Today is a very good day indeed, my blog has now reached over a million page views. To me, that's an insane number. To think that m...





Today is a very good day indeed, my blog has now reached over a million page views. To me, that's an insane number. To think that my blog has been viewed over a million times is surreal, and not something I ever would have imagined when I first started up, all those years ago.





Moving on to the actual post, and it was Eid al Fitr on Sunday, and as has now become tradition, I bleached my roots ahead of the big day. For the past month or so, my hair has been like a beautiful rainbow-esque mish mash of pastel pink, lilac, blue and peach; and as much as I loved it, the topping up and general upkeep was getting to be a bit much, so I decided I'd switch back to platinum, white blonde hair all over for Eid.





Removing vibrant colours from the hair can be a bit of a ball-ache, however, as mine were pastel shades I didn't need to bleach it, shampoo would suffice. I simply stopped my regular colour top-ups and reverted my shampoo to Head and Shoulders, which just seems to eat colour for breakfast. It's also quite drying, so I made sure to apply a nourishing hair mask after it.





I started bleaching my roots on Saturday, still unsure what day Eid would actually fall on (in Islam, we follow a lunar calendar, so we wait for the sighting of the new moon), and proceeded to rinse out that bleach once the time was up. Next up, I grabbed my bottle of toner (Wella Color Charm in T18) and realised there were only a few drops left. Why do we do this to ourselves, seriously? We keep almost empty bottles so long, we forget they're empty, and trick our brains into thinking we have plenty left. WHY?!





My roots still looked a touch yellowy, but I couldn't really tone them, as I had no toner, so I started rooting around my magical drawer of hair things in the bathroom and discovered some buried treasure right at the back, just underneath some latex gloves and a 10 pack of shower caps (can never have enough emergency shower caps in the house). What was this treasure? Gold? Silver? Pieces of Eight? Diamonds? No.





Directions hairdye, in lilac. YES! I could use this as a toner!





NO! That's almost run out too. (Again, why?!)





But that little tub of Directions got me thinking about all of the other Directions dyes I had, and as I was wearing pastel pink for Eid, why not colour my roots pink instead? I had it pink whilst in Japan last year, and I LOVED IT, and I've always had visions of reverse ombrés on my hair, so what better time to experiment than just a few hours before the biggest celebration of the year?!







So I dug out my Directions Carnation Pink, which is my favourite pink hair dye of all time. It's a very, very bright pink, so bright in fact, I don't actually apply it neat to the hair any more as it looks like a Barbie pink and reminds me of her convertible car she drives with Ken. So to tone it down a bit, I mix it with a white conditioner, which dilutes the colour to a Strawberry Milkshake colour.





I then proceeded to apply the mixture to the roots with my fingers, as with a brush I find that the final effect can look a bit too uniform for an ombré, whereas with my fingers, the spread of the dye is a little more uneven and I can start to work it down the hair away from the root and hashtag blend that shit. I left it in for about half an hour, wearing one of the shower caps from my 10 pack, as it retains the heat from your scalp and keeps the hair moist. Then, rinse it off, allow to dry naturally and boom - Pink Reverse Ombré.







I'm really loving the Reverse Ombré, which is kind of like the well known and much loved Ombré, but instead of having darker or natural looking roots that transition to lighter or coloured ends, I thought I'd go with coloured roots, transitioning out to more natural (ha!) looking ends. It's an idea that I've toyed with for a while, and I can imagine that blonde roots with black ends would look incredible, the contrast between these colours would make it striking, and it would seem so surreal, almost like living pop art!