If I've learned anything over the past year, it is to stop thinking I can do everything myself, and to seek out a professional when I need to. My journey to have bright blonde beautiful hair started February 2015 and has just completed now April 2016, but it was a long and necessary journey.
I am very much an 'instant gratification' person, which is why growing up I would dye my own hair, even when half of the time it would leave my hair brittle and orange. I didn't want to spend the money and I didn't want a stylist to tell me that I couldn't be as blonde as I wanted to right away. I wanted it now!! It was probably November 2014 when I had two days off of work and I decided to bleach my hair to obtain the blonde I wanted. I ended up using boxed bleach 3 times in 2 days, and my scalp had never been so raw in my life, it was a miracle I still had hair left after I did this! My hair was incredibly orange and brittle doesn't even begin to describe how totaled my hair was. I knew I had to fix the color by dying it back to dark, but I waited about a week and suffered through work with the ugliest hair you could imagine (I think I actually have pictures from early on in this blog).
Between November and February I had dyed it black, then used Color Oops to remove the black, then tried dying my hair red (which only made my roots red and my hair stayed black), it was a nightmare. by this time I was tired of wasting money on boxed dyes, and I was tired of having severe breakage. So this is when I wisely spent my money to go to a salon!
I wanted to go through this long story before showing my pictures because if there are any of you out there that refuse to go to salons because you want to do it yourself, but you are destroying your hair, you need to suck it up and go to a salon. It is basically impossible to get the results you want from a box and to have healthy hair at the same time.
I went to the salon today and my wonderful stylist Jenny made my the blonde I've been wanting to be! My hair hasn't been this healthy since before I started dying my hair at 13 (12 years ago, YIKES!).
So here is my progression: The photos on the top are from my former stylist, who didn't use Olaplex (or have it) like my current stylist does, and it has become a necessity for me to use it. Olaplex will protect your hair and make it amazingly soft. Jenny would also force me to get at least a trim every time I was there, which was the best thing she could've done for me, as she gave me the best blunt haircut of my life!
It is important to find a stylist you love, and not to settle, which isn't an easy task. The photo on the top right was the last time I had my hair done by my previous stylist. It was taken the day I got my hair done and looked to be a light blonde, but by 3 days later was completely yellow and terrible looking. The double photo on the bottom left is when I went to Jenny and you can see the difference in the color. My hair has never looked better!
Photo my stylist took:
