#i think i actually Have bleach powder here so i just need developer and toner probably

[punkrott]

the urge to dye my hair rn… strong

[tmntgirlie]

TMNT x Reader

Helping You Bleach Your Hair

Prompt: Heyoo :) hope you are having a fantastic evening/morning/afternoon/timeless endeavor in the void, could I request hcs of the boys helping their s/o bleach/dye their hair? In the process rn and would love some helping hands tysm ❤️❤️

Oh my gosh, why haven’t I thought of doing this one sooner? I’ll try to use laypersons’ terms as much as possible and not too much hairdresser lingo. Hope you like it! (Pro tip: please don’t bleach your hair at home. As a licensed cosmetologist, I wouldn’t even do so on myself)

Leonardo

“Y/N? Hon, where are you- what are you doing?”

“Uh-”

“What is that stuff on your head?”

You quickly explained what you were doing

It really wasn’t that big of deal- you wanted a chance, and you thought that lightening your hair would bring that change

Plus, once you got to blonde, you wanted to try all sorts of fun colors

“Is it supposed to look like cake frosting?”

“Saturation is key. Can you help me get to the back?”

Leonardo gingerly took the color brush from your hand

“What do I do with it?”

“You take thin slices of hair and brush the product on. Don’t get too close to my scalp, though, stay an inch away. That part is supposed to be last, I think”

You never had somebody more gentle working on your hair

You had your fingers crossed the entire time

It’s just hair, you kept telling yourself

What’s the worst that could happen?

Maybe you should have recorded yourself in case you screwed up

You could be the star of a new Brad Mondo video that way, make some coin

Twenty minutes later, Leo handed the brush back to you

“What now?”

“Wait another twenty minutes, I think, then do my roots- then rinse and tone”

“Tone?”

You had so much to teach this terrapin about hair

Raphael

“What the fuck is on your head?”

“Raphie! Baby! I’m just bleaching my hair!”

“The fuck is that?”

You scoffed

He was not in a good enough mood to appreciate your creativity

“I want to color my hair bright red, but I have to bleach it first so it’s really bright”

“Any particular reason you want red?”

“I’m starting to rethink it, actually”

“Well, who am I to stop you? Here, let me help”

You carefully handed him the color brush, hoping this wasn’t a mistake

Sure, he had his creative side, but he wasn’t this sort of creative that you knew of

“Thin slices, away from my root”

“Got it, babe. How thick do you want it?”

You grinned

“Thick as you can get it. It needs to be saturated so the lightener can penetrate better”

“Oh, penetration? That is something you know well”

He was kind of rough with your hair, but was it bad that you liked it?

Little tug here, a pull there

Your hair was probably not the only thing getting penetrated that night

Donatello

“Donnie! Donatello! Baby! Honeybuns!”

Your purple-banded turtle boyfriend ran into the room like it was on fire

“What? What is it, baby, what’s wrong?”

“Can you check to see if I got all of it?”

“Got all of it?”

You gestured to your hair

“How do you want me to look?”

You gave him a tail comb

“Use this, make sure every single strand is covered and that the roots aren’t touched. Can you do that for me please, baby?”

Donatello was certainly up for the challenge

He took that comb and ran the pointy end through your hair, inspecting every single strand of hair

He licked his thumb and wiped away anything that was even close to your scalp

“Isn’t this not safe to do at home?”

“Someone could say the same thing about your lab experiments”

He didn’t respond, just smiled and kept working

“What’s your goal with this, exactly?”

“I’m thinking of going for an icy blonde color”

“You’ll need to go a lot lighter than this”

“Well, yeah, it’s supposed to sit on for forty minutes. Sixty minutes max, I think”

“Did you even read the instructions?”

Donnie quickly researched ‘bleaching your hair at home’ and found out exactly what to do

If his baby wanted to be icy blonde, they were going to be icy blonde, dammit

Michelangelo

“Aw, you’re doing your hair without me?”

This turt thought himself to be a professional

After all, he had seen all of the Brad Mondo videos and bleach fails

He knew what to do, he knew what not to do

Dare I say he had more of an idea than you?

“Don’t tell me you got the T-18 toner- that’s a permanent color! Way too high ammonia for freshly bleached hair!”

