Hair Care and Ombré

I have to admit I'm absolutely horrible at looking after my hair. I have it professionally cut about once or twice a year, the rest of the time either leaving it or occasionally trimming it myself. For the most part I don't even care that I don't look after my hair. However every now and again, a photo or a glance in the mirror will make me think "I really need to do something about my hair...". Even then, its rarely an instant reaction to do something, its still a few weeks of umming and ahhing, before finally getting off my butt to do it.

This is the state my hair was in last weekend.

Alright so at first glance, it doesn't look all that bad. But trust me it was. A mess of split ends, a fringe that had grown out so much it was barely even a fringe any more, plus it just lacked any shape.

These are the less flattering versions to show you exactly what I mean!

For a while I had been umming and ahhing about dip dying it again. This was something I did about a year ago and loved. In fact, I always meant to get around to blogging about it, but never did. These are a few of the basic pictures from that time.

 

As you can see from the set of pictures, I dyed the ends of my hair blonde first, then dyed them red. I loved the effect it gave but unfortunately the red never seemed to hold for long - or at least not as vibrantly. I think I dyed the ends red at least twice after this, before eventually giving up on the dip dye look and trimming my ends.

When I went to Tesco, to scope out some dye, I saw a girl in the car park who had the ombré look. This was also something I had fancied doing, but my friend Amy had done it at the same time I'd dip dyed and I didn't want to seem like I was copying. The girl had really dark brown/black hair and it looked amazing with the ombréd look. I was pretty much decided that's what I wanted as I headed for the hair dye aisle. However, as I was looking, I spotted this:

Yes perhaps I'm a little stuck in my ways and fancied reliving my dip dye, or maybe its just that I love the colour red! Either way, I was sold - even at the cost of £6.99! Though I didn't have time to do it that night, I promised myself it would get done that weekend.

Anyway, back to my original horror hair... I desperately needed to trim my ends and possible even cut in a fringe. This got off to a bad start when I trimmed far too much off my fringe and gave myself little option of what to do with it. Luckily I'm not someone who really cares about hair mistakes either and just figured it would all grow out eventually. Not put off my endeavour, I continued to cut all my ends and hopefully give some sort of shape to my hair cut again. Finally I headed downstairs ready to ombré my hair.

When I'd first read the instructions, the night I bought the dye, I hadn't felt too daunted by what I had to do. I've always dyed my own hair, never needed anyone to help - like I said, I tend not to care too much about hair fails. However when it came around to actually doing this ombré look, I chickened out at the last minute and got Chris to help me. Other than damaging the t-shirt he was wearing at the time (and me feeling awful about it!) he did a pretty good job.

The hair dye has to be left in for 35 minutes. As we had a house full of kids at the time, who would probably need the toilet, I decided to head upstairs and read a book rather than hog the bathroom. However eventually I headed back down to wash out my dye and see the end results.

As always, the water ran red for a long time. Finally I conditioned, rinsed again and then headed back upstairs to check out my new do! After towel drying my hair, I was a bit concerned that my hair didn't look all that different. But often when your hair is wet, especially with dark colours, you really can't see anything but black/brown hair.

I ploughed on, deciding I would dry my hair properly (a rarity indeed) just to see what my hair would look like once dry. Sadly I was to still be disappointed. Even once dry, with the curtains thrown open for full daylight effect, there was really nothing different. Perhaps a slight red tinge?

So anyway I have to admit I was a little sad. A bad fringe and no ombré wasn't exactly what I was hoping to get out of the day. Like I said though, I didn't let it bother me for too long, figuring I'd just try something else eventually.

As yet, I've not done anything else to my hair. Already my fringe looks a little better with a weeks worth of growth, but everyone has told me it looks nice anyway, so perhaps its just my hate of fringes that makes it seem worse than it is. Anyway, I ended up in Boots on Friday and with my points I've bought this:

What is it they say? If at first you don't succeed... dye, dye, dye again?

I'll let you know how it goes!