As my hair is ombre I decided to buy the light ash blonde hair extensions from Foxy Locks and dye the top half of them a dark blonde in order for it to match my hair. It is a lot easier going darker than going lighter.

So far I have dyed the top half of the hair extensions once, however because of how light they were to begin with they are still quite light compared to my darker blonde hair on my head. I don't think I will be able to get the hair extensions to match 100% but if I can get it quite close I will be satisfied as long as it blends well.

The dye that used the first time and will be using again is the Nice n Easy Dark Cool Blonde/Natural Dark Blonde as these are the colours I normally dye my hair to create the ombre look when I went ombre the first time and second. I normally use either one of these because they are very close to each other and they turn out basically exactly the same.

First attempt:

(I forgot to take a photo of my first attempt!)

I had already worked out which extensions went where before hand so I knew what extensions needed to have more dye on than the others. Before I started each layer of extensions I put it up to my head where it would be clipped in and measured where I needed to put the dye. I used Nice n Easy Cool Dark Blonde. I started off by dying the higher up extensions as they would need to be the darkest, I then worked my way through the higher up extensions until about a couple of inches from the top of the extensions had been covered in the hair dye. I left this on for a bit and then added more starting from where the hair dye ended. I kept on checking this with my hair as I wanted it to have the gradient effect that my hair had, so it would match my extensions a lot better. I did this for all of the extensions until I was satisfied that all of the hair that needed to be covered was.

I then left this on for about 30-40 minutes and washed it off after. I also used some purple shampoo to tone the light ash blonde as my hair was a tiny bit lighter/whiter than the hair extensions. I left the hair extensions to dry naturally.

The next day I clipped them all in to see if they looked ok, there was still a colour difference. The hair extension bits that were dyed did look a lot more ashy/grey than my hair turns out to be, but this is just because of how light the hair extensions were in the first place. This is the same as to what happened with my own hair. When I first went ombre over a year ago my hair was all over a very light blonde like my extensions. I put on a dark blonde and it went a ashy/grey colour, I then put on another hair dye to make it darker which worked. It is just because the hair is so light to begin with that it will obviously come out as a much lighter colour than the colour on the box. So therefore it needs to be dyed twice in order to get the darker colour that I wanted.

Second attempt: 

Today (22nd Jan) I decided to dye my extensions again. I put my extensions on a plastic bag on top of a towel and mixed up half of the dye. I thought I brought the Cool Dark Blonde but it was Natural Dark Blonde Nice n Easy. I normally go between the two as they are quite similar and they turn out basically the same colour. At the moment the hair dye is on my extensions as I am typing this. I did exactly the same as before, however I didn't go as far down with the dye as they were a similar colour to my hair it was just the tops of the extensions that needed doing.

The two end pieces on the right hand side is the colour that my hair extensions were with the first lot of dye on, the other ones have the second lot of dye on with the dye developing. 

Other parts of the extensions with the dye on, these are the higher up extensions which have more dye on them. 

I always use a mixing bowl when doing my hair now, I never mix it in the bottle as I find it easier applying the dye with a tinting brush than from the bottle itself. This also means that I can mix up as much or as little of the mixture as I want to. It is a lot easier to do this with hair extensions as well! I brought the tinting bowl and brush from Boots a while ago it wasn't that much at all probably about £4ish?! 

I plan to leave the hair dye on for about 30-40 minutes, the dye is defiantly coming through a lot darker than before but it will lighten when I wash it off. I shall wash it out with my normal shampoo Aussie moisture shampoo I think it is called that I using at the moment. I shall use the conditioner that comes with the hair dye and I will leave it on for about 30 minutes to deep condition them. I shall then let them air dry and hopefully test them out tomorrow! 

If I do find that they do need dying again I still have half of the mixture left that I did't mix together. I can easily go over the bits that need redoing, but I am hoping that they won't need redoing! Fingers crossed. 

