Making my own ashy toner

[Cederin]

So, the thing is I am on the project of getting back to my natural colour which is very light, ashy blonde. :)
Currently my hair is darker and more red/brassy than it should be, and I'm going to let my hairdresser do one more bleach on me.
The problem is, I think that my hair will go very yellow in colour after that, and conventional ashy toners seems to be too mild in pigments to cancel out the brassiness in my hair. (I tried it on my roots where it's already very light)

Therefore I ordered some semi-dye from Directions in the shade Violet. I believe that the purple pigments can neutralize the yellows, I saw someone here on LHC that did the same thing, I think :) Even Directions themselves have one toner called "white toner" to remove red and yellows, which is basically just a little purple diluted, but way more expensive if you compare. The plan I have now is to dilute the violet toner with some cone-free conditioner so there's just a little purple left to do it's job. Of course I will strand test first.

But, does this sound like a good plan? Any experiences of diluting semi-dyes just for cancelling out other pigments?

[Scarlet_Heart]

I love this idea and I will be following your progress to see how it goes. My hair is a medium ash brown and I'm kicking myself for messing with it. I started growing out henna and had my lighter brown on top and dark, dark red on the bottom. So I did a demi perm color in medium brown to even it out. It did, but now it's a dark brown all over with reddish tint at the bottom. I would love to get it more of an ash like my natural color so if this works for you I'd love to try it.

Good luck! Keep us updated!

[divinedobbie]

Here is a thread you might be interested in reading:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=115585&highlight=manic+panic

[Cederin]

Scarlet_Heart, I promise to keep this tread updated! :) I think I will do my bleaching some time this week, and then we'll see when the dye arrives! It's very exciting! :D

divinedobbie, Oh yeah, that's the thread I saw before! :) I think I got the idea and inspiration after reading that. The only thing is that it's a slightly different dye she is using, I believe mine is more purple than the one being used there. It will be fun to see if I get similar results with this one ^^ After all her hair colour is very alike my own natural!

[SkyChild]

Yes, this should work. I did similar making my own red conditioner with a red semi-dye in conditioner to keep the red tones when my hair started fading. I only had a tiny amount of red dye left so maybe 30ml? In a 500ml bottle of conditioner. I left it on too long once though and it dyed my hair very red, so maybe just be careful how long you leave it on for. It worked fine as a 2-minute everyday maintenance conditioner.

[Cederin]

Thank you for sharing your experience, SkyChild! Great advice!

[Scarlet_Heart]

I'm considering getting an ash blonde demi perm dye. If I use level 10 developer, it won't lighten my hair at all, just deposit the ash tone. Might that work?

I also like the idea of putting some blue manic panic in the conditioner bottle. Hmm...

[Cederin]

Hehe, I think you know the chemistry better than I do there Scarlet_Heart :o But I guess it sounds like a good plan! The only problem I can think of is your hair not being light enough to take up the ashy pigments, which happened to me. But you can always try it! :)
Yeah, seems very smart to just have a little dash of blue/violet every wash just to maintain it. It's too bad that semi-dyes wash out so easily!

[Cederin]

Okay, so this is my before picture, this is the colour we're working with.
My final bleaching is scheduled on tuesday! I hope this goes the way I want to.. :rolleyes:

http://i62.tinypic.com/2dmgkyb.jpg

[ErinLeigh]

Good luck with the bleaching! I am very much looking forward to how the color and toning ends up.

[Cederin]

All right, now the bleaching and toning is done!

Here's the result, still at the salon:
http://i59.tinypic.com/rc0y2b.jpg

Here's one in direct daylight:
http://i57.tinypic.com/2sblbit.jpg

Then I made my toner, I diluted the violet so the mix looked like a saturated
lavender tone, covered all my hair completely and left it on for like 45 minutes.

The results, also in direct daylight:
http://i60.tinypic.com/2s96tuc.jpg

Sooo.... no, it didn't work that much for me :p The shade is slightly softer and maybe some of the most aggressive brassy tones cooled down a bit.
My roots are really light ash blonde, probably it matches my natural colour really well, but the ends are still kind of orange. I think my hair needs to be just a little bit lighter for this to work completely, and maybe a blue tone would cancel out the orange better. I will try this again sometime!

[chrissy-b]

I think your hair looks great now, Cederin! I love the new color. I just recently did a toner (light ash blonde) with 10v developer and it cancelled out all of the brassy/orange tones in my hair and my hair is a little darker than yours is now. I think the next time, though, I'm going to give manic panic a try. The results in THIS THREAD (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=115585&highlight=manic+panic) are amazing!

[Cederin]

Chrissy-b, Oh, thank you! :o Nice to hear that regular ash toner worked so well for you. We'll see what I'll try next time I want to get rid of the pigments!
Yeah I saw that one, really great results. I wish I could reach a cool tone like that in some way :)


I'll go ahead and post another picture for you all to see how it looks like right now in my warm bathroom light, compared to the daylight pictures. Afterall, I'm very happy how it looks now, considering it was pitch black just a couple of months ago! :D

http://i57.tinypic.com/8xv7du.jpg

[Scarlet_Heart]

I think your hair looks great! But I also had to say something about your amazing eyebrows.

[Cederin]

I think your hair looks great! But I also had to say something about your amazing eyebrows.

Aww, thank you! :blossom: