HAIR 101 - DIY Blonde highlights and lowlights at home.

Okay, so let me introduce you all to Nicole. Nicole is my bestest chummy everrrrr! Whenever Nicole needs her hair or makeup doing or advice she comes to me, whenever I need advice on clothes I go to her, were just like goddesses really... Let me give you all a little background to Nicoles hair, we've been doing her blonde for a good 2 years now so as you can imagine this was beginning to take its toll on her hair so we had to be super duper careful not to overprocess her hair. Anyways so me and her decided rather than going for the normal bland one colour all over, we were going to attempt to do highlights and lowlights ourselves, at home with no professional qualifications just knowledge i've acquired over time.

What did we use? 2 Sachets of Jerome Russel High Lift Powder Bleach RRP £4 .Volume 30 Peroxide (We used volume 30 because Nicoles hair has already been lightened and was blonde and we just wanted a few highlights, basically lighter bits running through it and to lighten the roots, we would have used a Volume 40 if all of her hair was the same colour as her re-growth but if we used a Volume 40 on her already pre-lightened hair it would have damaged it beyond repair) Also knowing that if we just done highlights Nicoles hair would have been all platinum blonde which wasn't what we wanted so we put some low-lights in to break it up which is basically some darker tones throughout her hair. For the lowlights we used a Garnier Nutrisse Box Dye, I can't remember what colour it was exactly but it was something like a Caramel 6.3 which was around £6 and hair foils, pintail comb.

                

I started off by sectioning Nicoles hair in half, straight down the middle, then split these sections in half sideways, and clipped it up, so now Nicoles hair's in 4 sections (I hope you're following along fine lol!) Concentrating on one strand of hair I sort of weaved the end of my pin-tail comb through the bottom of her hair. Like so...

(Heres a picture I got off of google images, I did smaller thinner pieces of hair on Nicole, same method)

I had the hair foil peice under this peice of hair, then I put the hair i've just weaved with the pintail comb onto the foil and applied the bleach, used a hair dying brush and applied the bleach to this hair, then folded up the foil so that the hair is inside of it and went on to the next section, I would do this bit with the low light (darker colour) and so on and so forth in whatever order I wanted, I sometimes did 3 lowlights to 1 highlight sometimes 3 highlights to one lowlight.. We wanted the hair to be pretty blonde on the top and around the back and sides so that when she tied her hair up it would be blonde so I put more highlights in these areas, it's all about personal preference. I'd say we left the bleach on for an hour maximum, it says to leave on for 60-90 minutes but because of the prelightened hair we were being careful and kept checking on the hair every 20 minutes.

                  (This is Nicoles hair before! I do wish we had some during, she was a foil head!)

 (This was Nicoles hair after, again i'm sorry for the bad picture we were in a rush and wasn't              even thinking of taking photos to put up here at that time and the hair was still wet) 

(This is Nicoles hair around a month and a half after we dyed her hair, as you can see her                                                       regrowth is starting to come through) 

If any of you were wondering, Nicole keeps her blonde locks looking fresh by using the Pro:Voke Touch of silver daily nourishing conditioner, which is available from boots for around £3 and Argan oil, also available from boots around £13

**** DISCLAIMER - I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL I AM ONLY TELLING YOU WHAT I HAVE LEARNT OVER THE YEARS FROM EXPERIENCE AND RESEARCH 

I'm going to do blog posts all about bleaching hair, maintaining blonde, maintaining red, hair disasters like your hair going bright ginger after bleaching, ect!

M
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ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - AUSSIE MIRACLE HAIR INSURANCE LIGHTWEIGHT CONDITIONING SPRAY

It goes without saying Aussie products are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, my favourite being the 3 minute miracle hair conditioner re constructors, I swear by them. They're affordable, work wonders and smell amazing.

The Aussie Miracle Hair Insurance lightweight conditioning spray for weak, distressed hair promises to protect and detangle "our special formula with a drop of Australian Jojoba seed oil detangles and helps you to protect your hair from everyday wear and tear" is basically a leave-in conditioner. This stuff smells gorgeous, it DOES help to detangle my hair and makes it easier to brush through and does give a little softness but whether it protects my hair, I'm not sure. I also have the Take the heat version of this which protects against heat damage which doesn't smell nowhere near as nice but I feel like it does the job in protecting against heat (Though in my eyes nothing can beat the Tresemme heat protectant spray). I was a little, (only a little!) disappointed in this just because I had such high expectations as all of the other Aussie products are brilliant!

                                   (Sorry for the really dodgy awful quality photos, lol!)

Both sprays by Aussie come in a standard plastic 250ml bottle with a spray pump. The product itself is long lasting, so far i've had mine 2 months or so I use them on a daily basis and it's more than 3/4 full! The sprays are around the £5 mark each, deals for 3 aussie products for £10 are on a lot in places like Asdas, Superdrug, Boots.

PROs-

• Price
• Smell
• Works to an extent

CONs-

• Doesn't live up to other Aussie product standards!

Have you used any Aussie products? What are your favs?
M
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MY HAIR NIGHTMARE!!!!

A month or two ago I was on a mission, to have red hair again but I wasn't ready to wait around and go about it the slow way, i wanted it NOW... baring in mind I had quite a lot of color build up and had previously bleached the front of my hair to have pink in it in August 2013.

I had brown hair now and I decided to set about going red by bleaching my hair and then putting the red on, BIG BIG BIG MISTAKE. I bleached my hair twice, my hair went bright ginger with the front where it was previously bleached going platinum blonde, it was patchy and I knew I couldn't put the red on this.  So i left it for a day and went out and brought a hair lightener, did an amazing job, I should have used this in the first place it would have done the job (Clairol Born Blonde hair lightener)  by now my hair had lost ALL of it's strength, moisture, everything, it was like elastic when it was wet. 

Now I put the red on, I used LIVE XXL REAL RED it was HORRIBLE it had an orange undertone, feeling how straw like my hair was I kept this for a good two weeks (it felt like a year!) I then dyed my hair with Garnier Nutrisse Ultra Color in Vibrant Red 5.62 , it was a gorgeous color and this dye didn't feel harsh on my hair atall. I decided, I needed to have a trim, my hair was growing out from a style where it was shorter on one side longer on the other.. I made a hair appointment for that weekend, my hairdresser trimmed up my hair and took loads of the damage off, it felt so much healthier. She recommended me products to buy, treatments to use and now i'm on the road to recovery, (I'm going to write a blog posts on what is working for me, what hasn't worked, reviews on loads of different hair products ect) 

As you all know red is a very hard color to keep up with so i'm using CRAZY COLOR to try and keep it decent looking, my regrowth is around 1.5 inches at the moment but i'm leaving it as long as I can to dye it probably when it's around 3 inches of regrowth, i'm thinking to dye it with MAJIROUGE in 6.66. 

My hair now at the front is so damaged it cannot take any dye and fades to a baby pink, my hairdresser has cut some of this hair into a fringe in attempt to get as much of the damage off as possible. I go back every few weeks to get this trimmed just to keep cutting away this damage so eventually it will all be gone. My hair is slowly on the road to recovery, if I could tell you all one thing from my experience it would be to GO EASY ON THE BLEACH, and try and avoid it at ALL costs!

**** I will try get some decent photos of my hair now and during the process and upload them to this!

Have any of you had any nightmare experiences with your hair?

M

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