The result:

My fringe needs a trim! 

(23rd Jan) I am wearing the extensions in the photo above, it gives me about 6 inches plus extra length which is why I wanted them. I waved them slightly so it would blend in better with my hair and pinned up two sections of hair from the side to the back. I do this when wearing extensions so if it is windy my hair is securely pinned down so the extensions shouldn't show. As you can tell you can hardly see where the extensions are compared to my own hair. The extensions turned a lot less grey/ashy more to the colour of my dark blonde. 

Overall I am very pleased with how they turned out. I even got a compliment from my mom who has never liked me wearing extensions saying that my hair looks nice, which I was totally shocked about. I laughed after because she didn't even realise I was wearing extensions, I don't see how because my hair is loads longer but still! At least I know it looks natural and blends really well. 

dark blonde dying hair extensions foxy locks extensions hair dye light blonde ombre hair ombre hair with extensions

13:28

I have been thinking about having purple dip dye in my hair for a while now, I did buy the L'oreal toning conditioner in lilac a few months ago but it didn't take to my hair as well as I thought it would. I ended up buying some directions on Ebay in violet.

It came yesterday and so I put it on the tips of my hair last night. I put it on about 2-3 inches of hair and left it on for about 15 minutes. I was going to mix it with conditioner so it would be a paler colour but as it will fade anyway I can see if I prefer it to be pale or a deeper colour without the conditioner added. 

Before:

After:

I am impressed with the results, my hair is a light blonde but I thought it would need to be a white blonde in order for the purple to take and become such a bright colour. It looks quite blue in the photo but it is quite a bright intense purple. I am not sure how long it will last as it is a semi-perm but I shall do another post in a few days. 

dip dye directions hair dye purple hair purple hair dye

08:18

So a few weeks ago I said that I wanted to go blonder, I wanted to not have ombre hair anymore dark blonde to light I wanted to have all-over light blonde hair. I had tried with normal hair dye but because of how many times I had dyed the top part of my hair a darker shade of blonde to try to match my roots the light blonde dye just didn't take very well. I decided that I would buy some bleach from Boots. I brought the Jerome Russell B Blonde kit in medium lift which is best to use on Blonde hair. It is £6.99 I think, it is not on the website for some reason so here is what it looks like:

In the pack you get:
brush
mixing tub
instructions
plastic gloves
developing hat
lightening powder bleach
medium lift cream peroxide
conditioning shampoo

I highlighted my hair using a boots tinting brush as the brush that the pack gave you was tiny and a bowl with foils. I just sectioned my hair off and using a comb selected bits of my hair that I wanted to highlight. I had the bleach on for about half an hour, I only mixed up about a quarter of the bleach with some of the powder as I wasn't sure how much I would use, when I needed more I mixed more up.

The results were good, although I did realise that I had to go back over some parts of my hair that needed more highlights. I also put some low lights through my hair to make it look more natural and toned the light blonde with purple shampoo to make it less brassy. When my roots grow through I will be able to use a light blonde hair dye to highlight these as they won't have had any dye on them perviously.

Here is the finished result:

Before:

After:

I would defiantly recommend using bleach if you have had a lot of colour on your hair that is darker than what you want to be. I am no expert this is just what worked for me. I had used light blonde hair dye before but it didn't go the colour I wanted it to be therefore this is why I decided to use bleach on my hair.  The bleach may also make your hair go slightly orange, which is why I use purple shampoo to fix it. I have bleached my hair before and so I knew what I was doing, but if you are worried and haven't used it before I would go to the hairdressers just in case anything goes wrong.  

at home blonde blonder hair hair dye highlights jerome russell

08:12

I have had ombre hair for 9-10 months now, I think this is the longest I have kept the same coloured hair! I did try to go lighter before but it just didn't work. I redyed my dark blonde the other day because it had faded, I decided to go for a brand that was on offer instead of the normal nice n easy I go for. This was a mistake, my hair which was meant to come a dark blonde went a medium brown. This did not look good for my skin! I am really pale anyway so by going a darker colour it completely washed me out. I left it for about a week hoping that it would fade but it didn't, so I got a really light blonde by nice n easy and stuck it on all of my hair. So now my hair is about the same shade of blonde it was before.

