SHORT LIVED BLOG

ugh sorry for my lack of updates, this is a pretty short lived blog but i dont think imma keep updating this as much
and decided to just merge my blogs together
from now on ill be posting tutorials and reviews on my actual blog since its just easier to keep track of it:

dearxx.blogspot.com

dont worry, i'll try and keep the labels/tags as clear as possible and will eventually wank around to making a proper layout or pester Toshi to make me one lawwwlz :D

Hair Lifting @ home & the "right" light tone for you

Hair Lifting @ home & the "right" light tone for you

So many people have asked me how do I lift my hair? How do I get my DARK ASIAN Hair to be a pretty light blonde?

Do I even look GOOD with light hair? Are asians suppose to HAVE light hair? Why cant we just stick to having DARK hair?

this is is an on going debate that will probably never change. So many people are for it while some are against it.

Personally, I've been both dark and light :P

which do I prefer? Honestly, it just depends on my mood. Thankfully I own plenty enough wigs to play with and whatnot but there's just SOMETHING about having light hair thats definitely a show stopper >:D

First of all, there are DIFFERENT shades and tones of LIGHT hair - Blonde hair.

From golden tones to more ashy tones. I've been both! 8D but don't use me as reference.

Some people look better with a more warm tone (warmer-gold tones) while others looks better with a more lighter cool ash tones.

It all depends on your skin tone.

So before you pick up a packet of bleach and peroxide and start bleaching the crap out of your hair, stop and check your skin tone and what are your skins undertones.

Those with pink or blue skin undertones fall into the cool category. This means that hair colors that have a cool overtone will generally look much more natural on you. When I say 'cool tones' that usually falls in the category of anything with the name 'Ash' on it.

While obviously those with darker tones in their skin are best to stick with a more warm tone. This rule isnt always 100% full proof on anyone and everyone. I'd suggest using swatches and placing it against your face to try and test out what color would be best on you. Since sometimes, someone who is pasty white like white rice wouldnt look good with anything ashy as it would simply wash them out even more! Golden tones help bring warmth to the skin and gives it a more natural glow.

I personally have red undertones in my face - so something warmer works for me, but! I've been bleach blonde and SILVER before 8D

how did I get away with it? Simply my dears - Makeup. Proper makeup application. I used the proper primer and base to cancel out all my nasty red tones in my face to give my skin a more 'cool' tone to it. You wouldnt catch me walking outside without so much as a base foundation on my face when I had blonde hair ahahaha.

So just keep that in mind when picking the level and tones of 'blonde' you want to be 8D

anyways, lets move on before I continue to blab some more! I'm going to go ahead and throw myself out there and use myself as an example. I am 100% Asian born with 100% DARK black hair 8D

Examples of how much I've killed my hair, probably not THE best examples :D but its better than slapping this post with photos of ageha models who are clearly not human and photoshopped to prettyness >D (no, I'm not bashing on those models, they are gorgeous, too gorgeous that its harder for us everyday folks to try and see ourselves are.../: )

so onto how to get your hair that light 8D

first of all, bleach can and WILL damage your hair, lightening your hair to this extreme levels will result in alot of breakage, throughout the whole process I think I lost a good 4" in lenght /:

(only because I went SILVER, I'm sure I could have save myself some breakage had I not pushed to bleach it silver :D kekeke) but again, the breakage differs from each and everyones hair and how much you're hair can personall take.

what you will be needing:

Gloves

Plastic Bowl & Applicator Brush

Plastic Processing Cap (or a shower cap but I prefer the plastic ones you can get locally at your beauty supply store)

Bleach

Vol. 30-40 developer (refer to my previous post on developers for info on the difference and what do they do exactly)

Foil (optional)

Plastic Cape & Towels

Hair Mask/Deep Conditioners (my personal favorite and go to is Ion Keratin Reconstructive Mask)

Vol. 20 + Toner OR the hair dye of your choice (depending on how lighter/darker of a tone it is, you'd want to get a vol. 10 or 20, again refer to my previous post on developers)

Plastic Clips

How to get started:

Mixing the product: Mix your Bleach and Developer in a clean plastic bowl. Follow the instruction on your bleach packet, but more often than not, they will be asking for 1:1 ratio. That means, 1 part bleach to 1 part Developer. For those of us who aren’t too keen on math, that usually means, for 1 cup of powder bleach, you drop 1 cup of developer in. Easy enough? Mix! :D It shouldn’t feel too watery or runny, if its TOO watered down, its going to be a hot mess! You want a nice good consistency- like cake batter :D ahaha. A good way to test how ‘thick’ your mix is, if you dip your brush into it, and lift it up, if the product is thick enough, it wont simply FALL off the brush. So you know you have a good consistency and it wont just drop everywhere!

