It’s been a while since I’ve dyed my hair. I dyed it Scarlet and Black, or more appropriately “Nuclear Red” and black before we went to ECT for my BILs wedding but I hadn’t re-dyed it since then. Our hair dye supply was greatly depleted as a lot of the dye bottles had reached their year expiration and had turned to a spongy substance, rather than the dye goop that I know and love so well, but yes you read that correctly YEAR expiration, an open bottle of Special Effects dye lasts a year, maybe slightly over without losing any of it’s color capability. If you have them in your house unopened they should last around two years. This is why I tend to buy in bulk and stock pile.

However with a little bit of the Yule windfall money I bought several bottles in different colors: Fish Bowl, Electric Blue and Wildflower the latter at Kore’s request.

Finally, this past Thursday, after our girls day out to watch ‘Legion’ Kore and I broke out the bleach and started to work. Sickness and general ill-feeling meant it wasn’t until last night that I could color my hair. I wasn’t too happy about this, but when you’re sneezing and coughing every few minutes the last thing you want to do is try to color your hair.
I just don’t like being bleached because of the way it looks. See?

I wore the head scarf for a few days so I didn’t have to see it, plus the bleach messed with my hair in other ways, and I was paranoid I’d keep messing with the tangles and knots and break a lot of the strands off. I do torture my hair so; but that’s the other reason I really like Special Effects dye. Once you do get it in it helps to rejuvenate your hair. It’s the one dye product I’ve used that actually leaves my hair feeling better after the dye job than before, and that’s without having to add extra tinctures and serums and things to it after dying.

I enlisted Kore’s help to dye the hair as I tend to make a HUGE mess, and this time I’d remembered to buy petroleum jelly which means I’m not all smurf faced this morning ^^ though I can’t see my back which we forgot to jelly.

I went with Fish Bowl in the front and Electric Blue for the rest, and even with a lot of the black dye not bleaching out very well I think the effect looks pretty awesome. I have had some hair loss which is to be expected, but not as much as I feared, about as much as I tend to lose in general from day to day given I have SO much hair. We used an entire bottle of Electric Blue and about 1/3 of the Fish Bowl. Still I should have enough dye to touch this up once, which means I’ll be like this for at least four months if not closer to six. Unless I get sick of it, which I doubt I will.

If you’d like to get your own Special Effects dye I recommend Amphigory wholeheartedly. They’re awesome about getting you what you want, answering questions and their prices aren’t that bad either, which helps. When I ordered this past batch they were still $10.99 a bottle, it has gone up to $11.49 plus shipping; but if you buy bulk like I do it’s an awesome deal, and I’d much rather pay these prices and wait a couple of days to get the dye, than go to a store and pay $15 a bottle for something which will fade out in a couple of washings. As I say I can maintain the Special Effects so that it lasts several months (they advise 4-6 weeks) but if you’re careful about shampooing and keep the water temperature luke warm when washing your hair it’ll keep at least 3 months if not longer.

Seriously I need to see if the company needs a spokesperson.