Color Crazy

Women are nuts. I'm just putting that out there. I've had 3 color clients in the last 2 weeks, and they were big ones! 


Color case #1 was this nice girl. She wanted 3 different colors in her hair: a warm brown (her natural color), with blonde highlights, and copper lowlights. I've never done all that at one time - so I learned fast! ;)


First, I mixed up 2 hair colors: bleach for the highlights, and copper for the lowlights. Remember when we learned how to foil an entire head? That was my next step. I would add bleach to 1 foil of hair, leave a small section of hair out, then add copper to the next foil, and leave another small section of hair out. I did this over her entire head, VERY careful not to forget which color I had just applied. That only took 40 minutes (I've gotten fast, apparently). After that was completed, I ran back and mixed up the warm brown color. This was the messy part - I had to lift up every foil, and coat the hair that had been left out...I had color everywhere. So basically, her entire head went like this: foil of bleach, brown color, foil of copper, brown color....then she had to process for 30 min. Next we rinsed, and styled her up. It was a crazy head of hair, but she LOVED it - it was just what she wanted, and I did it just right.


Here she is before: faded dark blonde color





And here she is after!!! (It's hard to see, but there are pops of light blonde and beautiful copper all over her head.


   


Color case #2 was a doozy! A girl with thick, coarse hair, down to her low-back had used box color at home, to go black (she's naturally brown). She decided she didn't like the black, so she used box color a month later, to attempt to go back to her brown color...here's the thing about box color: you cannot lighten hair with box color, after you've darkened it...SO, her roots turned brown (because her roots had not had box color on them) and the rest of her hair remained black (she came in with a hat on) ;) 


Step one was using Color Erase - it's a crazy-damaging chemical that strips artificial color from hair, to get you back to where you were. Works 95% of the time. Did NOT work with this girl. Ugh. So, we had to apply bleach - also crazy-damaging to hair. The bleach took FOREVER to pull all that color from her hair, but it came off. The thing with bleach, is that it doesn't stop pulling when it gets to your natural color. I had to stand there and watch her hair change from black to red to orange to yellow....(which is actually kinda cool), next we rinsed it all out, and toned it with the shade of brown she was going for. It turned out really nice, and the girl certainly learned her lesson about box color! ;) $90 and 4 1/2 hours later, I can only hope she leaves her hair alone for a while, and lets it repair itself! :(


Color case #3 was on Saturday. A girl came in with a deeper brown color on her hair and she wanted to go white-blonde. Ugh. She wanted to lighten her hair 6 shades - that's nuts. We colored her hair 7 months ago, so we couldn't just go in with color stripper or bleach....we had to mix and match, based on where her roots had grown out to, and where her artificial color started. My instructor helped me apply 3 different levels of bleach to her hair: roots, mid-shaft, and ends. We worked together, so we could get done faster, and the bleach wouldn't lighten sections of her hair too fast. Her hair was stubborn - she ended up processing for 20 minutes in the chair, plus 15 under the heat of a dryer, just to get it where we wanted it. After that, we spent another 20 minutes in the shampoo bowl, doing a bleach-wash, on the stubborn sections of hair that hadn't taken to the bleach. Next we toned her to get rid of the banana-yellow that ended up in her hair, from the bleach pulling out all her other tones. The thing with toner, is that you have to sit there and watch it, and rinse as soon as it's the color it should be, otherwise you have to start over. It took 30 minutes of toning and rinsing different sections of her hair, but this 18 year old ended up with beautiful white-blonde hair, with streaks of light brown and copper (that we couldn't get rid of) but it all looked really pretty. 3 1/2 hours later, she was happily-damaged, $65 poorer, and went on her way.


Women are nuts. See what I mean?

We had a family wedding last weekend, so my kiddos had to look presentable... My #2 got a curly do with some pinned back sections on one side


My #1 got a 60's inspired flip, that turned out completely adorable!