How to - Ombre Hair (with bleach)

A while ago I ombred my friend's hair for her and I decided to show you guys how we achieved a natural looking ombre effect.

The one thing that I hate most is seeing people with badly ombred hair. Their hair ends obviously shows a clear line of where they had bleached their hair. That is not ombre... that's colour blocking... in your hair. Ok rant over.

So how did I get it to look natural? I sectioned her hair off into different parts and left the dye in for different amounts of time.
Following the above picture:
Red ---> 60 minutes
Blue ---> 40 minutes 
Green ---> 20 minutes

After leaving the bleach in the red section for 20 minutes, I brought the bleach up to the blue section. 20 minutes after that I did the same with the green section. (If that made any sense whatsoever)

So hopefully that helped and have fun with your ombre hair!! :D

P.S. I used the Jerome Russel B Blonde powder bleach mixed with their cream peroxide.

-Tiffers xx

Product Review - Live Colour XXL Colour Intense Mystic Violet

I dip dyed my hair purple a while ago and did a post on it (here). I wanted to do a separate review on the hair dye because that post was getting too long and I couldn't really include it in there.

This product retails at £5.59 in Superdrug which I think is a decent price for a hair dye. It claims to be 'waterproof' and therefore is longer lasting.

I had bleached my hair prior to applying the hair dye because I didn't think the dye was going to show up on my dyed black hair. My hair was a bright ginger colour before I dyed it and unfortunately it showed up darker than I wanted it to be. The colour blended in with the rest of my hair in dull lighting (indoors) but underneath sunlight, it shows up as more of a wine colour rather than a deep purple that I had originally wanted. 

As for the lastingness, it did wash out a lot in the first few washes. I could see a lot of colour washing out of my hair but ultimately that made the colour more vibrant (but more of a red). Unfortunately, I had to swim once every week after I dyed my hair which caused it to wash out even more quickly. Immediately after I swam the first week I noticed a significant difference in the colour. Eventually, after 2-3 weeks it turned into more of a dull reddish-gingery colour.

Of course, I didn't take any photos of my purple hair and now I've chopped all of the ends off. But overall the colour lasts a decent amount of time considering purple/red is a very hard colour to maintain. One main tip is to try to wash your hair with cold water and also to avoid swimming to keep the hair colour in for as long as possible.

-Tiffers xx

How to - Dip Dye / Ombre Hair on Dark Hair (COLOUR)

A while ago I decided that I wanted to dye my hair purple but was too much of a wimp to go around school with a full head of purple hair. I mean, have you seen Katy Perry's hair? It's to die for!! She pulls it off so effortlessly as well!!! *goes cry in a pillow*

Anyway, I decided to go the safer route and dip dye my hair purple instead. Now this was very hard because I had just dyed my hair black a month ago. Yes, BLACK. The hardest hair colour to dye over... it's literally impossible. 

Step One - Bleach (lots of it)
Before I could dye my hair any colour, I had to bleach the heck out of it.  Different hair dyes have different amounts of bleach in them and therefore work differently. Unless you are 100% sure that the dye will show up over your natural hair colour, I recommend doing this if you have naturally dark coloured hair (e.g. medium brown to black hair) or if you want a very vibrant colour payoff.

The bleach that I used was from the Jerome Russell B Blonde line. I mixed a packet of the powder bleach along with their developer, and applied it onto the ends of my hair. Since I was going to apply another over it anyway, I didn't make any special effort to blend the colour in. 

I basically applied bleach on the red areas in the above picture. As you can see I applied it in streaks so that I wouldn't end up with a straight line of where the bleach stops in my hair (this is very important!!!). 

Since I had a limited amount of time, I put my hair in a plastic bag and blow dried the ends for 30 minutes (this causes the bleach to develop faster). I recommend leaving the bleach in for 60 minutes and blow drying it during the last 10 minutes for optimal results. After I washed the bleach out, I was left with ginger ends. Bright ginger. 

Step Two - Colour
Finally, onto the actual hair colouring. I used Live Colour XXL Colour Intense in Mystic Violet (review here) for the perfect purple shade. Obviously you can use whatever hair colour you desire. I simply followed the instructions that came with the dye but only applied it only to my ends. Waited for 30 minutes and... TA DAA!! purple ends :D

Unfortunately I was silly enough to not take any pictures of my hair before and after. Now I've chopped it all off so I'm left with no evidence whatesoever. If you're interested in how long the colour lasted on my hair, I've done a review on the hair dye here. Anyway, I hope you found this helpful and have fun dip dying your hair!!

-Tiffers xx

~DISCLAIMER~
If anyone's going to follow this, it WILL be very damaging to your hair, especially if you bleach it. My hair is comparatively strong (and doesn't take dye very easily), but it still felt dry and strawy after the first few washes. I strongly recommend using leave in conditioner as often as possible after doing this.

Current Trends: Ombre Hair!

I'm sure you've seen ombre hair around everywhere recently. Everyone's obsessed with it (well nearly everyone). Many celebrities are seen rocking their ombre hair on red carpets, around on the streets, in performances... EVERYWHERE! It's taking over the world!!! (Not really...)

Anyway, I was wondering how this trend even started and I found out that ombre hair was an accidental invention! Apparently in 2008 when many people were being affected by the economic crash, women couldn't afford to get their non-highlighted roots touched up. After leaving their hair to grow out through time, ombre hair became to appear. This created an ombre effect on their hair. This caught on after a while. I think the first time I've heard about this was last autumn. First, it was feather extensions, now it's all about the ombre.

After ombre hair came into fashion, its baby dip-dyed hair was born. Well you can argue that they're the same thing so I guess it's more like its sister. Anyway, people began to add colour to the ends of the hair.

I personally really like ombre hair, but it does cause quite a lot of damage to your hair. Your ends is normally where your hair receives the most damage, bleaching it even further would just cause even more damage. But if you would like to achieve the effect of dip-dyed hair, here's some great tutorials showing you how to get it without having to commit to the colour.