So my husband normally has silvery/white/uber super platinum blond hair. I’ve been doing the bleaching and toning for him for about nine months now.
(I’ve had a lot of practice dying SOs hair, for some reason they think I can be trusted with it.)
This time around I used a WAY too light hand on the bleach, and it ended up brassy. Since he wants a silver tone, I optimistically decided to up the ante on the purple toner recipe I’d been using for ages.
“More purple,” I thought, “that’ll counteract the yellow/orange tones and leave us with a lovely lavender gray, and it’s only Manic Panic so it’ll wash out in about a minute anyway.”
It ended up lavender alright, a beautiful lavender with silver streaks and tips that’s really gorgeous.
So here’s what I did to create this gorgeous screw up.
Most of his hair is already bleached to a level 9/10 (platinum or very light blond) which is necessary to get the pastel effect we see on the length, which honestly, you should go to a professional for. The roots I took from about a 4 (light brown) to a 6/7 (sort of a golden rod color) which was about 30 minutes processing time using 20 volume developer.
Then we rinsed it, shampooed it and allowed it to dry. I mixed about three tablespoons of Manic Panic Ultra Violet with about a quarter cup of Virgin Snow toner to do the brassiest bits (the roots).
After that, I ran out of Virgin Snow because I am absolutely never for prepared for anything. Luckily you can mix Manic Panic with most conditioners to dilute it (personally I like Pantene Pro-V Beautiful Lengths). It makes the color more prone to fading, but I wanted to make sure things were even, so I did it anyway, figuring I could always touch it up later. I mixed about 2 tablespoons of Ultra Violet to about 1 third cup of conditioner, and did most of the length. I also pulled some of the dye from the top through the length in various strategic places to get a bit of dimension.
Then we let it set for two hours (it was supposed to be 40 minutes, but D, my husband, got really intent on "Twin Peaks" and forgot about the timing). Then we washed out the dye, and soaked his hair in deep conditioning mask. Actually my husband did that last bit himself (D is self cleaning, which is as good a feature in a spouse as it is in an oven). Upon rinsing, he informed me that his hair was distinctly more purple than he had expected it to be, but that he didn’t mind because it’s a nice color and would fade eventually. D is also very forgiving, which is also a good trait for both spouses and ovens to have.