twilight
May 21st, 2016, 05:35 PM
Hi! It's been a long time (and a lot of hair stuff) since I hung around here but I learned some interesting things recently and thought I would share.
((whoa... super old avatar and signature! i am neither brunette nor pregnant. eventually i'll update those...))
Mini-background:
a few weeks ago i had BSL henna red hair. for mother's day, my DH made me an appointment at a salon for a trim (it had been 2 years or so) and... a color. i hesitated. we discussed. i googled. finally, of all the crazy a$s ideas i could come up with, he and i agreed that beautiful silvery-grey hair would be awesome. :bigeyes:
(note: i'm not a noob. i know about hair, dyes, chemistry, herbs, and all the no-nos and horror stories out there when it comes to color changes, so i didn't get into this blind. i have successfully removed indigo before using Effasol.)
so i got to the salon--which was in a mall since it was sunday :uhh:-- and after explaining how henna is not evil/metallic salts/etc and signing a waiver in case all my hair falls out, told her what i wanted to do. she just looked at me and said "i can't do that." LOL. at least she was honest. so rather than leave the salon with nothing, we decided to go for a nice body wave perm and a light trim.
that's how i learned you cannot perm over henna.
apparently the henna does such a beautiful job filling in the cuticle and coating it with magic that my perm failed to penetrate. she did use a formula meant for colored hair which perhaps was too gentle, but still. perm smell+no waves = boo. $80 later, i ended up with a trim i regret and stinky, flat hair. super disappointing.
but now that i had the "change" bug in my system i couldn't rest. i figured WTH, black will do. so i bought some chestnut Rainbow henna, mixed with straight indigo, and went to town that night. next day i had unevenly reddishbrownishblack hair. it was ok but made me look like my mom, which was not the goal at all.
so i called around and found a salon with openings to discuss my crazy silver plan (which was crazier now that i added the indigo variable - why did i do that?!). a friend of mine is a stylist and she booked me for her whole day to tackle this beast.
between 12:30pm and 8:30pm that day, my hair was 20vol soap-capped twice with heat, bleached once with heat, toned, demi- and semi-perm dyed, and at the end of it i looked like a really funny joke's punchline.
the soap caps removed all the indigo and a ton of the henna. the bleach brought it up the rest of the way to a bright buttery yellow BUT it left splotches of bright freaking teal (thank you indigo) and some coppery gold. even the two different colors of grey she dyed over it didn't cover those spots. it was not silver or even grey. it was just bad... but i wasn't upset because this was my crazy plan and now at least i had the bleach part handled; i figured worst case is i could dye purple or pink or something random for a while. whatever. remember: bleach turns indigo teal, but not evenly, and it doesn't come out.
she sent me home with Pravana semi-perm "titanium" which I used that night. it helped a little.
the next day i got Ion's titanium semi-perm and a demi-perm dark brown for my roots (to add some sanity). that helped a lot, so i then had a dark bluish-greyish color with hints of murky teal. it was kinda cool but still looked like it wasn't entirely intentional.
i spent the next few washes using silver shampoo and Adore semi-perms for toning, and while i liked the color because it matched my eyes, it wasn't light enough. i really wanted a less dark greyish silver.
so today, after a coconut oil soak, i soap capped again... this time with about 25vol+blue bleach+shampoo and left it on for maybe 25 min. i washed with a toning conditioner. it's significantly less gold and more inside-of-a-banana now, though i still have teal splotches. i'm about to use a semi-perm to attempt to get it to where i want it to be. i'm really keen on proving that you can go from henndigo to silver without all your hair falling out!
i'd also like to add that using henna in the first place - not dye - was both a problem and a saving grace, because my stylist was continuously shocked at how strong my hair held up to the abuse. henna really does fortify hair so it's virgin-plus.
i have pics of this whole process from start to finish so i will post them asap along with "final" results. and a product list, lol.
((whoa... super old avatar and signature! i am neither brunette nor pregnant. eventually i'll update those...))
Mini-background:
a few weeks ago i had BSL henna red hair. for mother's day, my DH made me an appointment at a salon for a trim (it had been 2 years or so) and... a color. i hesitated. we discussed. i googled. finally, of all the crazy a$s ideas i could come up with, he and i agreed that beautiful silvery-grey hair would be awesome. :bigeyes:
(note: i'm not a noob. i know about hair, dyes, chemistry, herbs, and all the no-nos and horror stories out there when it comes to color changes, so i didn't get into this blind. i have successfully removed indigo before using Effasol.)
so i got to the salon--which was in a mall since it was sunday :uhh:-- and after explaining how henna is not evil/metallic salts/etc and signing a waiver in case all my hair falls out, told her what i wanted to do. she just looked at me and said "i can't do that." LOL. at least she was honest. so rather than leave the salon with nothing, we decided to go for a nice body wave perm and a light trim.
that's how i learned you cannot perm over henna.
apparently the henna does such a beautiful job filling in the cuticle and coating it with magic that my perm failed to penetrate. she did use a formula meant for colored hair which perhaps was too gentle, but still. perm smell+no waves = boo. $80 later, i ended up with a trim i regret and stinky, flat hair. super disappointing.
but now that i had the "change" bug in my system i couldn't rest. i figured WTH, black will do. so i bought some chestnut Rainbow henna, mixed with straight indigo, and went to town that night. next day i had unevenly reddishbrownishblack hair. it was ok but made me look like my mom, which was not the goal at all.
so i called around and found a salon with openings to discuss my crazy silver plan (which was crazier now that i added the indigo variable - why did i do that?!). a friend of mine is a stylist and she booked me for her whole day to tackle this beast.
between 12:30pm and 8:30pm that day, my hair was 20vol soap-capped twice with heat, bleached once with heat, toned, demi- and semi-perm dyed, and at the end of it i looked like a really funny joke's punchline.
the soap caps removed all the indigo and a ton of the henna. the bleach brought it up the rest of the way to a bright buttery yellow BUT it left splotches of bright freaking teal (thank you indigo) and some coppery gold. even the two different colors of grey she dyed over it didn't cover those spots. it was not silver or even grey. it was just bad... but i wasn't upset because this was my crazy plan and now at least i had the bleach part handled; i figured worst case is i could dye purple or pink or something random for a while. whatever. remember: bleach turns indigo teal, but not evenly, and it doesn't come out.
she sent me home with Pravana semi-perm "titanium" which I used that night. it helped a little.
the next day i got Ion's titanium semi-perm and a demi-perm dark brown for my roots (to add some sanity). that helped a lot, so i then had a dark bluish-greyish color with hints of murky teal. it was kinda cool but still looked like it wasn't entirely intentional.
i spent the next few washes using silver shampoo and Adore semi-perms for toning, and while i liked the color because it matched my eyes, it wasn't light enough. i really wanted a less dark greyish silver.
so today, after a coconut oil soak, i soap capped again... this time with about 25vol+blue bleach+shampoo and left it on for maybe 25 min. i washed with a toning conditioner. it's significantly less gold and more inside-of-a-banana now, though i still have teal splotches. i'm about to use a semi-perm to attempt to get it to where i want it to be. i'm really keen on proving that you can go from henndigo to silver without all your hair falling out!
i'd also like to add that using henna in the first place - not dye - was both a problem and a saving grace, because my stylist was continuously shocked at how strong my hair held up to the abuse. henna really does fortify hair so it's virgin-plus.
i have pics of this whole process from start to finish so i will post them asap along with "final" results. and a product list, lol.