Hair color advice

[Draper Mel]

Joi's thread about coloring her hair crazy colors gave me the idea that this might be a good source for advice.

I currently color my hair with permanent color from the drugstore. But I recently thought that it would be fun to color my hair with something less natural looking. Hooray for working in theater! (Midlife crisis? ...maybe )

I'm thinking about coloring the underside of my hair (like from the top of my ears down) with Manic Panic. I already use a copper permanent color, which is currently very faded out. My understanding is that if you already use permanent color, you're less likely to have to bleach your hair out if you use a darker shade of MP, say Vampire Red. Besides, I want to start slowly

The question I have is what order to do the color in. My thought was to do the MP first, clipping my top hair up out of the way. Then in a day or two do the permanent color on the rest of my hair. It seems like that way there would be the least likelihood for bleeding or over-dyeing.

Any thoughts or advice?

[Maria]

When I used to do this, I would use the "natural" color dye first. The pieces I wanted to do in manic panic, I'd put them into sandwich baggies or rubber gloves, and use a "duckbill" type of hair clip to hold it on, and then have at with the natural color, taking care to keep away from the roots of anything that was bagged up. Then I'd clip my freshly dyed hair up to the top of my head with a big claw thing, let loose with the bagged strands, and do the manic panic on them. The manic panic takes a while, so I used to take my glove off by turning it inside out over the hair and clip it, just like I'd done in step one, so as not to dye my sofa Vampire Red, or anything. I just set aside an evening for myself and did it all in one go.

The unnatural color faded kind of quick on me (and some shampoos strip it out faster than others too) so I just would soak it in the dye again on laundry day, when I was already going to be puttering around the house looking a mess anyway. I imagine that it's mostly personal preference, how you go about it, but that's what worked well for me.

[dragon_wings]

I've been dying bits of my hair purple for over a year.
At first I just dyed my bangs purple then recently I did my whole head purple.
When I did my bangs (and my whole head) I'd dye my hair a very light blonde first then a few days later do the purple.
The purple has lasted longer since I dyed my whole head cause I took better care at maintaining the color then when it was just my bangs. The color is fading really bad at the top of my head (where I can't reach very well to begin with :P). I'm now to the point where I'm letting it fade cause I want to get it professionally done next time (I have a friend going to beauty school at can get me in her list to get half price services ).

Eta: my hair nature hair color is a bit of a dark blonde.

[Andara Bledin]

My hair is too dark to dye straight, so I'm going to have to get it bleached before I can color it.

I plan to do the underside in MP Hot Hot Pink. If that agrees with my hair, then I'll do up a hot pink witch's lock.

^-.-^