“Don’t worry, babe, I got a demi gloss”

“What’s the goal here, babycakes? What are we working towards?”

You showed him a picture on your phone

At this point, he had completely taken over your home project

You weren’t complaining

It was hard to keep your arms up for that long

“Oh, easy peasy! Do you want me to throw in a few lowlights as well for dimension? You don’t want a flat hair color”

“Do you know how to do those?”

“Ooh! What about a balayage? I saw a bunch of videos on how to do them-”

“I already started the all over bleach, but maybe we can do that next time?”

“Next time?”

Oh, he was so excited

He didn’t have his own head of hair to screw with, and now he figured he had your permission to do your head

“This is going to look so bomb. Should I do a root tap so that it grows in better?”

There were days you questioned his knowledge of the world

This was a day where you questioned why he had this knowledge

Again, not that you were complaining

-

A/N

I’ll admit, this one was fun. I could totally picture the guys wanting to help you or being easily convinced to help their partner do their hair. In all seriousness, I do not condone bleaching/lightening your hair at home. BUT if you absolutely must, here are a few tips

Slow and steady wins the race. You don’t need 40v developer to get where you want to go. 10v works just fine

In short, developers determine how fast the hair will process. In my country, we have 4 kinds- 10 volume, 20 volume, 30 volume, and 40 volume. You can mix them (using math, yay!) to get to any volume inbetween or you can dilute them with water- but never use more than 1:1 ratios when doing so! You could kill the developer

10v developer will lift the ‘slowest’, but will cause the least amount of damage and can be stretched/left on a tiny bit longer than manufacturers instructions. As long as you can’t stretch you hair more than 70% elasticity, you should be okay

Follow mixing ratios stated on your color/bleach, but when using bleach, these ratios are more like guidelines. The product will work BEST if used as stated on instructions, but you can put in a little more developer to create a runnier consistency or a little more powder bleach to make it thicker. It will still work

When using foils, you don’t need a cake-frosting thick bleach mixture. You can do with a runnier consistency as long as it sticks to the foils and doesn’t slide right out

Use a thicker consistency for open-air processing or processing just using a cap or plastic bag. The outside will harden, but will keep the inside moist inside

Follow instructions from the manufacturer on timing. Start the timer when you start applying- if you take 20 minutes to apply and the bleach needs to process for 45 minutes, that first piece you bleached will be done when the other parts have 25 minutes to go

And for the love of God, use a demi permanent color and 10v developer or LESS if you are toning

Plus, toning needs to be on level or lower in order to work

Happy coloring!

[dnaex]

About Bleach...

Okay.. so let’s get started and dig into bleaching; what condition your hair is in, what is best for it, the different types of bleach, etc.

Back in January I had my hair as a really vibrant blue, but as I can’t seem to keep my hair the same color for more than a couple months, I decided to hike my ass up to target and buy a box of black hair dye. This was a big mistake. Of course, if you want to go black by all means go for it, but getting back to a nice base color is not an easy venture after taking in a permanent black. 

In my mind, I would’ve been able to bleach my hair once or twice and gotten back to my vibrant blue you see above. But expectations vs. reality here... This definitely did not happen. My hair turned light blonde, and brassy, and green, and still held most of the black. This was a nightmare to me, as my hair had never turned green like this before. I had left the bleach on for 45 minutes after application, so around an hour in total. I rinsed my hair and was mortified.

After doing some research I found a lot of people talking about purple shampoo calming brassy and potentially green tones as well. But the thought of purple shampoo wasn’t enough for me, so as well as the shampoo I made the fatal mistake of picking up more bleach.

I have my hair pinned up, but this was the result after the second bleaching. As you can see, I pretty much got rid of the green. but the brassy colors were still in there. At this time I had no idea toner helped, and being clueless I used arctic fox’s frose to color my hair. Now, pink colors barely show up unless your base color is very light. so instead of getting pink I got a muddled pink roots orange-y hair weird mess; again. 

I was pretty annoyed and ready to give up, at this point my hair felt very damaged and the last thing I wanted to do was get more bleach. But I'm very determined to get things done exactly how I imagined... so I caved and bought more bleach.

