Happy New Year almost! Okay it’s not quite the New Year yet, but I wanted to do a post on my various hairstyles, hair colors, and just all around craziness that I have done with my hair for the entire year of 2016 as we come to a close. Year after year, I continue to have fun with my hair, by experimenting with colors, braids, twists, and really just whatever I feel I am in the mood for. (You can look back at some of my hairstyles over the last few years here: https://fabandravenous.com/category/hairstyles/. I honestly color and bleach my hair with reckless abandon. If the dye says keep it on your hair for 20 minutes, I typically push it to 40 minutes. I know I know! My hair is gonna fall out right?! Haha ehhh…if it does then I’ll just start over and do something more fabulous. I do try to take care of my hair  by washing/moisturizing/deep conditioning it as best as I can, but I’m no hair expert when it comes to the healthfulness of one’s hair. I just kind of…go.

To start off 2016 last year, I had just dyed my hair an aqua/turquoise blue mix of colors. Before that my hair was purple, and had begun to fade pretty significantly, so I wanted to do a color that would go on top of the faded purple easily.

Sidebar: Here is a quick tidbit on bleaching and dying hair, from my personal experience over the last several years:

Before I started dying my hair myself, my hairstylist in Dallas, Texas (imlythal is her Instagram name) was the one who first bleached my hair, and started to do the fun and funky colors that I have been in love with every since. When we moved to Los Angeles in October 2014, I was looking for someone who specialized in coloring and dying hair, and was mildly unsuccessful. (Meaning, I really didn’t research that hard. I figured that whomever I’d find, they would charge me an arm and a leg either way, because HELLO! IT’S LOS ANGELES! lol! And I was so afraid that I would pay a ton of money to a hairstylist, only to be ready to switch up my look again.) So I opted to start experimenting myself. I watched lots of YouTube tutorials and ‘how-to’s, and was like, I can totally do this. And I did!

Bleaching lifts your hair color from your hair, and can be pretty drying, and damaging if you’re not careful. The dryer your hair is, the more prone it is to breakage. That’s why moisturizing is key to color-treated hair and/or bleached hair.) And yes, I have suffered hair breakage  before. My hair is very thick and naturally curly, and naturally curly hair tends to be dryer than most anyway. So coupled with bleach, umm..yeah. I’ve learned that deep conditioning your hair is key to maintain its moisture and vibrancy. The good thing is, with proper care your damage can be restored. Once your hair is bleached, it is then primed and ready for color.  So for me, when I go from hair color to hair color, I typically try and do it in a way that makes sense. So rewind again to when my hair was purple, I knew that a blue/turquoise mix would work well on faded purple hair, and here was the result:

After I rocked with my turquoise/blue hair for a few months (Late December until early March), I then felt the urge to get braids! Our resident braider for the entire family, turned family friend, Kyron (honeycombncoil is her Instagram name), came to our home to twist up Chris and Vito’s hair, and she also installed 4 waist-length blue/green/aqua mixed braids. I LOVED this low maintenance look:

It only took Kyron about an hour and half or less to braid my hair, and I was able to keep them for about a month. I actually kept my hair the blue/green color for a total of almost 4 months! When my hair is not braided, I kind of just do whatever to it:

After sporting blue/green hair for 3 and half months, (which is probably a personal hair color record for me if anyone wants to keep track), I then decided it was time to switch it up and go lighter. Because I wanted to go lighter, now was the time to bleach my hair. (Count, first time bleaching in 2016 was early April.) I decided dye it cotton candy pink. (It was actually this color the year before around the same time too):

While this pink was soooooo pretty and vibrant, it did fade rather quickly, and started lightening up within a few weeks:

The pink was beginning to fade, but luckily for me, it was time for Chris and Vito to get their hair retwisted, which meant that Kyron was coming to town, so I decided that I wanted something somewhat dramatic for myself!  So after consulting with Kyron, we decided to go with pink individual braids. And about 18 hours later, (plus breaks with food, tending to the kids, and so on), the result was stunning!

