This is a recent photo of me, standing in front of a tree in front of the Armory, which is where I work. Yes, that is my real hair. Yes, chemicals were involved. Specifically, I bleached my hair out with bleach and peroxide (that's the stinky and dangerous part, requiring the hair to cook inside a showercap and eyes to be covered while applying the paste) until it was pale pale yellow, washed it out multiple times, then put on the blue dye. The color is "electric blue" and since I didn't buy it (Faith did) I don't recall if it was Manic Panic or Punky Colors brand. Either way, the thing about the colored dyes is that they are vegetable dye, so they don't stink and are not dangerous.
Alas, they do fade. Technically the stuff is "semipermanent." This means that you better not dye your hair thinking you can wash it out for work the next day, but on the other hand the color will definitely lighten hugely over 2 weeks or so. The first few days after dyeing, the dye gets on everything, most notably the back of my collar, which is annoying. The day of dyeing enough gets on there that I wear a junky old boroboro shirt. The next 2 days or so it still stains but it mostly washes out, so I use shirts that are blue. After that it's no problem.
At any rate, it faded about two weeks after this picture was taken, so I put more dye in (not more bleach), "Plum" this time. That made a great sorta purple to teal fade, it rocked. Again it faded, so I mixed the remains of the purple and the blue dyes together and painted it on, and it's again the cool multicolor fade. The bangs always lighten faster since I have to dunk them in the sink extra each morning.
Generally my MO with dyeing hair is, the first time, bleach it so the color is really bright, but then, since I hate having the light hair with dark roots (a.k.a. frat hair) I just keep putting only the color on as it fades, until all the light hair has grown out and been cut off, so the final fade is just back to brown. Then I just wait until next year!
