Monthly Archives: April 2012
Inspiration
Sometimes we need to hear someone else say it!
Being cruelty free and vegetarian isn’t always easy, let’s be honest.
It can even be a bit lonely! (‘´ー`)
But it CAN become your second nature, and even your nature after some practice.
Whenever i’m craving to know what’s going on with animal rights outside of this little city I live, or feeling lonely
.. or just need ideas for dinner (^_^’) ..
I like to look for people to reinspire me.
People I can relate to, so that I know there are people out there that think alike.
And they probably have some new insights! 
About 4 months ago I came across Gary Yourofsky.
Today a video was posted of him giving a lecture at one of the 176 schools he visited across the USA.
This is the Q&A part.
(it comes with subtitles in case you need them.)
He is SO inspiring!
He knows how closely the law, and the government are connected to the economical welfare of America.
But even then, he’s just not giving up at all.
He does is thing, full of energy, kicking people against the shins here and there, yes. LOL
But he knows what he stands for.
His website is an intersting read (especially PETA I found striking).
Also, a very interesting thing he mentioned is:
Vegan food is so much cheaper. Even for students.
If you ask a burrito at Taco Bell without the cheese or meat, it’s dirt cheap.
So no excuses! (*≧▽≦)
Did you know him already? Or is this not your type of thing?
Manic Panic after midnight
The second in my review series! After midnight (amplified)!
Pictures of all the colors I reviewed side by side can be found right here.
Keep in mind:
my hair is a super dark shade of brown, and I bleach it before coloring it blue.
(I descibed the first bleaching process here ..)
I’m not sure what to think of manic panic. The thing is, I loved their shocking blue, it came out so vibrant and lively, and stayed in well.
But after midnight…
I’ll just sum up what I think of this color so you can form your own opinion from that.
☺ pros
- Not tested on animals, and vegan
- Vegetable based
- Comes in a jar, so you can get every last bit out, and get your money’s worth.
Comes with 118 ml even, which is a lot! - The smell isn’t bad. It’s generic.
- Pretty nourishing, not as much as the Special Effects dyes though!
But it got my hair shiny nonetheless. - You can leave it on for weeks if you like, it will only make your hair more healthy because it’s depositing nutrients and pigment in your hair.
- It has a good amount of pigment. Not as much as the Special Effects, or Stargazer ones however. I find that those have so much pigment, that even when you leave the dye on for 4 hours, you still wash out an entire tub of colored water LOL!
- Doesn’t really stain your skin, proably because it doesn’t have that much pigment in it in the first place.
However, like I said before:
If you do have problems with staining, just take a cotton bud and go over the stained areas with some rubbing alcohol.
It’ll get the pigment right off.
My toner did this for me.
☹ cons
- This color is not vibrant.
The first day it’s rich, and dark, but not vibrant. When the light shines through it, it doesn’t give off a spectacular shade of blue or anything.
It just comes off as this undefinable “is it blue or is it black? or something else underneath?” kind of color…Contrary to Special Effects blue velvet, or even Manic Panic shocking blue, this does not wash off to a lighter shade of blue.
It just becomes vague.If you’re looking for a subtle change in color though, this one might be for you. It’s not overpowering at all.
With blue velvet I had people saying “Look! o_O Blue hair!” when I walked down the street.
Didn’t get many comments with this one.However, a warning if you ARE going to use this dye. For the color to show up even, you have to, HAVE TO, have an even base to color on. All the other dyes i’ve used give a nice effect when not applied on a completely even base. But this one just seemed sort of a mess. - Washes out pretty fast. After 7 washes you will probably need to dye again to keep the color decent.
It might stay in a bit longer if you cowash it every once in a while (like this).
The verdict:
The color is cool if you’re looking for a subtle blue, I just wish it was more vibrant.
And let’s not talk about the staying power.
Who wants to dye their hair every week.. (¬､¬)
It retails around 9 euros for the normal dye, and 11 for the amplified.
I would get 2 bottles if you have my length of hair, for an even application.
If you look at the price, and what you get for it, Special Effects is a better bet for your money..
Special effects blue velvet
Blue hair is gaining in popularity, maybe because of Katy Perry LOL.
I’ll write down my experiences with each dye i’ve used. First of all, Special effects blue velvet!
Pictures of all the colors I reviewed side by side can be found right here.
Keep in mind:
my hair is a super dark shade of brown, and I bleach it before coloring it blue.
(I descibed the first bleaching process here ..)
*start shot*
☺ pros
- Not tested on animals, and vegan!
- Vegetable based
- The packaging is easy to work with, it’s a squeezy tube. So you can easily keep it stored for later use, and just squirt some in your hair with one glove.
- It doesn’t smell. it smells pretty good even for hair dye, especialy after you’ve used a bleach right before. Ick.
- super duper nourishing for your hair. My hair felt like straw after I bleached it twice, but having this on there for even just an hour made it much healthier.
- You can leave it on for weeks if you like, it will only make your hair more healthy because it’s depositing nutrients and pigment in your hair.
- It has an INSANE amount of pigment.
Like I said you can leave it on for a long time, but you don’t have to. After being on there for an hour, my hair had an intense shade of blue. - It has Good staying power.
Started fading off after 7 washes. By 14 washes it was pretty much gone.For me, this meant it started fading after a week.BUT, I wash my hair every day, and I washed it with a normal shampoo, and conditioner.What I do now is, put some of the dye in my conditioner.
