I promised myself I would take pictures and write out all the steps on how I got my hair the color it currently is.. a black, blue, green, purple mix and match. The camera I used was a digital video camera, so the photo’s are not the best quality unfortunately. Regardless! Onward!

Step One: Dirty Hair & Ingredients
I’m a firm believer in not washing your hair before coloring. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just read it so much that it’s part of my routine. Maybe it helps lessen the damage when you’re bleaching (which is usually my first step.) This may not be required, but at least you can see what I started with.

The products I started with are Garnier BL21 Blue Black, Manic Panic Enchanted Forest Green, Manic Panic Ultra Violet, and Manic Panic Shocking Blue. I bought everything on Amazon. I also purchased their flash lightening kit because I have TONS of bleach in storage, but thought I might need a little bit for this project. I DIDN’T. Also you’ll want a hand held mirror unless you have a friend to help.

http://instagram.com/p/wpp4zOgWxq/

http://instagram.com/p/wuv5vHgW0o/

Step Two: Darkening
As you can see in the previous photos, I have dark blonde hair. I wanted my colors to be deep and rich. Very jewel toned, but I also wanted them to be on a black canvas, not a blonde one.  This is where the black hair dye comes into play. Prepare yourselves for some terrible photographs!!

• Before coloring, I partitioned my hair. I didn’t have any fancy clips (in storage) but I did have bobby pins so that’s what I used. Using my applicator brush I parted my hair from the top down. Keeping the sides and back separate. It wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t need it to be.

• Now that I have my hair partitioned. I started on one side and just blackened the roots. Yes, this sucked and was a big pain in my ass, but it really wasn’t as bad as coloring later. I wasn’t too stressed about having longer or shorter area’s blackened, as long as the roots were black. My biggest concern was that it would bleed onto the uncolored hair.
• I also decided to color ALL of the hair on the top of my head. I partitioned it first and sectioned it around my part. I only did about 1.5″ wide strip around my part. Total. 1.5″ WIDE TOTAL. Not on each side of the part. I wanted the colors to peek out from behind the black/dark hair. I also completely darkened the hairs surrounding my face.

• Rinsing stressed me right the fuck out. I just knew it was going to bleed all over my blonde hair. I knew it. I even used cold water. But then.. I used shampoo too. A lot. More than I should have probably. It made the black more of a dark steel blue color.. I still liked it.

•  When coloring my “bangs” I didn’t entirely blacken them. I left a bit of it blonde so that the manic panic colors would have something to grab on to.

Step Three: Manic Panic Colors
I’m just going to go out on a limb and guess this is what you’re here for. And I really dropped the ball. I did not take any pictures of me coloring my hair.. because it was so god damned messy I would have ruined my camera. I had green staining my sink, blue on my face, I mean everywhere.

• After blow drying my black/blonde hair, I partitioned it again the way I did the first time. Then once it was partitioned I just started painting in chunks of color. I kept the color consistent down the length of the hair. I have vertical stripes, not horizontal.
• This was not easy. This was the hardest part of any dye job I’ve ever done. Especially the back of the head.
• After I was completed I wrapped a safeway plastic bag around it (so I wouldn’t tye dye my house) and let it hang out for two hours. I would’ve let it hang out longer but I was impatient.

Step Four: Finale
After rinsing (WEAR GLOVES) and dying my hand blue (REALLY WEAR GLOVES) this is how it looked wet. I was freaked out. I thought, oh no, did I really fuck my hair up this badly? OH NO, I SHOULDNT HAVE DONE BLACK. OH NO I SHOULDNT HAVE DONE X, Y, OR Z.

But, you see, I’m a worry wart.

• Once I busted out my blow dryer and brushed it out a bit.. I was pretty pleased.

FIN!

http://instagram.com/p/wt_gFFgW12/

So there’s that. If you have any questions, please leave a comment!