As bright as a bright thing

So a few days ago, I decided I was going to dye my hair!

It's all Zaz's fault really; she's a woman with long dreadlocks from a website called Dreadlock Truth. Her locks are waist length and - due to her fascination with mermaids - she recently dyed her hair green. It looks A-MAZ-ING!

I knew I didn't want mine all one colour though and on a recent shopping trip to Southampton with Alex; I found what I was looking for!

So I roped Vicky (Matt's girlfriend - she started a Hair & Beauty course in September) in to help and we started off by dumping a load of bleach in my hair.

I will admit; I was absolutely terrified! I've put a lot of work into my dreads - I love them, they are getting solid and feel more dreadlockish. What if my hair all fell out, or the dye looked really shit? What if the bleaching process made my locs break? What if it set my scalp psoriasis off?

We sat and we waited and waited. After half an hour, I went and rinsed. A lot of the hair was still quite dark, but seemed to have survived intact. We decided to apply another load of bleach and wait another half an hour.

When I rinsed, this is what I got!

I duly posted a pic on twitter - some loved it, Claire hated it LOL

The next bit was going to be a bit more tricky as I was going to be applying 2 different colours and couldn't just slap it on as I was used to.

We started off by applying the colour to the roots - almost immediately it became obvious that this colour wasn't going to go very far and I started to panic - I didn't want a whole load of blonde hair underneath.

Then I remembered some dye I bought years and years ago and had never gotten around to trying.

When colour number 1 ran out, we added colour number 2 to the ends of the locks that had been partially dyed with colour number 1.

Once colour number 2 ran out we blanket dyed the remaining locs with the ancient dye I'd stashed in my bedroom - we had just enough!

I sat around with all that foil on my head, too scared to move in case something broke and all my hair fell out.

Vicky was exhausted and went to bed and I was left to sit and worry on my own - well, the teen boys were there, but you know what they're like!!

I waited about 40 minutes then went next door to use Mum's shower - no, I still haven't had an electrician in to wire up my fancy bath so I can get the shower attached!

I didn't look in the mirror until after I got out, but from the amount of colour that ran down my body - I knew it was going to be bright.

I had decided to hop into the shower and do it that way as colour 1 was a lot lighter than the other colours and I didn't want any bleeding effect going on.

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for colour 3 to do what it did!

So, first off, let me show you my hair!

Bright, isn't it?

Personally, I love it!!

Unfortunately, Mum's shower has now been stained blue - I used loads of cleaner on it and still couldn't get it back to white.

Then I saw my back - it was blue too. I could've cried!

I called Alex in and we scrubbed at it until we got most of it off. I got the hairdryer on my locs (it was gone 1am by this point) and dried them off.

Then I went to bed.

When I got up the next morning, the first thing I noticed was that my neck was blue again!

I couldn't believe it! I scrubbed again, I tried toothpaste, eye make up remover, handwash, perfume and T-Gel - I ended up with little more than a sore blue neck :(

We've come to the conclusion that this stuff is just going to leech onto my skin until it settles down, unfortunately this means I can't actually wear my hair down to show off the dye!

The first two colours - Flamingo Pink and Indigo Violet by Directions - are absolutely fine and I have had no problems with them at all. It's the Blue Velvet by Special Effects (the really dark bits) that's causing all the problems!

I'm going to go and wash it again in a minute then give it a good rinse in cold water with a bit of vinegar in to see if that helps at all.

Well....it works on fibre!