My Hair in a Year

Since I've been going to school, I've colored my hair countless times, bleached it to death, and even got a perm! (Hey, SOMEONE had to volunteer!) So I thought I'd show the evolution of my hair over the last year, with the photos I have available. I've brought my hair to hell and back and I'm finally at my favorite color so far.

 This picture was taken last spring. My hair was the longest it had been in a LONG time and was relatively healthy! I believe at that time I was mostly using semi permanent colors and sticking with warm brown red/violets.

And then I got this crazy idea to go blonde... Throughout my life, I've been every color under the sun, EXCEPT blonde. I've been little mermaid red, blue, black, brown, violet, orange, but not blonde. So I began the process by easing my way in to it with highlights. My hair had a ton of red in it, so I knew it would be rough getting it the winter white blonde I'd decided I wanted...

 Aaaand after 2 Sundays of having a friend give me back to back foils with 30 volume bleach, I was finally blonde. Granted, I was a brassy, multitone, fried to hell blonde.  I ended up cutting off probably a good 4 inches of hair after the second round of foils because my hair had turned to cotton candy. It was to be expected, but sad none the less.

 After toning it several times and using toner shampoo, and almost drowning myself in deep conditioner and leave in conditioner to repair my fried hair, I was almost where I wanted to be! Still a little yellow, but after a tone, it was the purfect ashy/winter white.

 BUT! Being me, I got sick of it quick and needed to spice it up, so I added some pink to the tips with Jerome Russel's Punky Colour in Flamingo Pink.This ended up being a bad idea, as the pink worked against my toning shampoo and my hair ended up turning a gross murky off yellow color after a few washes....

 Which was cool, cause I didn't make a very good blonde anyway and now that I had such light hair, I could go the bold red I love! My inspiration was originally Mad Men's Joan Holloway, but it was short lived. (Like everything seems to be with my hair!) When I first went red, I had to cut quite a few inches off due to how porous my ends were, which made them a lot darker than the rest of it.

 But after some much needed TLC and trial and error, I've found my perfect color cocktail and am in love with my current color! My hair is for the most part all healthy again, (Still fades more on my ends than the rest due to the bleach underneath) but I'm using only semi permanent color. I've had to darken the all over color to match the color I get on my regrowth, since I've sworn off bleach for the forseable future.

I use Wella's Color Touch 6/45 which is a Dark Blonde Red Red/Violet. My natural hair is a dark brown, but picks up the red really well, so I don't have to worry about matching the regrowth to the rest of it anymore. It's simple, bold and vibrant, and I LOVE it. We'll see how long it lasts ;)