
rest, I used another Bleach London kit to bleach the ends again. They
turned out slightly brassy and wouldn’t really take a pastel dye; I
tried Bleach London’s Rose and it just went from candyfloss pink to
light orange within a few hours. So I chose Schwarzkopf Live Color
XXL Shocking Pink to go over the top. Hey presto, proper bright pink
ends. Probably, too soon, I had my usual keratin treatment with
Alterity Studio in Covent Garden, and now I have straight hair with
pink ends. My dip-dyed ends are now soft and shiny, and considering
how worried I was that my hair might break after all the bleaching
and dyeing, I think it looks pretty good. Not the neatest dip dye in
the world but good.
I will continue to use a deeper colour
while this keratin treatment wears off as bleaching can remove the
effect of the keratin, I understand. I was also told by the lovely
Carmen at Alterity Studio that it’s not recommended to dye your
hair within two weeks of a keratin treatment either, so be warned, if
you’re going to get some colour in your life. I may head to Bleach
London and get something more pastel done before my next keratin
treatment. If you want to see the results follow @Tindara
on Twitter or @tindaras
on Instagram.
Bleach London DIY Dip Dye
is £7 and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL is £4.
This post: In the Pink – with Bleach LondonDIY Dip Dye and Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