Drape a towel around your neck and another one behind you, (so you will need 2 towels)

The 2^nd towel should be tucked into the back of your shirt, the first one should be wraped around your neck. Drape your plastic cape on, you usually wanna wear 2 towels incase the first one doesn’t catch any bleach residue falling into your shirt! :o which would definitely suck. The cape is optional but I always suggest picking one up since their super cheap anyway at your local beauty supply store. Or just get a big towel. But plastic capes are definitely the best since their easier to clean!

Onto the hair!

First, you wanna section your hair off in 4 different sections or regions, it just simply makes it easier to do it and allows you to do cleaner and easier partings to properly distribute the product onto your hair. If you have sensitive scalp, I suggest definitely using Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer and to wash your hair previously with COLD water, thus closing the hair cuticles and minimizing the ‘burning’ sensation in your hair.

Starting in your back section, you wanna try and do nice clean partings, small partings layer by layer and apply the product half an inch away from the scalp to the end.

Why away from the scalp? As explained before in my previous post, you wanna start away from the scalp first since Hydrogen Peroxide, or developer reacts to heat, and well, clearly your scalp produces heat :D!

So if you ever noticed, if you do your roots-end application, your roots tend to always be a lot lighter then the rest of your hair? Well, that’s why! :D

So go ahead and go all around your hair, and in the last 20 mins of processing, you wanna apply some bleach to the roots where you left off, again starting at the back to the front sections again .

Once you’re done with that, you wanna cover your hair with a processing cap, to help keep the heat in and keep the bleach from drying out, once it dries out, then you’re pretty much done processing /:

Bleach/Dye usually is done processing at 40 mins to 60 mins. So no point in trying to leave bleach on your head for an hour and half, since most likely the bleach has dried out already.

Another option, since I mentioned foil in the above materials is, well, as you apply the bleach half an inch away to the ends, you can wrap hair in foil to help keep it moist and this also helps process the bleach faster, keep it moist and not dry out so much faster and also helps differentiate layer by layer – making root application a lot easier. Since you just need to lift one foil, after the other and sneak your brush through to the roots and apply the bleach there :D

After processing, you want to go ahead and rinse off your hair, shampoo and condition as always. Then dry.

Most Asians will most likely end up with either brassy orange hair to yellow.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v93/cruelangel45/?action=view&current=zomfgblonde.jpg

This photo above is my hair going from Brown to Blonde, this was done with I believe 1-2 bleachings, with vol. 40 and purple shampoo, I haven’t toned my hair yet at this point.

Again, how much your hair will lift can definitely vary, please refer to my previous post on Hydrogen Peroxide levels, I have a level chart there that talks about the different levels of hair and color and whatnot.

I got this light personally because my hair as already a BROWN shade and not VIRGIN BLACK. So it only took me 2 bleachings at the most using vol. 40 developer to achieve this color.

Now usually at this point I can choose to pick a blonde dye to throw over my hair, which would also help tone out the yellowness, or I can continue to bleach it one more time and then apply purple-blue toner to achieve and platinum or white blonde color.

What are toners and how do I use them?

Toners comes in different shades, ranging from blue, purple, green and etc. what they basically do is, when applied with developer and applied to hair, basically cancels out the contributing pigments.

At the above photo, you can clearly tell I had Orange and Yellow underlining pigments.

To get a ‘pure’ color, you definitely want to cancel those out, so if I wanted to continue going blonde (depending on how much orange/yellow I have in my hair, it would also depend on the toner I need)

I would go ahead and use a purple-blue toner, my personal favorite is Wella White Lady, since it has both purple and blue in it to help cancel out all the yucky yellow and orange tones in my hair.

I personally don’t tone my hair tillI get it to this level of lightness. Since after 1 bleaching, and my hair is at that loooovely orange stage, the toner wouldn’t do anything or even budge it.

Toners have instructions in them so I wont bore you guys with any more info on them.

For my next post, I will go over some products for us wannabe blondors :B and the difference in different ‘bleach products’ and etc. Since this post has definitely gone pretty long already

Hydrogen Peroxide

What is 'Hydrogen Peroxide'?:

Hydrogen peroxide, developer or activator is the 'white' stuff you use to mix and activate your hair dye to turn it into hair dye prior to slapping it on your hair :D

It is H202, and it is a oxidizing agent that you use to mix with an oxidative agent such as Hair Dye. It supplies the needed oxygen the dye needs to pretty much 'activate' it. PH levels usually range between 2.5 to 4.5 When mixed together with the dye and applied to the hair, the activator reacts and 'opens' up the hair cuticles to allow the hair dye to penetrate the hair shaft. The higher the level of the developer, the higher the your color will 'lift'
You mentioned different names and forms?