The main reason I went ombre was to let my hair grow, which is has done a lot. I no longer need to wear my extensions which I haven't touched since about christmas. The plan was to allow my hair to grow a lot until the summer and then go back to a lighter blonde but to still let it grow. As I don't really use heat on my hair, my hair is in great condition, so dying it a lighter blonde won't do too much damage hopefully!

This is the sort of colour I am hoping to go for:

I love Gwyneth Paltrow's hair in this photo, I don't want to go platinum blonde as it doesn't suit my skin tone but a lightish blonde like this shade I love.

I don't know who she is but she is beautiful! 

Knowing what I am like I will probably go out tomorrow and get some dye... I think I am going to dye it lighter and then put some low lights in to give it dimension. The low lights I would want to be close to my natural colour so then I could just put in some highlights every so often and let my natural colour grow through as well. Or put in some highlights and then if I want more dimension I could put in some low lights later on. I would still have some variety of colour going through because half of my hair is darker than the rest. 

The bottom image is the type of colour I want, the darker colour is close to my natural colour, so the shades would go well for my hair. 

So... after ages looking at hair dye I couldn't decide what colour I wanted to be. I know that I do eventually want to go back to all light blonde but for now I will just stick with my ombre hair. The one thing I did do was I did lighten my light blonde of my ombre so now it is very very light almost a white blonde which compared to the dark blonde on top of my hair I think would look quite nice! I am going to let my hair grow even more and then go to the hairdressers and get it done professionally as I want more than one colour in my hair. 

blonde hair dye hair ideas

11:32

I decided that I would try out the Garnier Olia hair dye in Light Golden Blonde. I wanted to go a bit lighter for the summer and it said on the side that dark blonde would turn up quite light. I had heard from a friend of mine who had used it before that it was good hair dye and smelled nice. So I was looking forward to using it. I brought it from Asda where it was on offer for £6 I am not sure the original price I can't remember how much it said it was.

It comes with 5 things in the box, developer, colour, bottle to mix everything in, conditioner, gloves and instruction leaflet.

I mixed the developer and the colour in the bottle, there is a circle on the back of the box which you can pop out and you can put the bottle in this. I guess this is so its somewhere safe where you can empty the developer and colour into. 

(colour chart is lighter in person)

It did smell quite nice, it wasn't as strong as other hair dyes I have used, normally my eyes water quite a bit from the scent but this time I didn't have that problem. It was quite weird putting it on my hair as it is quite creamy, like a hair mask rather than a dye. I decided that because the top half of my hair was darker than the bottom I would put the mixture on this first before putting it on the rest of my hair. In the instructions it says that if you want to touch up your roots to put it on the roots for 20 minutes and the rest of your hair for 10. I did this for my hair because of it being darker on the top than the bottom. 

I did notice that my hair was going lighter while the dye was on my hair so I did have high hopes for it. After 30 minutes I washed it off in the shower and I dried my hair to see what colour it had turned out as. It hadn't turned out as light as it said it would, my dark blonde was still quite dark it had only lightened to about a medium blonde. My roots however lightened a lot it went to an almost orange colour, and my light blonde ends hadn't changed much at all. 

I was expecting the dark blonde to lighten a lot more than it had done because it said it would on the box. I could of used bleach to lighten my hair even more but I am trying not to damage my hair as I want to grow it quite long. I decided that I would put a dark blonde on my roots to cover up the orangeness and brush it through to ombre it even more so the medium blonde would match my roots again. 

