red advice

so so so, i think i will dye my hair rreedddddd, and i think for my birthday ill ask for some special colour keeping shampoo...or something.

Some important things i picked out today about dyed red hair (some are totally obvious, but ill add them anyway):

• you need to have your hair at LEAST one shade lighter for the red to take and not go a horrid colour

• if your hair isn't naturally light, you WILL need a pre lightener to strip the pigment out.. i found this out on here. REALLY useful site for advice on bleaching hair...from a real person, not a money grabbing salon :) (i do agree sometimes you should go to a professional, but sometimes at £40 - £200 a time, thats just not an option)

• if your hair goes wrong the first time, DO NOT just dye it again straight away, surely common sense will tell you that the more non natural stuff you stick in your hair, the worse it will get?? do some research, and put a leave in conditioner in whilst you look into what you should next
  

• red is by far the most difficult pigment to keep in and ultimately you will have to dye it more frequently if you want it to remain as vibrant. To help you can use products specially formulated for red hair because they disperse a small amount of red pigment to your hair and also contain less stripping agents that volumising shampoos. You can also use baby shampoo as the detergent level in it is very minimal unlike volumizing or clarifying formulas which have loads of alcohol in them to dry up the root so that the cutical of the hair shaft is roughed up and looks more voluminous. Keep conditioning locks and use leave in conditioner with a UV protector in it which will keep the sun's rays from fading your locks.

• I am sure what happened when you initially first dyed your hair was that you put it all over your head and waited for the dye to develop? This is what would leave your ends darker than the top of your hair. A trick I learned is if you are lightening your hair anything over 2 shades always apply the hair colour to the ends first, away from your scalp let that delvelop for about 10-15 minutes and then spread the remainder through your roots and leave that in for 15 min. (developing time 25-30 min) I will tell you why, the heat from your scalp speeds up the developing process thus speeding up how fast your hair lightens thats where a lot of people go wrong when doing hair on their own for the first time. Also, virgin hair that's never been dyed will pick up colour a lot quicker. When you apply the colour to the ends first if gives them a head start to lighten and will end up matching beautifully once you rinse.

• choose a red that suits your skin, i.e warm or cool colours etc..check what will go with your skin tone.

so, red it is!!! pre lightener soon and then red, i used to use this stuff..

not sure if ill try something different this time?? hmmmmm...this stuff fades quite quickly, so i could just put different colours on top if i want a change. yes. :) can't wait.

RECLAMATION OF MY MIND, SOUL AND BODY.

xxxx