No one cares about this shit but I'm writing about it anyways because I want it here for my own documentation. I had a major colour correction come in this afternoon and there weren't any senior stylists at the salon today which meant I had to entirely whip something up on my own and pray to the hair Gods that I knew enough about what I was doing that it would turn out and that they would walk out a very happy person.
The person came in with an inch and a half of nearly dark brown (almost black) roots, with a medium brown base colour for about a 3 inch length of the midshaft, with a light brown colour on the rest of the mid shaft of the hair, and the ends were blonde with a green tinge from being damaged and absorbing too much ash concentrate from their last toner/colour. The colour was uneven, blotchy, some natural, most previously coloured (with box dye black underneath it all) and the hair was very porous and damaged... and I managed to have them walk out of there with beautiful caramel brown (neutral, even a little on the cooler side, not brassy at all) highlights with a perfectly even rich chocolate brown base colour (that is still ligher than the natural colour of hair on this persons head.) Not only that but the hair actually looked and felt healthier than what it looked/felt like when what I was first dealing with.
I would just like to say that this was my first "holy shit" moment I've had in a long time. I am beyond amazed at the fact that it turned out, because I'm not going to lie, I was absolutely terrified. The formulation for the colour was incredibly complex. I was using a combination of bleach for the highlights (which I couldn't put on the ends of the hair otherwise it would have caused extensive damage,) a permanent colour for the natural root, and a combination of a couple demi permanent colours to even out the midshaft/end colour. When I was colouring the hair between the foils, I had to do the medium brown at the root, then dampen the ends of the hair before I put on my demi-permanent so that the porous/dry ends wouldn't absorb too much colour and go too dark. I also had to take into account that putting colour over top of colour (even if you're using the exact same colour as what's already on the hair) will go darker because of the amount of pigment in the shaft. So I had to formulate something that was lighter than the goal colour so that it would combine with the pigment that was already in the hair to get to the goal colour, but would still not be too warm (because said client wanted a more neutral/ashy colour.)
After washing out all of that I had to tone the highlights... This was probably the scariest part for me being that the root/midshaft was a nice brassy yellow and the ends were a mucky green colour. I lifted the roots/midshaft lighter than I needed to so that there was less red/yellow pigment in the hair so that I could use less ash control in my formula and still get a neutral/more ashy highlight. I mixed a natural based colour with a brown/ash based colour so that there was a small amount of ash control to neutralize the warmth that was in there from my highlights, but there was also enough brown, gold, and red in the colour to cut out the green that was on the ends.
I managed to do all of that with a haircut in 3 hours. I'm really happy with that because 65 minutes of that was colour processing time alone. I did the haircut, blowdry/flat iron in 45 minutes, 20 minutes for the consultation... which means I spent 50 minutes in colour formulating/mixing, application time, and two shampoos (one for the highlights and colour, one for the toner.) I'd say that's right on fucking par.
Yes I am totally highfiving myself and yes I know that nobody gives a shit about this, but this was definitely an exciting moment for me since it was something that would make even an experienced senior/master stylist nervous.
I frigging love my job. It's everything I ever wanted in a career. It's challenging, fun, social, creative, and the best part - never monotonous. I can't imagine ever doing a job that I wasn't this passionate about ever again.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Wow. I really have to get myself downtown. I've never experienced feeling like a hair dresser I've had actually CARED about my care, or knew what it could/couldn't handle. I've even had a woman just take scissors to my hair to cut it without separating it into layers first. Just chopped it all at once right across my back. It was awful. I read your earlier post about hair colour and what has always worried me about it is that it would damage my hair. I've done henna and highlights, but never a full colour. I think I should go for it before I'm too old. lol.
The passion you obviously feel for your job is awesome. I've been reading your blog since before that other stuff went down and it's so (cheezy as it may sound) heart-warming to hear all of your hard work and experiences and how well everything is working out for you.
Awe thanks! There definitely are some hairdressers that don't give a shit (I've met many) but there are a lot who genuinely care about your hair. It's a walking billboard for us really so if I ever do something poorly it only hurts me in the end.
Henna is awful stuff, I don't recommend doing it. I think highlights and a colour in between can be a really great way to create dimension without compromising the integrity of the hair. The demi permanent colours are quite gentle on the hair since they don't penetrate as much into the hair shaft as a permanent colour :)
Semi-permanent sounds like it would be a good start for me. If I wanted to go from medium brown hair to red would the only good way to do that be to bleach my hair first? :( Why is henna awful? It did take forever and stunk like dead leaves, but it didn't make my hair feel bad...
Henna is awful because you can't get it out of the hair. It can also cause weird reactions with a lot of colour products so if you ever want to remove it from your hair, you're basically stuck growing it out and can only (maybe) dye a darker colour, but won't be able to go a lighter colour.
As for going red, if your hair is virgin hair then you could go the route of using a permanent colour line (which lifts and deposits colour in one step, thus avoiding the lightening process)... but if you have colour in your hair then likely you would have to do some bleaching. That being said, if it's a light/medium brown and you wanted to go a deeper/darker red you could just put a demi-permanent colour on top. Just keep in mind that reds do fade. The copper tones fade out nicely, but red-violets (the deep rich reds you see) don't typically fade out as nicely. Demi's will always fade, so will permanents, permanents will just fade a lot less, and a lot less quickly.
Post a Comment