Dye, weft! Dye!

I still have a bunch of Special Effects hair dye left over from my pink/purple/red/blue hair college days. So, since I'm having so much fun with shrinkie highlights, I bought a pack of 613 human hair and went color crazy. It's just the Sassy brand from Sally's ($24 for 18"). I wonder if I can get away with cheaper hair if it's just highlights?



Here's the section of weft I snipped off before coloring. At the top, you see the colors I used (from L to R): Atomic Pink, Mixer/Toner, and Cherry Bomb. The very top is actually straight Cherry Bomb, so it's a little darker. I painted the mixture on, turned it over, painted the other side, let it sit while I cleaned up the inescapable mess, and shampooed it in cold water. I actually shampooed it a couple times because I'd hate that magenta to bleed onto my almost-white streaks. Hang it out to dry, slap on some silicone gloss (where did my CitreShine spray go?), and voila!



That's some bright hair! I can probably get about ten streaks out of it (I like thinner ones so the bond is smaller). And I still have a lot of hair left to turn all sorts of other colors.

Special Effects isn't supposed to be permanent, but on severely processed hair like this, it should last quite a long time. Atomic Pink in particular lasts forever. I used it in my real hair and even bleach only faded it--it never completely came out. So at worst, I'll end up with a lighter shade of magenta. I have found that Special Effects lasts longer than Manic Panic. The Garment District is the best place I've found to buy it. Even with the super-cheap (and supposedly slow) shipping, it takes less than a week to get from NY to CA.

Oh, and I was crazy to think that would only make ten strands. I tipped them last night and made 30 from that eight or so inches of weft.

Kristin, this stuff does tend to bleed a bit, some colors more than others. That's why I would recommend washing the weft a few times before tipping it. You might need to wash it like ten times until it doesn't bleed anymore. My hair is dark, so it's not much of a concern to me...if a blonde highlight turns too pink I can take it out.

I'll probably install tomorrow or Thursday, so I'll report how the color is holding after a couple weeks of washing.

Hopefully I'm not taking this too O/T, but I've heard there are much more potent crazy colors available in Europe than the United States. I heard they're not FDA approved here, but they produce a lot of the Manic Panic and Special Effects shades but last much longer.

Does anyone know about this?
:)

OK, I get it. Thanks for the info.! :)

Here's the one week update on the neon pink hair. Up until an hour ago (and I'll get to that story in a sec) the pink was as neon as ever. I can't tell if the color bleeds when I wash because the color on the rest of my hair is still turning the water pinkish.

As of right now, it's faded to a medium pink, but that's because I used One n' Only Curl Remover this morning (the same folks who make Color Fix). It really faded all of my haircolor, but my hair is straight...now to see how long it stays that way. Anyway, you should not put a chemical straightener on cheap BSS hair...I only did because I was too lazy to take the three strands out, and I figured if I ruined them, oh well, I've got lots more. So, I think after the curl remover, the cheap pink-dyed strands are close to melt-down, but they're still pink.

I do think it's worth a try to buy a bottle of Special Effects if you want to turn some human hair funky colored. Not all colors last really well, however. I know for a fact that Atomic Pink lasts forever--it takes bleach or some other chemical to remove it. You'd have to test other colors to see how they last, but it's only like $10 (including shipping) to buy a bottle from the Garment District (see link above) and there are lots of color samples at www.amphigory.com/special_effects_hairdye.html (click the color name for the pictures)

On a side note, the 613 streaks I bought from Doc Locks would go wavy and poofy after washing, like my real hair, but the BSS hair stayed perfectly straight (this is, of course, before using the curl remover).