DIY: Ombré Hair

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Hey guys,

I know i've been absent recently but exams and essays have been taking over my life, and I'm still not done! My last exam is on the 31st so I'm excited for that to be over and done with so I can start my summer!

I don't know if you guys know, but I'm in love with the whole 'ombre' hair trend but because my hair is so light already, it is virtually impossible to ombre without dying my whole head darker and starting from there. Any way, I didn't want to do that so I decided to like vicariously through my friend, Alicia, who also wanted to have a go. Luckily for her, she had gorgeous black hair so we could go ahead and give it a go!

We bought the dye in boots for around £6/7 and went for a blond highlighting kit after researching how other people had achieved the look. I forgot to take pictures of the first few steps *d'oh* but it's really easy !

1) make sure your hair is dry and brushes through

2) mix all the ingredients together (basically just follow the instructions, they're pretty straightforward)

3) put on an old top or use an old towel to protect your clothes and skin from the bleach

4) different people do different things, but we chose to section her hair into 3 using little hair ties (at the level where we wanted it to be the lightest) and applied the dye there.

5) leave for however long it recommends for your hair colour. Alicia has really thick, dark, asian hair so we left the die on for about 40 mins each time.

6) wash the dye out and blow dry hair on low heat.

So this is what it looked like after 1 go - slightly copper at the ends.

7) Now time to do it over again, but this time higher up the hair to help to create the gradient effect.

Second time :)

8) when you're happy with the colour you've got, apply half of the conditioning shampoo they supply in the box (if your one does) and leave the other half for about 3 washes later.

9) blow dry the hair again on a low heat.

Et, voila! To be honest with you, doing this is completely trial and error. The timing, the amount of dye and the placement of the dye is just something you have to play around with, especially as every box of dye is different.

Alicia and I both agreed that next time we do her hair (or top it up) we would go a bit higher and wait a bit longer the second time around so that it is a bit lighter further up.