Platinum to Red in a Weekend

This weekend I undertook going from platinum to being a ginger.  My hair was just getting too nasty from the bleach and I felt it was time for a change since work got on my ass and decided I needed to be in the "natural color spectrum" and the main reason for me going platinum was so that I could dye it crazy colors.

 This is me, blonde:

I quite liked the platinum blonde.  Upkeep was a bitch, as my hair is tenacious. Every week sometimes, I'd notice quarter inch roots. Sometimes, I got away with every two weeks, and sometimes, three, but by the third week it looked pretty damn awful.

The first dye I used was Loreal Excellence Creme in 8 RB Reddish Blonde.  I think it cost around $8.

I mixed it with Colorful Protein Treatment in #10 Red Red to try and let the color have somewhere to grab, and also, because ginger plus white is going to be lighter than the box result since color is cumulative and my hair was so very pale. Plus, my natural color (should it ever be seen again) is medium brown. To get from platinum to brown, yellow, red and blue tones must be introduced. Basically to replace all the tones I stripped from my hair to get to platinum...color is bleaching in reverse. The protein filler cost around $5 at Sally Beauty.

I liked the result, under inside artificial light:

 Unfortunately, outside, it looked worse than this last photo which was Super Ginger. It was barf orangey peach. Not at all attractive. At least not on me.  Plus would be a no no at work considering it was not really a color I've ever seen in nature.

I had bought two boxes of it, so I even tried a second dye job thinking perhaps the pigment just didn't properly stick to my hair after two years of bleach. Uh, no. It did not work.

So, luckily for me, after MUCH internet research before I even started, I had bought three OTHER shades of red in varying tones.  Since my hair was so peachy, I selected Ion Color Brilliance Light Burgundy Blonde.
Thinking that because burgundy is a blue based tone, and blue is the OPPOSITE of orange on the color wheel, it should cancel out the orange. (That's basically what toner does to get to platinum, too. Purple/blue tones create that ice blond if it came out too yellow/orange.)

While this is NOT a box kit, it IS simple to use. You mix the tube of color with 10 vol developer. I had 20 vol, but if you water it down by half, you get 10 vol. Simple math even I can do! And basically follow the instructions depending on what result is needed. I was going DARKER so the instructions told me to leave in on for 25 minutes. I didn't like the super perfumey smell of it, but hey, the results are what are important, right?  The box I bought was a creme, not the liquid in this photo. I prefer creme colors as they are less drippy, but to each their own. Same color, different format.  The box plus the developer probably cost about $10. So STILL super inexpensive.

Again, color is CUMULATIVE. So I was going from about a level 10 blonde to a level 8 red, thinking I can always easily go DARKER. As someone who draws, its always much simpler to go darker gradually than to go too dark and try to correct that. Dye works exactly like that.  Then from the level 8 yucky peach result, I went bluer, and down to a level 6 red. Got that?

Home hair dye is not for the faint of heart. If you have any doubt, go to a salon.


Result of light burgundy blonde:


This first one was in the bathroom light. Super Red. Love it, though. 

 Since the outside lighting test was so yucky with the other dye, I went outside to test this result. Yep, still love it.

 A color found in nature!

Pictures are probably a bit scary. I had showered twice in the last hour and a half, was not really amused, and am definitely NOT wearing makeup. Which I rarely do, but I like the look of, like in the blonde photo, above.

And because I LOVED my mad purple hair:

Someday, when I am otherwise employed, I will meet this hair again :)