My Manic Panic Experience

Lately I had been wanting to change up my hair colour. I have always always wanted purple in my hair, in what way I'm not sure. But anyway I recently saw on my FB feed one of my friends dyed her hair Blue! Like Marge Simpson blue! I was in awe, but she did say she had to bleach her hair first to achieve the vibrant colour then used this semi permanent dye called Manic Panic, which I'd never heard about before until now. So off I went to Google it. Pretty much almost all the sites and videos I watched said that you have to bleach your hair in order for it to show. Well my hair wasn't exactly black, nor is it super light as you can see on the right. But my previous colour was a light brown, so I thought that some purple should show up without needing to bleach....right? I am quite terrified of bleaching my hair considering how damaged my hair already is (but I'm not ruling it out in the future). I think I'd love to have a gradual purple ombre of some sort. And this was what I was thinking that I might be able to do on my own with Manic Panic. 

So to my surprise I managed to find an online seller on Qoo10 that sold Manic Panic in Singapore. At $22 not including postage, it is a little pricey, but it is from the US and it's all Vegan, so I guess you pay for quality. After contemplating which colours to get, there was soooo many, and after researching all over the place, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, you name it, I settled on Ultra Violet. 

I found this Hair sample comparison on Pinterest from Manic Panic Japan. I think my hair was pretty close in colour to the far right one, so I thought great I'll see some purple.

The tub isn't very big.

It's like poster paint my friends say.

So I was pretty excited and nervous to try it out. And the best thing from watching all those Youtube videos was a tip on using those black garbage bags as a smock. What a great idea! Why hadn't I thought of that before.

Fancy Garbage Bag Dress

I decided to do just the bottom half of my hair...not realising how weird it would look.

Ok, it doesn't look super bad....right?

Looks a little like a reverse Ombre effect right? Hmmm.....I really couldn't decide what to do. So I sent my pic to a few friends. Some said just leave it, but most said think it's better to do the whole head. So I redid it. And this is what it looks like:

 How bizarre, now it looks like I have jet black hair!! What's going on?? It was night time so I couldn't wait for the next morning to see what it was like under light.

 This was taken with flash, ok, so you can see the purple streaks. I liked it a lot, but shame you can't see it more prominent. 

Next morning, standing in the shade, this is what it looked like. Puzzling....coz it still looked pretty dark. 

 

And then this happened! I had the sun directly shining on my hair and lo and behold my hair was so bright! I was totally in love with this colour, it's exactly what I wanted! I just wanted to stand in the sun all day just to have this colour show up. Too bad that this isn't the colour in the shade. Maybe I should really consider doing this colour permanently.

3 days later after 2 washes, this happened. I was walking towards a building and suddenly saw a spot of sunlight and look, my hair now looks red! But on the right you can clearly see it's still pretty dark. How can one hair colour have so many different hues!

Now my hair is slowly washing out, I don't wash my hair everyday, just every second day (sometimes if it's overly oily I will wash two days in a row). Everytime I put shampoo in my hair, the shampoo turns a bluish purple, so now I understand how semi permanent dyes work. My hair is still pretty dark after a week but I can start to see it lighten up more and I guess slowly it's going back to my previous brown...so now I'm patiently waiting till I can dye my hair another colour again....coz girl, my natural roots are startin to show!

So if you're thinking about dying your hair with Manic Panic, just do it! After all if you're not happy with it, in 4-6 weeks or less it'll all wash out. But here's a few things to take note of if you decide to go ahead:

• Make sure you cover up, this stuff really stains and avoid wearing anything light coloured for the first week;
• Put vaseline around your hairline, neck areas, chin, ears, this will make it very easy for you to just wipe off any stray colours and trust me you will get some strays;
• Although they say use a brush to 'paint' it on your hair, I found it was just easier to dip your Gloved fingers and rub it into your hair and then use a comb to spread it out more;
• Wear gloves! Because it will stain your hands for days! I wore gloves and still had staining on a few fingers;
• Even after you wash with shampoo, when you are styling your hair or blow drying your hair and you run your fingers through your hair, your palm and fingernails will turn purple! Which only goes away in a couple of days.

The best thing about this dye though is that there is none of that nasty chemical smell. No amonia smell to burn your eyes and no burning sensations when you put it close to your scalp. Though it may not work exactly the way I wanted it to, I still give it two thumbs up. But because it's a bit costly, I doubt that I'd be doing this too often.

I know it's been a rather long entry, thanks for making it this far! Happy Colouring!

UPDATE 25/8/15: After less than 2 weeks and after washing my hair on alternate days (sometimes everyday) the purple has all pretty much washed out. My colour is slowly returning back to its original brownish colour. But it's still not exactly the way it used to be, I guess there's still some dye in my hair. I wonder if it'll all wash out eventually? I miss my old hair colour :(

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