Ta-da it actually worked this time!! I picked up a Kiss brand box bleach that came with a toner, but it wasn’t a permanent toner so I didn’t touch it. Instead, I was convinced my hair was light enough to do a silver and again I was wrong. I found a youtube video where this lovely girl concocted her own mixture of silver dye using Arctic Fox’s Transylvania, Manic Panic’s purple haze, and diluted the mix with conditioner.

The results after this one was okay to me, though you can see at the ends my brassy blonde was still showing through. I kept this in for about a week before heading to Sally Beauty’s, deciding to fix this mess once and for all. After some more digging around I picked up the Wella T18 toner with a big bottle of the 20 Wella Developer. Now at this point my hair was pretty faded, but I wanted to make sure the toner would take to my hair, so I did as the lady at Sally’s suggested; a bleach wash.

For those of you that don’t know a bleach wash is a very mild form of bleaching your hair. For this process I used half a packet of Wella bleach powder along with 1.5 oz. of the 20 developer, and diluted the mixture with shampoo until I had enough to cover my whole head. I let this sit for about 30 minutes, after washing, my hair was completely stripped of purple, but instead of returning me back to my base color... I had blue-ish tints near the top of my head.

After this I absolutely refused to use bleach again, but still wasn’t convinced the toner would take to my hair, so I did a little trick that I found recommended by several beauty YouTubers...

1 cup of baking soda

1 cup of 10 or 20 developer

3 tablespoons of dish soap

3 tablespoons of purple shampoo

I know what you might be thinking, but this trick has saved me. I mixed that all together, having well more than I needed for my hair, got on my gloves and massaged it into my roots, as that was the only spot on my hair that needed more lightening. I was a little nervous for the results as my hair was so damaged, but I wanted this to be the last time I messed with my hair for a while so I could let the poor thing heal. After letting the mixture sit on my head for 25 minutes, I took my cap off to see that my baby roots had turned pink.

Now at this point, I was annoyed, and had no idea how that had happened. I sighed with frustration, but I still had one last hope: my Wella T18 toner. And damn do I gotta say...

It really did the trick. This toner was amazing, it gave me the light blonde I had been set off to get at the start of this whole charade. Now as you can see there were some brassy spots I missed (though most of that is from lighting) but I just had to stop then and let my hair breathe.

These were the several mistakes in my hair process that made me learn a ton, and I hope I can help some of you avoid such a frustrating process.

--Danae N.

[bespectacledbookworm]

How to Bleach Your Hair and Not Completely Ruin It

I get it. You want to be platinum NOW. If you’ve done your homework, you know what everyone says: it’s a process, it can take weeks of being brown, then light brown, then dark blonde, then medium blonde, light blonde, and finally platinum. For people who can afford it and have the patience of Mother Teresa, this is no big deal. But you work part time and go to school, and ain’t nobody got time for that! So before you pop on down to Sally’s, or your local beauty supply store, PLEASE READ THIS.

EDIT: for clarity regarding level of damage to hair.

Disclaimer: I am not a professionally licensed cosmetologist, so everything I say, you listen to at your own risk. However, I have been trained by a popular beauty supply store to ADVISE others on bleaching and or coloring their own hair at home, and I’ve done my own research. About three years worth. So, be advised, be warned, be smart. Please. The integrity of your hair is at risk.

If you’ve done your research, and all of this looks familiar to you, go ahead and skip down the section titled THE METHOD to see the process i’ve used to avoid fried, patchy hair.

For the sake of this post and time, I’m not going to cover every single thing about hair color and chemistry, but I’m going to go over some important stuff if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m hoping you’ve already done some research, either on google or youtube. If not, you might want to watch a few Hair Bleaching Fails from Brad Mondo’s youtube channel. He periodically gives tips and tricks during these and is actually licensed. If not, here’s a quick article that explains the process of bleaching that I think covers the basics that I’d like to add. 

[child with natural ~level 10-11 hair. About the lightest hair can really get without bleaching out all pigment to white]

So onto a few basics and info that I think is worth noting:

KNOWN TRUTHS OF HAIR BLEACHING:

To achieve  Platinum hair, THE HAIR MUST BE TONED. More on that later.

