Accomplishing this feat would normally mean completely bleaching your hair to achieve the color intended, however I didn't really want that color. I wanted my hair to remain brown at the top and have a dark green in the under layers. I could have used other darker greens, but unfortunately for me Sally's only had Electric Lizard in stock. But! I'm not complaining.
My hair is a dark brown in normal lighting a little bit chocolatey red (maybe) in bright light. I wanted to find out how it looks on dark/virgin/unbleached hair, but to no avail did I find anything. I saw posts for red, purple and blue. No green!! So I went out on a whim and decided to be my own test subject.
I could have bleached my hair but it scares me too much since my hair is really thin. I mean it's really healthy and shiny, just too thin!! So what I did, with the help of my lovely mother, is do two test strands before the plunge. One with just the dye and the other with developer (10) and the dye. An associates at Sally's recommended using the developer to help make my hair more porous but it really didn't do anything. I googled afterwards to see if this was recommended and it wasn't, but I tried it anyways. I read that washing hair with baking soda helped make it more porous because a higher, more alkaline pH opened the hair cuticles which would let the color stay in longer but I didn't try that. The lady at Sally's tried to give me a lecture on pH values, but little does she know I passed all the basic chemistry courses at my uni with A's. So I indulged her and listened to her wisdom.. lol. Well anyways the strands came out dark, but noticeably green coloured in the sunlight. The one with developer really wasn't as bright as the normal strand, but I digress.
Let me also state that I washed my hair with only shampoo before all of this and dried it with my hair dryer! I know it's better to dye hair with oils in it but that's the first direction on the dye to shampoo your hair, so I complied! After the strand tests, I sectioned off pieces of my hair and had my mother help out with the application process and waited about 2-3 hours before I couldn't stand waiting any longer! I washed it out with COLD water, and used an
Ion color defense after-color sealer to help. I also used a mixture of half water and half vinegar to rinse the dye out (a lower pH helps seal the cuticles, the more you know right!).
I dried my hair, and honestly the results weren't as spectacular as I had imagined they'd be. I knew it wouldn't be the vibrant color, but I just thought it'd be a tiny bit more noticeable in normal lighting. It's already night now, so I can't see the color in my normal hair but I think I have deluded myself into thinking I can see a little bit of green with some yellow bits. My mother says otherwise, she thinks it all blends in. I tried it with flash to photography and I was more pleased with the results:
It's pretty bright here, but not in normal light. This is the look I kind of wanted because I'm not ballsy enough to go all the way with the electric green (one day I will be!!).
Looks a little uneven with the yellow kind of showing through, but my mother swears it looks even.
I got some of the dye on my ear :-( that's ok though! The green makes me feel like my hair looks dirty in this picture, so I don't know if I'm completely in love with it yet!
End Result: I like it somewhat. The color shows up on my hair which is actually pretty dark (these pictures make my hair look lighter than what it really is, I think it's just the shine being misleading). It looks like the dark green I wanted!
My Thoughts: I think if someone wanted to use color dye in their hair but is afraid to dye or bleach their hair, they should still totally go for it. The Manic Panic dyes are semi permanent so they will wash out, but you still had a hint of color that pops through.
If you want another color just google Manic Panic dye on unbleached hair and you'll get a ton of results but in my case there were no results for green! So I hope I helped someone out there!
:-)
EDIT 09/20/2014
I never updated this, but as it's my most popular blog post I might as well! The color lasted a good 1-2 months MAX but my hair grows really quickly and I'm always cutting a good inch off every other week, so I'm not sure what the long term results could have been, but these are some photos as to what it looked like in sunlight:
Sorry for my disgusted face in the first photo.. lol but it was bright outside. So it showed up in daylight as what I would describe as a spinach color haha. I liked it while it lasted. I have now bleached my hair (professionally) to attempt ombré. I have been tempted to use the left over manic dye and put green in my hair but we'll see!
EDIT 01/01/2015
I forgot to include I made a second post on this product
here!
:-)
