My hair, like many others’, has been through quite a journey over the years.
In high school, I was in private school, so I was limited on what I could do with my hair. It had to be a “natural color”, and a conventional hairstyle. Because of those rather strict guidelines, the craziest that I could go was a dark red that looked purple when I was in the sun. I loved it, and I kept that color for pretty much the majority of my high school years.
Look how little we were!!!
My first attempt at true unnatural hair color was some teal highlights in my bangs with the rest of my hair black. I’m so sad that I didn’t take any pictures of it because it looked pretty cool.
For the first week or two.
I had no idea that I had to wash my hair less often than I was used to, and in cold water at that, so it faded rather quickly.
I ended up just going back to a dark reddish brown for a few years until I went back to my now natural hair color of warm black for my wedding.
Yes, my prom dress and wedding dress were one and the same. Same dress, necklace, and tiara
I think I kept that for a year or so before I decided to finally take the plunge and bleach my hair and dye it what I dubbed Watermelon Red. Depending on the light, sometimes it looked more red, others more pink, but I liked it.
The one that I really miss though, is when I dyed my hair teal! I felt like a mermaid. It was so beautiful!
The only downside was that I used admittedly cheap hair dye and IT. BLED. EVERYWHERE!!
For the first week after every time I would dye it, my hands and neck would be stained light blue. I swore I looked like a miniature frost giant. Like Loki! It was ridiculous how much it bled. I thought my professional hairstylists would get it to not bleed so much, and which ended up being only semi the case. What my hair looked like when they took all of the color out was really cool though. It’s like a unicorn’s mane. Too bad that wasn’t quite the style at that point. Either way, the hairstylists were all quite impressed with the quality and strength of my hair considering how much I’ve dyed and bleached it by that point, so that’s good!
After a while, I went back to my regular hair color. My scalp needed a break after all of the at home bleaching, so I decided to not bleach my hair anymore. I went back to various shades of red-brown over the next couple of years, sometimes all at once.
Eventually though, I decided to have a drastic hair cut for the first time in my life by my own choice. I decided on doing a side shave, and I finally learned how to curl my hair using a curling iron (rather than just relying on my hair deciding to curl when and where it wanted to). I also discovered that there were now unnatural hair dyes that worked on brunette hair! I was so excited, that I just had to try that out for myself. I loved how it turned out considering how dark my hair is, but unfortunately, it lasts for a very short amount of time.
My husband and I then decided we’d experiment and see what would happen if we tried blonde hair dye with my hair instead of bleach. It actually worked for my hair much better than we thought it would. It actually made me okay with the idea of having blonde hair because I never thought it would look good on me before this.
From there, we dyed it our old favorite, bright red. Apparently the only really good pictures I have of it are from video thumbnails, so here you go:
You can watch this video here if you want
Eventually, I got tired of shaving my head, so I started to grow it back. It’s unfortunately a rather awkward process to do that. For a while there, I just adjusted my part to disguise it until it got long enough that I once again took the plunge and drastically cut my hair into an asymmetrical bob. I had them adjust the dyed parts to make the transition not so blunt. I was quite please with the result. It’s so easy to take care of, I now understand why so many women continue to keep their hair short after cutting it so.
