Blue & Green

I Bought This

My prelude to split hair.

I'm very hesitantly trying Manic Panic with low expectations—it's that notorious fade and other things that make the hair community cringe. (I swear, every time I've seen someone with Manic Panic hair, it just looks awful—extremely fluffy like it was very, very severely over-processed then they didn't care to do a treatment of some sort and the dye, which claims its conditioning, did nothing to re-hydrate it even a little bit!)

Anyway, the reason I opted for MP over Ion Color Brilliance, Jerome Russell PUNKY COLOURS, or Special Effects are varied.

• Ion doesn't have the colors I need for my green. I still love Ion, but their selection is a bit limited currently! (I do know for a fact that they will be expanding their line in the future.) I hope that the colors they plan to release are mind-blowing.

• PUNKY COLOURS are very, very limited at Ulta. It's a bit pricey to get them online, which I'm not a fan of unless it's a color I really, really want. I admit I'm a cheapo.

• Special Effects are both costly and limited right now—I can't find Bright as F#@$ Yellow (yes, that's the real name) or Limelight locally or online. They're a bit of an odd company, really...

• The single dye I could buy for my green would take about 2 weeks to get here from the UK and I'm not entirely sure that would be considered "safe." (Royal Mail did destroy a bunch of Illamasqua packages for containing nail varnish, after all, and I don't want to think what they might do about a hair dye.) A friend of mine recently had a bad experience with Stargazer as well, and we aren't sure exactly why.

Manic Panic has the green I need, and it's easily available at Sally's (and Hot Topic, but Sally's is cheaper with their card and somewhat closer). Two bottles of Special Effects is $30+, and with gas as well as parking for the store I go to... It's a lot. Not fun!

I used Electric Lizard, with just a little bit of conditioner up the back to lighten it ever-so-slightly since Lizard on it's own is extremely bright and I wanted to tease out the yellow base so give the hair a little dimension. (Think cartoon radiation, but with the brightness set on high.) The blue is Teal from Ion Color Brilliance Brights, which has sadly been discontinued. They may bring it back and I hope so! I added a little conditioner stretch the color and dilute it a little to create a contrasting, lighter blue. I love that this Teal has the right amount of green in its base while actually being a blue-teal overall.

Ewww greasy roots ~ I'm about to refresh Electric Lizard and just wanted to show what it looks like faded!

The photo here is about 3 weeks after I initially dyed it. I learned Manic Panic bleeds when protein treatments are used, but I don't know if this is true of all of their colors or just Electric Lizard. I've never had a color seriously fade so fast (specifically the ends, where it was pure instead of slightly diluted by conditioner). This is why I really don't use Manic Panic EVER: the notorious fade. I also didn't find it very conditioning, which I usually find with Ion, Special Effects and PUNKY COLOURS.

To get the right look, I feathered the dye by applying it in quick, vertical strokes higher on the head and just smoothed it down through my ends. The rest of my hair was coated in conditioner to prevent accidentally making the blonde blue or green, since I know quite well that Teal bleeds. To make sure I only colored the sections I intended, I carefully separated the hair and clipped the side I wasn't working on up and out of the way. Admittedly, it still looks a little bit block-y and patchy. But hey, when it's just you, working on the back of your head, what else will happen? Especially since I was running out of Teal pretty quickly.

PS: Seriously, dish washing gloves? Brilliant. I now don't get dye or bleach down the backs and sides of my forearms! Huzzah! I hated that so much, always making a mess. Yeah, the fingers are a bit big, but I've never had particularly well-fitting gloves to begin with and the ones that typically come in hair dye kits are so flimsy as well as being pretty big on the hands. They do make gloves for lady hands, that fit properly, but I don't want to spend extra money on getting disposable gloves that fit and with my luck, I'd probably rip them putting them on.
 

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