Best Home Highlights Kit???

[BlooferLady]

I'm trying again, because my previous post made literally NO sense in the title...

Can't afford to get my highlights done professionally...can someone recommend the best DIY stuff? I know it's generally frowned on but surely some will do the trick?

My hair's just touching my shoulders and is naturally sort of mid-blonde. Any help gratefully appreciated - I need a pick-me-up for less than £50!

[doglover]

I use the Nutresse Kit 1. Fab! You simply apply with the brush provided - as much or as little as you want - leave for 20 min and then wash out. Very natural and about £5!!

[BlooferLady]

hello! Thanks for that ... is it possible to do highlight type streaks (I am guessing I wouldn't be able to do it as finely as the hairdresser's foils....) or is it block colour??? I suppose i could Google and find out!! and also - do you find it dries out your hair, or is it OK on that front?

[BlooferLady]

Oh blimey just looked it up - that does look good, and easy enough for a cack-handed creature like me...In your experience how blonde does no 1 come up? I feel brave. But also cautious. Eep it's a minefield...

[doglover]

I was EXACTLY like you, BL!! My hair is naturally mid-blonde, too and I always apply it thinly in sections to achieve a sun-kissed, natural colour. I'd hate it to look like false 'block' colour. My hair is naturally greasy - unfortunately - but the colour doesn't seem to affect this at all! Do give it a go ; you'll be delighted! I now leave the colour on for about 25 min at the crown to get a slightly lighter colour there. Be brave!!

[mumtoted]

Model night at a local salon for cheap highlights?

[TattyDevine]

Right - there is one. The Scott Cornwall "Foil effects cap".

It is a really good quality cap that comes with a very detailed book. The cap can be reused many times.

The beauty of the cap is that you can do something called "true toning". You pull hair through the cap (there are many different ways of doing this - you can mark out a "map" on the cap according to the books instructions for a t-section, fine foils, slices, etc etc depending what you want). With a normal kit you would apply bleach to the hair, and leave it on till it is the desired colour but - this can be scary, sometimes you don't really know how it will look against your hair. The beauty of this kit is that you can wash the bleach off once you've reached say a canary yellow, then dry it off with the cap still on, and apply a semi permenant colour to "tone" the highlights to your desired shade.

This means if you want blonde highlights but you want a really ashy blonde to blend with the tones of your natural hair, you can get the shade really right.

Even better, if you have dyed brown hair and want red highlights, or copper, or mahogany, or deep caramel, you bleach up the highlights first, rinse, then apply your semi or permenant colour on top, leave for the allocated time then rinse off.

It takes away a lot of the guess work - when you are actually sitting there doing it, its really hard to know when to take off the bleach. Also, you are sitting there watching it rapidly go orange then yellow etc you can easily freak out, but when you know you are doing "true toning" you don't - you just rinse it off when its light blonde, knowing you are going to tone the colour to the correct colour with a semi or permenant.

Does that make sense?

[TattyDevine]

By the way, if you are a mid blonde naturally, and you just want lightening, you can buy a high lift tint and forget about the bleach - just pull hair through the cap and apply something like this for some lovely vanilla highlights.

If you are already tinted up to mid blonde and want some highlights for summer, you will need bleach to achieve that.

[BlooferLady]

That's really interesting and useful Tatty, thanks ever so! I had no idea such things existed. I feel considerably more edumacated on the subject now. I just need to take my courage in both hands and crack on before summer gets fully underway...

[TattyDevine]

Do it - let me know how you go. I'm going back to brunette next weekend, I'm going to do it myself. I'm a light golden brown at the mo, almost dark blonde, and its great to know that if my brunette looks to "hard" at first or too wintery, I can pull a few strands through the ol Highlighting cap, bring em up to canary yellow, rinse, and then slap some of my old golden brown colour on top to have a smattering of lighter strands round the front - its made me more confident about doing my own home dye jobs, I actually feel like I have more control over what colour I have and what effect I can achieve.