The thicker your hair is, the more bleach it can take, usually. If you have curly/kinky hair, it’s not necessarily impossible to bleach, but because of your curls and the tendency your hair has to frizz, bleach can be more damaging. (Or, rather, the damage is much more visible on curly/ kinky/ natural hair. Sorry ya’ll :/ ] 

Fine/thin hair is fragile. TAKE CAUTION. Test strand.

Test strands are your FRIEND. Please don’t bleach all your hair in one go before test stranding.

Bleach will damage your hair. There’s no way around it. You’re hair will never be the same. It will be drier, a little frizzier, more brittle, and it probably won’t hold a curl as well. You have to accept this, and realize that you will be spending a little more to mask the damage.

You cannot repair bleached hair. The process is permanent and so is the damage. All of the products that claim to repair are tongue-in-cheek. Many of them say “Reduces the appearance of damage of the hair” on the back. This is not the same as actually repairing the damage. As far as the Hair community knows, Olaplex is the only thing that reverses the hair damage, but it is expensive, it is only sold to professionals, and only yields the greatest results when mixed in with dye or bleach, when the hair is being chemically altered.

Bleaching is a PROCESS. This is why professionals will have you visit the salon multiple times before you get platinum/ silver. It’s healthier for the hair, it saves length, it stops your hair from looking like spaghetti- Which is why it’s so expensive. But you’re here because you don’t have patience, don’t lie to yourself. You’re probably also here because you want to save money. Which brings me to…

[ the usual bleached hair process from this site]

WHAT DO I NEED and HOW MUCH WILL THIS COST?

BLEACHING HAIR IS EXPENSIVE, no matter which way you go. Product breakdown, 2019 prices:

1 pound tub of powdered bleach (trust me. You want the tub. It’s cheaper in the long run): ~ 30  dollars. This tub will be enough to bleach a shoulder length bob (normal hair thickness) two or three times.

16 Ounce bottle of developer: ~5

Manic Panic/ Other brands: ~10 for one tub. One manic panic is about 4 ounces of color, which can color an above shoulder bob if you have normal/ thin hair. For thicker, longer hair, you WILL need more. So the price for this is anywhere from ~ 10— 50 dollars for first time application.

Brush for color: ~2

Brush for bleach: ~ 2

Bowl for bleach/ color (it can be washed and rinsed)- ~3-4

Toner (wella, most popular toner)- ~5

10 0r 20 Vol. Developer for toner: ~3

Shampoo Toner (less permanent than well, but also less damaging) ~ 12-15 dollars.

gloves: ~ 4

Hair clips/ ties to section hair: free if you have them: ~ 5

Protein masks/ deep conditioners: ~1 for the mask or ~ 10+ for the bottle.

(There are bleaching kits, like the manic panic one and “High lift” boxes of color at walmart, but I don’t recommend them as they usually are packaged with a 40 developer and not one box fits all. Plus, they’re way WAY more expensive than buying a tub of bleach if you have long hair compared to buying five boxes of Feria high lift or whatever at 10 bucks each. And they don’t contain as much product, so. YEah.)

Total: ~80. Sales tax (CA)= 5.60. That’s around 85 dollars MINIMUM if you have shoulder length hair. If you have longer hair, you WILL be spending much more than this. A salon visit will cost about 175+ for a bleach process alone, not including color or toner.

Does it sound like i’m trying to convince you to just go to the hair salon? I kind of am. If you’re going to spend this much money, you might as well just go to a professional, sit down in a nice comfy chair, and have someone else slave over your hair while you chillax. But I gotchu- you want to do this yourself! It sounds fun! Plus, the pride of doing it yourself? Addictive. And the potential to save money? Even more so. So okay. You’re buying all this stuff. Now the other question is….

[Loreal Quick Blue Bleaching Powder. Probably the most popular tub of bleach.]

WHAT DO THESE PRODUCTS DO??

Bleach powder: chemically lightens hair.

Developer: Activates bleach and opens the hair cuticle, allowing the chemical reaction to take place inside the hair strand and take out your natural color. A lower level developer is typically used to deposit color/toner back onto the hair.

Toner: Light glaze of color that tones hair, usually purple or blue. Why? Think of it in terms of the color wheel. Your hair will be some shade of yellow no matter how much you bleach, so you have to neutralize the yellow with a purple to create that beautiful silver/grey/ platinum/ white color. It’s just color science. This can be achieved with long term results with Wella or similar toners, or you can use a shampoo that’s purple colored for short term results.

