Hair Dying Tutorial (kind of)

So I have returned to Missouri and I am settling back in at home. I am now going to try and catch up on all of the posts that I have been promising to post and haven't.

Let us start as far back as I can reasonably remember.

May 2012

My brother decided that he wanted to dye his hair blue. He was going to be a Thing in Seussical and did not want to wear a wig. So he set about convincing me to do it for him as he slowly found all the required equipment and brought it home. 

Finally I agreed to bleach and dye his hair on the condition that he would shave his head as soon as the show was finished. He agreed with that.

So here is what we started with. A nice shade of dark brown.

I began the whole process by bleaching his hair. The theory here was to get a nice blonde base that would take the blue dye really well. My fear was that it would not turn a nice blonde but more of an orange.

As I had feared it did not come out as a soft blonde. Instead we had a nice vibrant shade between orange and straw yellow. I tried to recommend that we now give it about a week or at least several days of washing and conditioner to allow it to naturalize out a bit. My brother was positive that his hair did not need that and he could have me dye it blue the next day. So I yielded to his desires.

Like I had predicted instead of blue he came out with a nice aqua green. It was more vibrant when he first washed it out. This picture was after a few days of intense washing/conditioner.

As you can see it was a bit more of a dirty green in the front.

By this time I was ready to just shave him now and get a wig. But he was determined that he was going to achieve blue no matter how many times he had to color his hair.

So he bought a platinum blonde hair dye for me to use next hoping that this would provide a better base for the blue. So I went on ahead and dyed him blonde. This time he took my advice and allowed the blonde a few days of washing to naturalize out a bit. We then again tried for the blue. 

This time we had success. The front was still not quite right but it was easily fixed with a bit of hairspray before each show.

So here are my two brothers who were Things. I made a wig for the one on the left.

I used a cheap colonial mans wig for the Thing wig. I took out the ponytail and backcombed the whole thing until it was a poofy mess. I then gave it a trim so that it was shorter and even. To finish it I sprayed it with blue hairspray.

My mom and I found it amusing when my brother went out to mow the lawn during the week between the shows. It looked like we had a clown doing our lawn work.

So that is what I did to my brothers hair. I suppose that this is really just a detailed explanation rather than a tutorial. Anyhow, my advice is that if you want to dye your hair vibrant colors and want it to look decent, then go to a professional. Although I would love to try this again and see if I can do better.

(Now to find some trusting and clueless guinea pig. hehe)

Playing with "hair"

I decided that I wanted to play with synthetic hair and learn how to manipulate it. So a few weeks ago I got out the only piece of synthetic hair I have and began to play. This started out as a wavy ponytail extension.

I started out by rolling the hair in curlers.

I then heated a large pot of water on the stove. I brought it to boiling. I using a pair of kitchen tongs I quickly dunked the hair into the pot of boiling water. I left it in there for a few seconds then removed it and placed it on a towel to drain/dry.

After allowing it to cool and dry for a bit I slowly removed all of the curlers. Tada, perfect ringlets.

I then combed it with my fingers to see what it did. It poofed quite nicely.

Now I had a curly mess of an extension. So I decided to try straitening it out. So I reheated the pot of water and dunked in the hair.

I ran a comb through it.

I then dunked it a couple more times and also shampooed and conditionered it a few times.

I then hung it out to dry.

Here is the final product.

Overall I think it went really well considering the age of this hair. It is a 12 year old hair extension. It lost a significant amount of hair and the extension is a lot thiner. This is mainly because I used a brush and not a large toothed comb.

It also was begining to lose its coloring. I think that is partially due to age and the lack of synthetic hair cleaners.

It was alot of fun and I learned alot about synthetic hair.