Warning this post is long:
Right before Halloween I decided to dye my hair purple. I was having a major existential crisis, and feeling like I had no control over the things I was doing and then while I was at the grocery store this image popped up in my twitter feed:
The always lovely Gaby Dunn
and then I looked down to see this:
So I bought it. But this isn’t what I used.
For those of you who don’t know the woman in the picture above is Gaby Dunn. You can (and should) find her here, here, and here, and other places like Buzzfeed, and this interview that she did with Tim Minchin, which I think everyone everywhere needs to read.
I posted on twitter that I had been inspired to impulse dye my hair purple because of Gaby’s image and tagged her in it with a picture of that dye. She told me that Splat has a tendency to wash out quickly and that she used Pravana.
The always lovely Gaby Dunn’s hair braided by Kristen Mortensen
I didn’t end up using Pravana either though, because once I get an idea in my head I have to do it right now. So I went to Sally’s and bought Color Ion Fuchsia and Lavender, with the Color Ion Color Shield Conditioner.
This is how it turned out:
This is how I got this color: I mixed 1/4th of a tube of Fuchsia with a dab of Lavender in a Dye bowl that I bought for about a $1 and it came with a brush. 
Then I added about 20-30 pumps of conditoner:
And I mixed it all up until it looked like yogurt:
and I applied the mixture to dry hair, put on a shower cap and left for it for 3 hours:
You are not getting a picture of me in a shower cap, only tumblr is that lucky
To maintain the color I wash my hair about once a week with the Regis Purple Shampoo:
and then I make the above mixture using less conditioner and dye than in the above picture and I leave it on for about an hour or two depending on what time I’ve put it in my hair.
When I went to Sally’s recently to get more dye they had the Violet dye that I had originally wanted:
so I added it to my usual dye mixture so that it looked like this:
If you’re wondering why I didn’t just switch straight to this since it’s the color I originally wanted, since my hair is already Fuchsia the lady at Sally’s recommended I mix it in using less Fuchsia and more Violet each time until I’m using only Violet when I run out of the Fuchsia.
and after I applied it I got this color:
the color is a bit brighter than this, it was dark outside when we took the picture
I did not bleach my hair when I dyed it, which is part of why my hair isn’t as bright as hers is. My hair was a pretty light blonde already, but I do plan on bleaching it come summer when I change colors.
If you could dye your hair any color, what color would you dye it?
*I got permission from Gaby to use her photo’s in this post. You should always get permission before you use someone else’s photos, it’s just the right thing to do.