Oh Hello Purple Hair!

Hey Fabbies! My older sister, Tamika and her son came out to LA to visit me and the kids last week, and stayed for almost a week. We had soooo much fun while she was here, and Zé and Vito got a chance to play with their cousin Cisco everyday, which made them so happy. Anyway, when I picked Tamika up from the airport, one of the first things that she told me was that she wanted to dye her hair. I instantly became so excited, because it has been YEARS since my sister has changed her hair color. Probably close to 10 years! Her hair was currently dyed black, so I knew if she wanted to go lighter, it would be a bit of a process. On the flip side, here I was, trying not to dye my hair until my birthday (which is in November), and my sister is wanting to dye her hair while she’s in town! Ahhh the temptation…

Tamika knew she wanted to dye her hair an auburn color. At this point, I was like “welp! I might as well dye my hair too!” The color that I had been eyeing for my next color was purple. My hair was dyed black like my sister’s, and I knew in order to make it a lighter color, I would need to bleach it first. Umm. I had never done that before. And neither had my sister. With all the crazy and fun colors I have achieved over the years, professionals had done the dye jobs for me. But with me sister being in town, and so eagerly wanting to change her hair color, I decided we could surely figure out how to do it ourselves. So I did what any other girl seeking information on everything hair-related would do: I got on YouTube! I looked up several tutorials on “how to bleach your hair”, “how to bleach black hair”, and so on. I also researched what brands people used, how long they left the bleach in, etc. The more I told Tamika what I had learned, the more nervous she was lol! She had never had her hair bleached, ever! Whereas I had gotten it bleached a few times over the years. But I convinced her that she would be fine, and we would have some cocktails to relax her nerves!

So after watching several YouTube videos, I felt confident we could do it ourselves, and my sister and I were officially on a mission to bleach!, then dye our own hair! The next day, we went to Sally’s Beauty Supply store and grabbed everything we needed to start the process. This included bleach, a developer (used to mix with the bleach to help lift the color from your hair. My sister and I used a 40 developer, which is the strongest. They have 20 and 30 developer as well. I texted Lythal, my old hairstylist and asked her which developer she had used on my hair over the years, and she told me 40.) We also bought plastic mixing bowls to put the bleach and developer in, brushes to apply the bleach, and then the semi-permanent dye to put on after the bleach was done. Below is the type of bleach we used, and then the hair dye that I used on my now purple hair!

The rule of thumb is, that after you bleach your hair, you should use a semi-permanent hair color right after, since they’re typically not as harsh on your hair. And Manic Panic is a great brand of semi-permanent hair dye, because it doesn’t contain harsh chemicals, and the colors are very rich and vibrant and last for months. If you google them, you’ll see that they offer probably every crazy hair color you can imagine. Plus it’s a vegan hair dye! So no animals were harmed in the testing of their products! Yay!

The entire process of bleaching our hair, then putting the dye on top took about 5 hours. We truly had a blast doing it though. We put the kids to bed, slapped our gloves on, turned on some music, made our cocktails and went to work! It was truly a bonding experience, and we both were very happy with our results! Below I’ve shared some pictures of us enjoying the moment of playing beauticians, secretly praying we didn’t eff up our hair in the process lol!

Last selfie together as raven-haired broads

Divided our hair into 4 sections and were about to begin!!

turnup!

Hair bleach: check Cocktail: check

Was it a good idea to drink and dye? Yes!! haha

Shower cap selfie! At this point the bleach was in my hair, so my sister and I came downstairs to relax and wait for about  40 minutes. We refilled our drinks and caught up on the DVR

Crown Royals and lemonade

 

Wearing our matching robes from my wedding lol

And the results are in! I have purple hair now!

 

And Tamika is not a huge fan of taking pictures in general, so I didn’t get lots of pictures of her hair, but I did manage to get a few of her with her newly auburn tresses!

At the beach!

This was their last day here. Oh hey my nephew Cisco! I loved how her hair color came out too. And please disregard her sweatshirt. She took half of my closet back with her to Dallas, including this sweatshirt that I no longer have a use for lol. It’s all about the Pelicans baby!

All in all, I am so happy that we figured out that we could dye our hair a drastically different color ourselves. We really had a great time doing it, and really made it an event. On top of that, it was her first time in LA, and we had a fantastic week while they were here. And now that I know how to dye my hair these fun colors, watch out world!