Highlighting Your Own Hair
I came to a place where I was ready to bring my personal beauty maintenance in house instead of outsourcing to professionals. This process has been a journey, and I will say it's taking much trial and error. This blog is about my experiences with different products, things I like, things I love. Mistakes I've made, successes I've achieved. Advice that I can give for you if you decide to try doing things on your own, or if you're just curious about how to look high-maintenance with a low maintenance budget.
I started the process of learning to highlight my own hair by watching YouTube videos. Growing up, my mother always highlighted her own hair, and that's what scared me. Her hair was usually dry because she used box color and she loved it. She looked like "Blondie." Very bleach-blonde, very sexy and she was not one to spend a lot on anything.
When I arrived into adulthood, I was making good money, so I went all out and spent thousands of dollars to have gorgeous, beautiful hair. I must say, it worked! I had great hair for many years, however, I was at the mercy of the stylist, and that put me in a rough situation whenever I became "infamous." Suddenly the people I relied on to do my hair were no longer available. So, I started learning to do my own thing, and this is that process.
Thankfully with the Pandemic, there are more resources than ever for learning to do your own hair on YouTube. Here is a list of videos I watched and lessons I learned.
DIY Hair Highlights Playlist on YouTube
Tools You Need for DIY Highlights
- Lightener or Bleach (Pravana)
- Developer (Creme Developer 10 / 20 / 30 / 40)
- Hair Color Brush
- Gloves
- Comb
- Foil
- Bowl for mixing
- Towel & Old Shirt
- Lowlights (6BB which is blue violet)
- Kitchen whisk
- Foil
- mirror on an extension arm (at Ikea) mounted on the opposite wall from the mirror over your sink
Mixing the Product
Options
1 to 2 ratio lightener to bleach
1 to 1 ratio
Sectioning the Hair
- Center of the eyebrow(s) for middle section
- Back of head to right behind the ear
Process
- Start at the sides sectioning the hair diagonally
- Very thin so it's not ugly and chunky
- Hair on the matte side of the foil
- Create lip on the foil
- Take foil and put as close to the scalp as possible
- Pulling hair down foil with maximum tension
- Flat brush, start under lip, do not go over light area (In her case)
- Then side of brush, but not all the way to top of foil
- Take foil, fold in half corner to corner then tap. Don't zip lock
- Then fold again
- Rat tail comb and fold corners
- Add a few low lights - bring color all the way down
Questions
- How do you know what lowlight to use?
- How do you know when your bleach is done?
- How do you process bleach at home?
- What are the levels of blonde?
- How to protect your hair during bleach process?
- What about toner
- How to get the back of your hair
- How to bleach very dark hair
- How to handle brassy issues
- How to get the rooted look
- Learn about "regrowth"
- Babylights
- Depth and Dimension
- Blends nicely
- How to lighten dark hair
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