Hair Adventures of a Mermaid

Hi friends, I'm a blue-head now!  Well, with a few other colours thrown in.  (I'll list what I used at the end of the post.)

I've been colouring my hair since grade 9, way back when.  The first time I did it, my friend was putting the colour into my hair, and I was so freaked out about what my mom would say.  Thankfully, I had managed to not really know what colour my original hair was, because nothing had changed after I rinsed out the colour.  I had picked out a shade that was pretty much the exact same as my hair.  After that first time, I slowly became more and more red.  After a couple years with luscious, long, wavy, thick red hair, I decided to get a little hippy.  I dreaded my hair in grade 12, and they became platinum blonde.  I wore those for about a year until I was over them.  But I couldn't part with my hair.  Cutting it off was not in the picture.  I spent three long months slowly and gently combing each dread out.  I managed to do it, but the bottom 3-6 inches of my hair was so fried from all the bleaching, and the dreads themselves.  I ended up cutting it all off anyway, right before heading off to university.  I coloured it dark brown, chopped it into a little A-line bob, and every time I got bored at school, my hair seemed to become darker, and shorter.  The worst thing I did to my hair was dye it black.  It absolutely killed my hair. 

A few years later, I was flipflopping between reds, blondes, browns, and all the variations in between.  It wasn't until I went all over blonde, and had been following Natasha Lillipore online, and fell in love with her hair.  She had blue, then pink, then purple...every bright rainbow shade under the sun.  I wanted it so bad, but knew that where I was working would SO not be into it.  So I started with just a little chunk on the underside of my hair, which could be easily hidden.  The only problem was that every time I re-touched it, the chunk would grow bigger and bigger.  Eventually, I was all over bright red, and somehow got away with it.  This was leading up to my sister's wedding last summer.  Thankfully, she was down with my electric red-fuschia hair (which looked so good against my navy bridesmaid's dress).  Ever since then, it's only been full on mermaid/my little pony hair, all the time.  And I love it.  I had super bright hair for my wedding, and just last week, went blue/teal/purple/green.  Here's some pictures I took to share.

I'm a die-hard Manic Panic user, since it's gentle on my hair, and I can leave it in for hours, and my hair comes out so silky after.  I often use a lot different colours when I do my hair, so that there's lots of variations to enjoy.  For this hair-do I used: Green Envy, Shocking Blue, Atomic Turquoise, and Ultra Violet.  I try to use the Amplified Manic Panic colours, because they last longer, which helps my hair stay more vibrant.  I also have a small bottle in my shower thats part conditioner, part colour, which acts as a glaze every so often.  It's been a while since I've used just straight colour, so it was pretty shocking how vibrant and dark it was.  All summer, I've just been using the glaze to make my hair more pastel, since being in the lake often would fade it fast, and I was pretty lazy about wanting to take the time to really colour my hair.  I don't want to spend a whole day inside soaking my head in colour on these beautiful summer days!

This past weekend was my hair debut to my husband and friends, and they loved it.  I think I was told about a hundred times how much they liked it.  We had a blast of a weekend, playing outside.  I learned to shoot a BB gun, and hit the can my first shot!  Watch out world, this mermaid might impale you with a little metal ball, but I'll try really hard not to.  Just kidding, I don't shoot people.  That's not very nice.

Tips for keeping your colour:

-wash less: water strips colour, so I wash the least amount possible and use dry shampoo in between

-conditioner colour: as I said above, I 'glaze' my hair with a little colour every couple showers

-use coldest water you can handle when washing, it helps, trust me

-I keep my dye in for as long as possible, with a shower cap or plastic bag on my head.  It really helps the colour to stain my strands really well.  I don't recommend doing this with all hair dyes, but Manic Panic hasn't hurt me yet!