The darker the purple OR the longer you leave on the toner, the darker grey it will get. Some people have the misconception that using a toner like Wella’s T14 will lighten their hair to grey which is not true. The developer lifts a little bit of pigment out, but it also replaces some with the purple- it doesn’t really lift :/ . To clarify: toner NEUTRALIZES the yellow hue in your hair. It’s like toggling the “hue” tool in instagram editor: you’re not changing the darkness or lightness of anything, you’re just changing the color a bit. 

Okay! So you have these products, you’ve watched some youtube videos, you have a general idea of how to apply it. But..

[Ahh, Brassy hair. The bane of our existence. Katy’s got about three different levels of hair going on here, all untoned and brassy. The hair at the crown of her hair behind the bangs isn’t bad- it’s a nice golden color. But the rest might be a little yellow/orange for some of us. ]

HOW DO I AVOID PATCHY/ BRASSY HAIR??

Test strand! Mix enough bleach using the ratio on the tub, it’s usually 1 parts bleach to 2 parts Developer. So get a tablespoon of bleach in your bowl (parts can mean anything used for measuring but a table spoon should be enough), mixed with 2 tablespoons of your Developer and apply it either to some hair you’ve collected from your hairbrush, or snip a few strands from the back of your head. Follow the rest of the directions on the tub. It is crucial that you test hair that is in the same condition that your hair is in now. Don’t use old hair. 

Okay, so you’ve done that, and the hair still is only a weird orange/yellow color! Can I bleach it again?

Technically, yes. But in a salon, they would make you wait a week or two, even a month before daring to touch your hair again. So I tell you the truth: bleaching it immediately will cause more damage then if you’d waited for a few weeks while using conditioning treatments like moisturizing and protein packets. Your hair will be more brittle, dry, and rough if you bleach again immediately.

But that’s your call. It will be more expensive in the long run, because you will probably purchase more expensive conditioners and more treatment packets to mask the damage.

Just for clarity, here is a hair level chart from Pinterest, showing toned levels of hair on the left and the underlying warm pigment of that hair on the right:

THE METHOD

Okay, so to avoid patchy hair when you bleach, I find that this method described below is time intensive but almost foolproof. It works best on hair that is longer than shoulder length, as hair this long can end up the patchiest. Like I said above, your hair will be damage, but using this method, it won’t be as bad as the “hair bleach fails” that you see on youtube. On virgin hair this process should yield hair that is a uniform color with minimal damage. After you’ve test stranded and found the appropriate amount of time that works for you, section your hair into four sections, buns is good. Now apply bleach to one section of hair beginning an inch away from the roots all the way down, making sure the hair is thickly coated in bleach on BOTH sides (bleach is thick and not as runny as water and will not “soak” into your hair like water. You need to make sure to get both sides or patchiness will ensue). Then go back up and do the roots. Now this is the important part!

LET THAT ONE SECTION SIT FOR THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU NEED. DON’T DO THE OTHER SECTIONS. Then rinse, shampoo, rinse, maybe shampoo that one section again until it is free of bleach, taking care not to wet the other sections. And repeat. Yes, I am advising you to bleach and wash your hair in sections. We can’t do our own hair fast like the professionals can, we just can’t. Bleaching it like this in sections will ensure that each section is bleached for the same amount of time, every time, ensuring a nice even color all around. Is it labor intensive? Yes. And if your hair is still only a level seven after you do all that work, you may have to do it again before you can tone. 

But this method will save your hair. Get your supplies, test strand, bleach and rinse in sections. You and your hair will thank me. I’ve done this, and it worked!... for the most part. I got cocky during the last section and waited an extra ten minutes longer than all the other sections, and wound up having to get a trim, but that was my fault. So don’t do what I did; go by the time you have used on your test strand for. Ever. Section. 

If your hair is already patchy/ has previous color tackle those sections first. I’m not guaranteeing anything for hair that has been previously treated- that’s a color correction and is very hard and expensive to do. This method works best on virgin hair, but not really on hair that’s already been colored. 

If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll try to answer them the best that I can. Good luck!

[the beautiful silver hair of all our dreams....]