Cutting and stripping

So I recently had a bit of my hair cut off. Not a whole lot, maybe like 2 inches. My friend Cate did an excellent job last time she cut my hair so she's now officially one of the only people I will let come anywhere near my noggin with scissors. She put in layers last time and maintained it again. I've noticed it's much more flowy that way as opposed to the straight along the bottom blunt cut.

Before, left. After, right.

As you can tell, she didn't take much off. Just enough to go from below my waist to at my waist. It wasn't really frayed at the ends, I just wanted to clean it up a bit since I want to dye it soon.

Speaking of dyeing! I needed to strip what was remaining of the green out of my hair. The cut got the moldy green colored tips off, but the rest of my hair still had kind of an olive hue to it.

A couple before stripping (but after cutting!) pics:

And as a better indicator of just how green the underside of my hair still was, check out my braids the day after getting it cut:

I used the same color remover as I had when I went from red to green: One 'n Only Colorfix. I liked how well it removed my permanent red and so decided to give it a shot on my semi-permanent green. It warns on the instructions it is designed mostly to remove oxidative dyes (permanent) and not direct dyes (semi-permanent). So I knew going into this that it might not work at all. What I like is that it doesn't bleach or lift, it just removes color. I don't ever want to bleach my hair again.

Here's me just before applying the stripper. One side of my hair is just un-braided. The other side is unbraided and brushed for hilarious effect:

I followed the directions for the most part just as they tell you to for what they call "partial" color correction. Meaning I used One part of the Color Reducer + One part Conditioning Catalyst + 4 parts shampoo. In a normal haircolor applicator bottle, that came to 1 oz each of the color reducer & catalyst, 4 oz of shampoo (I used my Biolage Normalizing shampoo) for a total of 6 oz out of the 8 that the applicator holds. Because I washed my hair and towel dried it before applying this concoction, it saturated pretty quickly. I had 2 oz of each of the color reducer & catalyst left, so I mixed the rest of those alone in the applicator bottle and applied the rest of that to my head. I kneaded, combed, and pretended to wash my hair (well I guess technically I was) there at the sink.

Here I am with it all fully worked into my hair and with a processing cap on:

I let this sit in my hair for about an hour. Let me mention here that this stuff reeks. Not a normal chemical reeking either, it's a very unique ass-smell. And it does not go away for the first few washes. One downside I guess. I just washed my hair for the second time and its still pretty dang stinky. All I can recommend is to use some leave in hair conditioner that smells nice to try to cover up the smell. I'm using Josie Maran Argan Oil right now (more on that in another post).

After letting it set, I washed it out very thoroughly in warm water. I used my normalizing shampoo that I love for exactly such applications. Then conditioned liberally with my moisturizing conditioner. I don't feel like this stuff is as harsh as a bleach is but it doesn't seem like a bad idea to really baby your hair after processing it with this.

Here I am the next day with my hair all dried.

As you can tell, it did dramatically lighten the green in my hair. It didn't bleach my roots either. Those are light enough - that weird border between blonde and brown. However, it did not completely get rid of the green. Also however though, it got rid of enough that when I apply my red permanent hair dye, there should be absolutely no issue. I think the last time I did this, I did a different ratio of shampoo to the stripping chemicals. The key point in both instructions (for both full and partial color correction) was that you use equal parts color reducer & catalyst. As long as you do that, you can cut in as much or little shampoo as needed depending on how much or how little color you want to remove. I perhaps should have done a 1:1 ratio of chemicals to shampoo rather than a 1:2. For those of you confused about the math there, I should have used 2 oz color reducer, 2 oz color catalyst, 4 oz shampoo rather than the 1 oz, 1 oz, 4 oz I did use this time around. Also, it says to put on dry hair for more color reduction. That part sounds a bit harsh though.

More to come on dyeing it red very very soon.