Going Lighter

Today I decided to go lighter on my hair color. I was going to wait another week, but I'm just oh so impatient. Two days ago, I did a test strand and it came out maybe a light medium brown. Even though the box is really light brown, I knew it wasn't going to come out that light.

People always say its so bad to use a box dye and that you should get it done professionally. I have to disagree, because it would have most likely came out the same just more expensive. I mean they're pretty much using the same chemicals in your hair, unless of course a salon has some magic hair dye that doesn't use harsh chemicals at all..? Yeah fat chance!
STORY TIME. I was having a conversation with a friend one day about bleaching hair. She went to a salon and got just the undersides of her hair done. While I bleached streaks all around my head AND the front part of my hair (and dyed it pink.) She kept going on and on about how bad it was that I did it at home and how I should get it professionally done before my hair starts to get damaged. I just nodded and continued to do my own hair. Turns out she had to cut the majority of her undersides off, because when she went to the salon again to get it redone. They used a lower developer and her hair turned orange. So they took a higher developer and tried to redo it, but her hair was pretty much fried. Um I'll take my chances on damaging my own hair than having my hair "professionally" damaged. 

Before

This isn't really a good before picture but this was the medium brown hair color on my hair. Its only lighter where I bleached previously. I still felt that this was too dark, especially for the summer. Anyway, I really only buy this dye because of the conditioner that comes with it. Its probably the best conditioner EVER made. After I use the dye, I keep the conditioner longer than it instructs me to. I usually keep conditioner on longer than I should because, since I'm naturally curly my hair tends to dry out faster than straight hair would.

The dye is on in this picture and you can pretty much tell that the roots soaked up all the dye. I figured that would happen because, that always happens when coloring hair.
 What really sucks is that my hair curls up when I'm dyeing it, so I never know what the actual color is until I straighten it. Oh what a process! You can't really tell in the picture, but it did get pretty light, especially in the root area. It sort of makes a cool ombre effect, from light to dark. I have to say, I'm really liking it. Its perfect I have to take a picture of it in direct sunlight for sure!

Final Result!!