Most places/people call Hydrogen Peroxide 'developer' or 'activator' as described above.
It comes in different forms, such as your regular basic liquid cream form (white liquid), gel (clear liquid. I personally dont like using gel as it tends to be runny) and sometimes even a heavier cream version which is best used for when bleaching your brows :D as its a thicker consistency allowing no drips or drops at all!

Levels and their usages:
H202 comes in different levels, the most basic levels you'll be able to access through your local beauty supply sheps are vol. 10-40. and Yes, they DO make developers as high as vol. 50 and 60 BUT are never advisable to be used at all! :O so dont worry about those, unless you are a licensed cosmetologist, you wouldnt be able to access anything higher than 40. And most places wont even sell you vol. 40)

Vol. 10 - Used to enhance ones own natural hair color, it doesnt 'lift' your hair color at all but it definitely works for depositing color and using it to enhance your natural shade. This developer gives the least amount of damage or NO damage at all considering its not even strong enough to open up the hair shaft.
I always suggest this to anyone who has pre-lightened hair and wants to go darker.
ie: When a friend went from black to blonde (and we all know when asians bleach their hair, is usually pretty yellow), she wanted to go 3-4 shades darker but still remain in the blonde range. So we used vol. 10 + the dye. Mixed them accordingly and reapplied to her hair.

Vol. 20 - most standard of the developers, this is the one most commonly used in boxed dyes (usually the ones that comes in the boxes are alittle bit more dilluted), this is also the developer used for full gray coverage. This would lift your hair 2 shades.
its strong enough to open up the hair cuticles and deposit the dye just enough but not too strong that it'd completely open up the hair shaft.

Vol. 30 - Use this for alittle bit more of a KICK to your hair lifting, this would lift you up atleast 3 volumes and is most commonly used with 'Hi Lift Colors' Most commonly adviced when using L'oriel high lift colors, per box instruction

Vol. 40 - Highest max lift in 1 step. This would lift you a nice 4-5 shades in one step.
I highly advice this for anyone going Blonde :B since it def helps lift you up a good 4-5 shades.
I wont go into detail in regard to 'how do I lift my hair to blonde blablabla, atleast not on this post. :D I'll go into it much more detailed in a different post. This is just a basic break down on Developers and what they do and whatnot.

What are the 'hair levels' you're talking about?
Your hair comes in 10 different 'shade levels'. Most Asians are either a level 1 or 2. Which is Black or Dark Brown. When 'lifting' your hair, you can use this chart as a guide to see how 'high' you wanna go:

Photo provided from Clairolpro.com


Will using a higher level above 10 be damaging to my hair?
Yes. The higher the level you're using, the stronger the chemical is, harsher it is on your hair, seeing as the higher the level the more it opens up your hair shaft.

As seen in the photo below, provided by hairfinder.com (found via google images)


the higher the developer, the more it 'raises' or opens up the hair to allow maximum porosity. The stronger the developer, the more it blasts or raises the hair cuticle which in turn, does damage your hair more and more making your hair feel more dry and course since you're taking out all that moisture and nourishment. So I always suggest babying your hair with masks and deep conditioners to try and close the cuticle and restore moisture.
When looking for a conditioner or hair masks, try to find ones that has 'Keratin Protein' in it.
keratin protein is basically the compound your hair is made out of and is very healthy for your hair to try and get as much of that keratin protein back into your hair.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Hello and Welcome lovely ladies and Gents

My apologies for the barebones of the blog. Theres still so much work that needs to be done in regard to polishing up the layout but most importantly, getting content in here!
I'm slowly working on adding as much content as I can.

Among the following that I have in mind that I will be posting about within the next couple days are:

• Developers and their different levels
• Box Dyes vs Mixing your own portions (getting your own kit at sally's)
• Achieving unnatural hair colors (yes from Asian hair :D)
• fading your dye!
• prepping your hair for a dye job
• Swimmers and Chlorine! :O and why their color never works on them/why their color fades too quickly
• tutorials on achieving _____ color
• Japanese Brands vs US Brand Box Dyes
• Wigs & Extensions and their care
• ASIANS GUIDE TO GOING LADY GAGA BLONDE :O