Tuesday, July 21, 2015

My adventures with mermaid hair.

Let me tell you that I am shocked, shocked I say, that the only internet tutorials out there on how to dye your hair with markers seem to be created solely by preteens, teens, and drag queens (and that was on dyeing synthetic wig hair with sharpies which, while intriguing, was not applicable to yours truly).  Not a one was by or for Women of a Certain Age looking to shed all pretense of middle-aged respectability by dyeing their gray hair something other than "what I vaguely and optimistically recall being my original color".  Needless to say, that required documenting my own experimentation.

Ironically enough for someone who has never been on-trend in her life, let alone fashion forward, "mermaid hair" seems to be very much on-trend for summer 2015.  Since I've been contemplating doing this for almost a year now, I'll just pretend that I'm a trendsetter.  Unless you count the gray itself, I haven't had an "interesting" color of hair since my sophomore year in college, which resulted in the following conversation with my organic chemistry professor:

Prof: Purple?
Me: Better living through chemistry, dude.

Things the tweenies on YouTube did right:

  1. Fresh markers (lots of pigment to work with; I used some random ones from my collection of random art supplies)
  2. Vaseline on the forehead (I used some Nivea cream, but as I was sweating like stuck pig throughout this process, it did me very little good)


Things said tweenies did wrong:
  1. Opening marker cases with teeth (Speaking as the contemporaries of the people who pay your dental bills, OH HONEY NO!  I did that shit when I was younger, and my teeth are chipped to hell now.  Just don't.)
  2. Not using gloves (purple fingers look very silly)


I seem to recall a hairdresser once telling me that gray hair is very pigment thirsty, and that seemed to be the case with mine.  Despite sacrificing several markers in my pursuit of blue-green hair, the color ended up way lighter than I was hoping (though, admittedly, quite a lot darker than my gray, which immediately made me want to dye my eyebrows due to loss of contrast definition).

Also, doing this in the blistering July heat may be inadviseable, as it may cause sky-blue rivulets of sweat to go running down your face.  I think I may go back into the shower, wash my hair again, and see how much of the color stays.  That said, I like the effect.  I may go for something like Garnier Color Styler or these hair chalk things I've been seeing.