Pastel Hair

I'm one of those people that can't get an idea out of my head without doing it.
So when I spontaneously decided I wanted lilac hair instead of my boring dark brown, I went through the process and achieved the colour I wanted, all within a day!

Here's what I did:

Bleaching

My hair was quite a darkish brown colour, so it needed bleaching (multiple times, it turned out) to achieve the platinum blonde needed for a pastel colour to work. I went into town and found three different highly recommended bleaches - I do not recommend this all in one day! Many hair stylists will advise you to bleach your hair maybe once a month. But my hair had not been dyed and barely styled with heat products for about three years, so I just went ahead with it - Schwarzkopf Live XXL Absolute Platinum was first. I made the mistake of applying to the roots at the same time as the rest of my hair though, so I ended up with platinum blonde roots and ginger tips. You're meant to apply to the tips of your hair first and gradually work your way up.

Then I use the L'Oreal Preference Extreme Platinum dye, and that lifted my shade even more to a blondey gingery colour, still with platinum roots.

After that I used Garnier Nutrisse Creme in Ice Blond. This made my hair an overall lighter shade that I could get away with, though the roots were still a bit lighter.

Lilac...

It still had a brassy tint to it so I used a lot of Pro:Voke Touch of Silver products to get an ashy blonde colour, before using L'Oreal Feria Lavender toning conditioner to turn it slightly lilac (your hair needs to be pretty much white for this stuff to work, so it didn't work too well on mine). I so recommend the Pro:Voke range if you're wanting to keep your hair a lovely blonde/platinum shade! It has immediate effect and I swear by it now. Some people complain that if you leave it on too long, you are left with a lilac tint to your hair - but that was perfect for me as it was the colour I was trying to achieve! Yay! I even left it on overnight a few times once I'd dyed my hair lilac, and it brought out the colour even more.

 These are all the Pro:Voke products I own, and I aim to buy more because they're so fab. I recommend using the 'once weekly' range if you want to maintain a lilac colour, but use the daily stuff if you want to stay blonde.

Shade of the weekly maintenance shampoo compared to the rest of the products. The more purple the product, the more it tones your hair, so I use the weekly shampoo a lot. The conditioner is also lovely to leave on overnight (wrap your head in a towel) to achieve a toned but not completely lilac look. It also conditions your hair so well.

I went to Turkey shortly after dying my hair lilac and it ended up turning a lovely blonde colour instead, which I didn't mind, but I wanted to go back lilac anyway.

Pink...

Yesterday I went into town hoping to buy some of the lilac Bleach London dye, but it was out of stock. :(
I spotted the Rose colour and bought that instead. I went home and used Directions white toner to get rid of any brassiness after my holiday, and it worked really well.

The instructions recommend that you leave the product on for 15 minutes - but when I used the lilac Directions dye, I left mine on for about an hour and it still didn't work completely well (again, your hair has to be snow white in order for it to take full effect). So I left this white toner on for 30 minutes and it worked great! My hair turned out a lovely blonde / white colour.

Then I used the Rose colour.

I used about half the bottle and it seemed to cover my slightly below shoulder-length hair, but I think I should have used the full bottle as there's still a blonde tint.

It turned my sink and hands this lovely shade of pink with a slight lilac colour!

Overall, I'm really pleased with my colour now, and although I'll have to top it up regularly as it's only semi-permanent, the Bleach product worked really well. I'll probably end up trying some of their other colours too, like 'Washed up Mermaid' and the 'Violet Skies' I had originally been hoping to find. They also sell temporary colour chalks if you're not willing to commit to something so daunting! I'll probably even try some of their actual bleach products when I top up my roots.