Hands down this is one of my all time favorite hairstyles of 2016. It was so fun and playful, dramatic, and fun to style. What’s best of all is that they were not heavy on my head. (I got silver twists back in 2015, and while I loved them, they were a wee bit heavy. You can see those braids HERE.) The individual braids proved to be significantly lighter, so I kept them that much longer. It was worth every hour spent in that chair! Thank you again Kyron!

I kept the braids for nearly all summer long, and I took them out in July, a few weeks before my girls weekend #LitInTheDesert. When I took my braids out, the pink dye had all faded out by then, so my hair was basically back to the bleach blonde that I applied back in April, but of course my roots were darker thanks to the new growth from having had braids for a few months:

Blonde hair is always a good time. It has kind of become my default hair color whenever I’m not walking around looking like a Crayola Crayon. But in October, I was bored of the blonde, and was ready for a switch up. This time, I would opt for the color red! Red-the-color-of-a-stop sign, red:

My roots were still fairly dark, because I put the red dye on top of my dark-rooted blonde hair:

Oh how I so loved that hair color! That was my first time going THAT red, and if and when I do it again, I will likely bleach my hair first so that my roots can be equally red all over. I would have kept the red longer than a few months, but the color faded after the two month mark, so I was ready for another change! Which brings me to more recently!

A few weeks ago, I bleached my hair again. (You still keeping count? That’s the second time in 2016-told ya I only bleached once or twice a year.) Anyway, I learned from a hair stylist at Sally’s Beauty Supply that it would possibly take several processes (meaning, several applications of bleach) to fully remove the red from my hair. So after the first process of bleach, my hair turned orange. And well, I kinda liked it:

I knew that the orange hair would only be my “transition hair”, as I had to bleach my hair again to completely lift the orange out. So after rocking the orange hair for a solid week, I then bleached my hair for the second time. I didn’t have to leave the bleach in as long (usually I do 30-40 minutes depending on how fast the color is lifting.) The second time around, I left the bleach on for about 20 minutes, and my hair was now a more light orange/blonde/yellow color. (sorry I don’t have any pics. I went ahead and dyed my hair the next day after re-bleaching it.)

So after finally getting the color out, it was time to do a brand new color, and that was green! Honestly, the reason why I chose to do green this time around, was because I was cleaning and came across a box of braiding hair that Kyron had left behind for me. Every time she would come and braid my hair, she would bring packs and packs of hair just in case she needed to use them (always better to have too much than not enough!), so I’ve amassed quite the collection of brightly colored braiding hair (i.e., synthetic weave), including a beautiful green color! I had the urge to do something dramatic, so I began researching the different styles that I could do with a pack of braid hair. I ordered the hair dye, hoping it would match the pack of hair, and wouldn’t you know, the dye matched PERFECTLY! And a few tutorials later, a mermaid was born!

When I tell ya’ll this hair color and ponytail are EVERYTHING! It literally feels like I’m playing dress up everyday. Which, I have come to the realization that, is exactly who I am! I am very visual, and like to express myself visually! So changing my hair color, experimenting with hairstyles and clothes, accessories, & everything else in between, makes me extremely happy! And as we close 2016 and head into 2017, I am going to start the new year with green hair, and continuing to be exactly who I am: Fab and Ravenous! 🙂

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And for fun, here are some tidbits on what the color green symbolizes: 

• This is the color of balance and harmony. From a color psychology perspective, it is the great balancer of the heart and the emotions, creating equilibrium between the head and the heart.
• From a meaning of colors perspective, green is also the color of growth, the color of spring, of renewal and rebirth. It renews and restores depleted energy. It is the sanctuary away from the stresses of modern living, restoring us back to a sense of well being. 
• Green is an emotionally positive color, giving us the ability to love and nurture ourselves and others unconditionally. A natural peacemaker, it must avoid the tendency to become a martyr.
• Green promotes a love of nature, and a love of family, friends, pets and the home. It is the color of the garden lover, the home lover and the good host.
• This color relates to stability and endurance, giving us persistence and the strength to cope with adversity.
• Green is the color of prosperity and abundance, of finance and material wealth. It relates to the business world, to real estate and property. Prosperity gives a feeling of safety to green.

Source Here

After reading some of those, I think heading into the New Year with green hair will suit me just fine. 😉

Have a wonderful weekend Fabbies! xoxo