In all this product smelt nice and other people I know who have used it have had good results. It just didn't take to my hair as well as it could of done. 

blonde garnier olia hair dye review

07:42

I used to dye my hair quite a lot which was very very bad for my hair and it ended up being so so short!   I have been nearly every colour under the rainbow at one point but I decided to go for a more natural colour since I have been at uni (so for the past 3 years). For the past year maybe I have been growing it, hardly dying my hair, not putting heat on it being a good girl and so on.

However yesterday I had the 'bright' idea of going lighter for the summer. Well technically my hair is quite light, I mean half my hair is light blonde the other is medium blonde to dark blonde but I wanted it all light blonde. So I hopped off to Asda with my boyfriend to get a few bits and pieces and ended up picking up some hair dye while I was there. (I shall do a review on the hair dye on another post this is just my 3 hour hair crisis). I decided I wanted to go a lovely light golden blonde to look like the sun had blessed my locks. I even checked the colour chart on the side of the box and it said that on dark blonde hair it would go pretty light, to about the same lightness as my light blonde ends! This was not the case.

About 4 hours ago I put on the hair dye, I was excited and nervous as I have had some bad experiences with hair dye. Such as my hair going pink when it was meant to be blonde, and the green hair dye I just wanted on a section on my hair leaking out onto my white blonde hair turning my whole hair green. Yup, bad experiences indeed. I made sure I had done everything right, I decided that I would put the dye on my darker section of hair first then put it on the rest of my hair after a period of time. On the leaflet it said about 20 minutes if you was doing your roots and 10 for the rest of your hair so I basically followed these instructions.

At first it seemed like it was going well, my hair looked like it was turning lighter, brilliant I thought! So when the 30 minutes was up (it was maybe actually 40 I forgot to check the time) I jumped in the shower and washed my hair.

I decided that I would dry a section of my hair with my hair dryer just to see what colour my hair had turned out. 'Oh my god' I thought. My roots which was just over an inch I'd say had turned bright orange. Yup bright orange. I have nothing against orange hair, I have often wanted orange hair but when I was trying to get blonde hair orange is the last colour I want to be! My dark blonde that had been dyed dark blonde (because my roots are slightly different colour to my dark blonde that I dyed the light blonde hair when I ombred it) was still a dark blonde, maybe a medium blonde. It was darker than the rest of my hair, the light blonde on the other half of my hair was fine, looked lovely sun kissed B E A U T I F U L  if only the rest of my hair had gone the same way. 

Now I had a few options here I'd like to think
1) go in total panic mode and cry (which I have done before)
2) put some bleach on my hair and purple shampoo the crap out of it which would be even more damaging to my hair 
3) live with it 
4) dark blonde on top again and ombre it up 

I decided to go for option 4 which I think was the best choice. I often highlight and lowlight my moms hair, she has the same natural dark blonde I do and so she did have some dark blonde hair dye in her wardrobe which is the same that I normally use when doing my roots. She lovingly let me use her hair dye which she had about half a bottle left which was just enough. So thankfully now I am back to my ombred hair. 

I know that I could of turned my hair into a lighter blonde with some purple shampoo and bleach which I have done before, but it would mean spending more money which I don't really have. The hair dye at the end of the day didn't mix well with my hair which can sometimes happen, its how my hair turned pink before when I used a blonde hair dye. I know I am not the only one that this has happened to, my nan's hair for instance sometimes used to go green or pink depending on the brand of hair dye! Maybe its a genetic thing?! Who knows! I am not saying that the hair dye was rubbish because I know other people who have used the hair dye and it has worked brilliantly for them. It just works differently for different people. 

What have I learnt from this experience? Well I know that not always your hair can go the way you want it to, from my many bad experiences I know that it can sometimes go wrong. I would still rather do it myself though than go to a salon because I have had bad experiences at salons as well and it's pricey! I am not telling anyone out there what to do when it comes down to your own hair, I am no expert. This was just my experience that I found quite funny and thought I would share it to who ever may read this. 

blonde experience hair dye

12:20