notesonpretty

Soooooo, over the years I have been pretty hard on my hair.  I have dyed it red, brown, dark brown, bleached it, highlighted it, low lighted it, straightened it, curled it, double processed it and even permed it, which is really saying something, since I have naturally curly hair.  After all this torture, It’s a  small miracle I have any hair left.  Sometimes I leave it to the hairdressers and sometimes, I lose all common sense and decide to take matters into my own hands

What Balyage should look like

A couple of months ago I watched one too many YouTube tutorials decided to balyage my own hair.  Here is the problem, one minute you are delicately brushing on blond highlights (I used a L’Oréal kit, I think?), and the next minute you panic and end up saturating every hair on your head with bleach.  (Sigh. this would be funnier  if this hasn’t happened to me more than once.)  At the end of this experiment I ended up with really, really brassy blond hair.  The next sane move would have been to go to the hairdresser but I had no time, plus I didn’t want my awesome hairdresser of 10 years to know I messed around with my hair again.  So I did some online research and found out that you could use blue shampoo to “tone” down blond hair.

What blue shampoo looks like out of the bottle

Have you used these before?  I wasn’t really familiar but I picked up the Schwarzkopf Blue Shampoo.  It took a few tries but it really toned down the brassy bits until I could go back to the hairdresser.  In fact, the shampoo worked so well my hairdresser didn’t even seem to notice that DIY’d my own hair (that or he was just being nice).

If you have blond hair or highlights, these types shampoos and conditioners are great if you are in between salon visits and your color starts to look a little brassy i.e. orange.

Here are a few to try:

BC Color Freeze by Schwarzkoph –

Works very well and smells like cotton candy.  The hairdresser I bought this from advised that you should use a regular shampoo first.  Interesting but OK.  Available on Amazon for $14.99.

Clairol Shimmer Lights – 

I’m not a huge fan of the smell, it reminds me too much of mall bangs and perms gone wrong (use your imagination), but it’s cheap and gets the job done.  So there is that.  Available at Sally Beauty for $8.49.

Beauty Protector Protect & Blonde Toning Shampoo – 

This one smells like cotton candy too!  I’m beginning to sense a theme here. This shampoo is the deepest, darkest purple shampoo ever.  I loved it.  Available at Birchbox for $23 buckaroos.  I will probably repurchase.

There are many, many brands that have blue shampoos, these are just a few that I tried.  Give it a whirl, see what you think.

Yours until the moon and back,

Natalie