
I’ve been obsessed with my hair for as long as I can remember, I’ve cut, dyed, bleached, stripped, permed, straightened, curled, plaited and various wild arse things to it over the years and I’m here today to talk about what I’ve learnt, in addition to some tips based on my hair disasters over the years. Of course there will be some funny stories along the way, because that’s what I’m all about and I’m not going to pretend to be a flawless hairdresser/ fashion icon/ beauty guru (definitely not that).
So I’ve listed this post, because it makes for easier reading and I love a list (soz if you’re a regular reader and bored of hearing about this lol);
- Bleach is the devil
I honestly can’t stress this point enough and hope that this stupid gif created using footage from my old channel on YouTube shows you what happens to your hair when you’ve bleached over bleach, which has been bleached and bleached again. Your hair looks stiff, like cotton wool and will take forever and an age to get looking good again. I honestly thought it looked long… like for real, I really thought my hair looked long lol.
2. Regular trims make your hair look thicker and healthier
I convinced myself for a long time that my hair was long, although it didn’t really look long as the ends were all straggly and nasty – but over the last few years I’ve been getting (semi) regular trims and have noticed that my hair genuinely looks longer. I used to trim off the dead ends of single strands during my lectures at uni with my embroidery scissors and steered clear of hairdressers for YEARS! Find a hairdresser you trust and know won’t cut your beloved locks off of your head, I promise your hair will look better and be a lot more managable!
3. ColourB4 smells like eggs and can turn red tinted hair pink
I went through a time in my life where I thought I wanted to have dark hair – but after returning from a holiday to Tunisia, I realised that I was a blonde through and through, so searched far and wide for something which would strip the dark brown, reddy tinted hair back to my usual blonde. I had high hopes that I’d be the bouncing blonde again, but didn’t realise that dyes can stain your hair and it turned into a bit of a gingery colour. My best friend Maisie had done the same thing as me when she was pregnant with her little girl and we applied the ColourB4 to her hair, only to see her hair turning pink before our eyes! It was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen and I’ll never forget the picture on her face when she looked at her hair in the mirror!
4. Use Vaseline around your hairline when dyeing your hair
I did a post in 2016 about What I’ve Learnt From Dyeing My Hair and covered this point in that post, but I wanted to include this because I loved the picture I used back then ;).
Putting Vaseline or some kind of barrier around your hairline makes washing your hair and head after a lot easier, reducing the amount of staining you get on your skin. However, please note that this won’t prevent you from getting stains on your eyelids when you drip hair dye from the bottle (true story).
5. A perm is a terrible idea if you want to keep your hair moisturised and gorgeous
Last year, I had a crazy idea about perming my hair as I was sick of plaiting it every night to get the big old hair that I love to rock! So I did some research, ordered some perm lotion, curling rods and thought, what the hell? Little did I realise how much damage that would do to my hair, or how it would look really weird when it started to grow out. I’m sure if I went to a hairdresser to get this done, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but doing it at home was a stupid thing to do and I wish I had some bloody sense sometimes. I’m a kind of spur of the moment kinda gal and have been known to make some questionable purchases off the cuff (ahem, a car) and it’s definitely something that I’m working on reigning in.
6. Don’t put hairspray on your hair-straighteners
The first pair of hair straighteners I ever owned were a pair from Nicky Clarke when all the girls as school were using GHD’s, so I decided that to make my straight hair last I should spritz some hairspray on the plates – because that makes sense?! I’m sure there’s nobody that’s that stupid to do this, but don’t if you’re debating. It ruins your plates and makes them pretty shit.
7. Don’t hold a curling iron on your hair too long
I was one of the many people that sat and laughed at the girl on YouTube when she was filming a tutorial on curling your hair with a curling wand and suddenly realised that she’d burnt off the section she was curling. Can you imagine how mortified I was when the same thing happened to me (thankfully underneath the rest of my hair) and I was pulling chunks of hair out on New Years Eve at a party?! Make sure you haven’t got the temperature too high on those curling wands people, because they can definitely burn your hair off.
8. Don’t put any medicinal products on your scalp to make your hair grow
This point is completely hilarious and stupid, but I needed to acknowledge that I’ve put athletes foot cream on my scalp to make my hair grow. A few years back I became completely obsessed with growing my hair and truly believed that this was helping my hair to grow, I watched endless videos on what I could do to get it lusciously long before I came across the “magical” cream that women in America were putting on their fannies for thrush and noticed their hair (down there) had started to grow faster, so it must have been the cream that contained miconazole nitrate! The UK equivalent was a cream called Daktarin, but we used it for feet – so I obviously jumped straight on that bandwagon, started sharing my “Hair Growth Journey” in the cringiest videos you’ve ever watched in your life on YouTube, disregarding the headaches I was getting all in the name of growing my hair.
It’s bloody stupid, it didn’t work and my hair grew over time once I stopped doing all the stupid crap to it – the irony of it all ay?
Let me know in the comments below about your own stories and if you’ve learnt some hard lessons about hair!
,natural hair growthbad hair daybig hairbleachbleached hairburnt haircurly hairdaktarinHairhair dyehair growth storyLifelong hairpermpermed hairreal lifestraighteners
I’ve always been one to dye my hair and it’s been various different styles over the years – luckily I’ve always had my hair done at a hairdresser’s and have never done anything myself at home, I’m a bit too sensible but sometimes that works in my favour haha!xo
Char | http://www.charslittleblog.co.uk
I wish I had the same common sense at times 😂😂 xx
Oh god hahaha bless you some of these stories are hilarious! Foot cream on your head?! You have absolutely beautiful hair now though so I guess it was all worth it to get to where you are now!? Bleach is definitely the devil but I can’t live without that white hair!
Alice Xx
http://www.blacktulipbeauty.co.uk
Haha glad you could have a giggle! And yeah, if you search on YouTube for hair growth miconazole nitrate (I stumbled upon it during my mad years), there were hundreds of girls/women putting it on their hair LOL! And I’ve kept bleach away from hair for a good couple of years now, but do love the colour you can get from it – your white hair is beaut! xx
Good tips!
I’m terrible with dying my hair. Since I was about 14 I’ve had blonde highlights, My poor hair! I’ve given it a bit of a break recently but want to eventually go back blonde. The things we do, ey!
Thank you and Ahh me too, that’s how it all started and just spiralled from there 😂
Oh god I remember using colourb4 and it was soo so bad ! The smell of rotting eggy farts and the bright yellow it turned my hair, what nightmares are made of !
I know right?! 😂😂 I’ll avoid it like the plague now!!
Your hair looks absolutely gorgeous now! You can tell that it’s well looked after. Some of your stories about things you’ve tried are hilarious! I’ve never bothered too much with my hair but I have home dyed it and ended up with it everywhere, the Vaseline trick sounds like a helpful tip! x
Alice http://www.accordingtoalicex.com
Ahh thank you lovely, it’s still got some perm damage, but the bleach is aaaalmost grown out now! And Vaseline is deffo the way to go to save your skin – I picked it up as a Saturday girl in a hairdressers 😊 xx
I have had to learn some of these the hard way. I am glad you putting these out for other girls
Tell me about it 😂😂 glad I’m not the only one that’s learnt the hard way too!