This is not bad for you, as it is vegetable based.
It won’t dye your skin either because it’s so dilluted with conditioner and water.If you do all this, and bring washing your hair down to twice a week, maybe even cowashing it once? (like this)
I would suspect it stays nice for about 4 weeks.It is still a vegetable dye though, so most of the color will stay on the surface. You will need to redye every once in a while to keep the color vibrant.
- The color is SO vibrant. Even when it starts fading in some parts, it still stayed vibrant throughout.I would imagine it’s awesome to see this fading on actual white hair.
Mine was dyed on semi-blonde hair.
I had dyed it chemicaly before, so it was hard to get all of the color out in one day.However, my roots were the brightest, most beautiful blue.So dark-haired people, don’t fear! Just bleach!This color would look beautiful on light hair as a pastel too, because it’s such a pure blue. (^ｰ^)
Just add conditioner to it to dilute the color!
☹ cons
- It stains your skin and head unlike anything i’ve ever seen.
They thought it was chemical junk at my hairdresser.
I kept saying check the ingredients, it’s nooot! （≧▼≦)When they washed my hair with bare hands, and they turned super duper blue, that’s when they REALLY became annoyed.
(note to reader: wear gloves when washing your hair right after dyeing.)Should the stains bother you, just take a cotton bud and go over the stained areas with some rubbing alcohol.
It’ll get the pigment right off.
My toner did this for me.However, that all is just because there’s just so much pigment packed in there, which translates into the good staying power.
The verdict:
All in all, this dye, together with the Stargazer one, is the most vibrant color with the best staying power i’ve used so far.
It retails around 11 euros.
I would get 2 bottles if you have my length of hair, for an even application.
(special effects should be back in stock around the 20th of April.)
Hairmorphosis
Feel free to skip to the pictures if you’re not much of a history person, for those of you who do care:
i’ll just give you a quick run-through of why the heck this post is here!
A while back there was an issue with vegetable hair dyes, apparently Special Effects had a temporary (read: couple of months) halt in production.
The outcome of that:
pretty much all of the online stores as well as physical dye shops had NO special effects shades left for a couple of weeks, except for yellows etc.
Then of course the next step had to be: people moved on to other brands like Manic Panic and Stargazer. So THOSE blues were mostly sold out as well!
Drama drama, first world problems.
It really isn’t a comfortable situation though.
Vegetable dyes need quite some care because they’re not as harsh as chemical dyes. They don’t penetrate the hair shaft that deep.
They’re great for your hair, basicaly a deep conditioner, so you can keep them on for hours if you like BUT will still stay on the surface for the biggest part.
Your hair will be asking for more color pretty soon.
Here‘s a link to how I keep my color vibrant and my hair healthy should you be interested. OR in case of a second worldwide dye-drought.
Anyway, because of those issues, I could either get:
- no hair dye
or
-only one bottle of the specific blue
or
-only other types of blue.
I managed to keep my hair from being green however, and it gave me a chance to review loads of blue dyes LOL.
This post will be updated every time I use a new dye – hmm I wonder if there will be a rainbow in a while…
There’s links to seperate in-depth reviews on all of these dyes when you click on their names, except for the shocking blue because I couldn’t get hold of enough dye for my entire head!
First up:
Special Effects Blue Velvet after about one week of washing my hair every day:
you can see the part that faded first on the side. it turned sort of brownish.
then some pics of blue velvet two weeks later. It had faded away pretty bad by then (having washed it every day):
It washed off to a purple
The ends went first!
At that point I went over it with Manic Panic, After Midnight Amplified, which turned out to be super dark:
This gave me a pretty uneven haircolor.
(because of me only having one jar of dye each time, so the base of my hair had different shades)
So I used a color stripper to get all of the blue out, wanting a fresh start!
What I was left with was blonde with a green tinge.
Then I threw on Manic Panic’s shocking blue:
Yeah, it turned out turquoise!
I actualy loved it though.
the only issue was that, AGAIN, I only had one jar.
So the bottom of my hair was uneven. It was more green than blue.
So I went to get *ahum* ANOTHER jar of dye the next day.
But again, they didn’t have the dye I wanted. Which was shocking blue. It sold out.
So I went with Stargazer’s Coral Blue now.
The color I then switched to, I kept all summer long.
It’s Stargazer’s UV Turquoise.
All my posts from July up until (and including September) are with this color on muh head!
After that I covered it in green for fall!
It’s Manic Panic’s Enchanted Forest:
I tried the vitamin c treatment to remove my green dye, however that failed.
Good old bleach did the trick, and I chucked Naturtint’s Fireland on my locks.
When that washed out I went to the hairdresser to have it died simple brown. However that turned a little brassy so I applied a warm brown: Warm Kastanje permanent hairdye by Kruivat homebrand.
You’re welcome to check my reviews for bigger pictures and all that goodness!
What do you think? YAY or NAY?
Summer blossoming = awkard dancing!
Ahh I LOVE a good bollywood movie, especially during spring.
They make me want to put on something bright and go jump around in the desert or something!
Current inspiration here:
Besides that, this Easter break school has been needing my attention. And games. Games too.
And my hair!
I’ve not been able to get the color to stay!
Will be putting up a post about that tomorrow, and also about how i’m trying to fix it ^_^
