Bad Hair Day

I've been dying my hair red consistently for the past 9 months or so, the longest I've had my hair one colour in quite some time. I've tried several different brands of dye throughout this period, all in basically the same shade and I've been happy with most of them. But, as my mother will agree, I suffer from extreme hair boredom. I don't have the guts to try out big changes like drastically different cuts or colours so I make do with subtle dyes.
A couple of weeks ago, I started feeling that same old itch and wanted to try something a little different with my hair. I toyed around with a few ideas and the decision I finally made was that I wanted to try get a little more oomph out of my red. I wasn't quite ready to move on completely,  but I wanted to liven it up a little.
When I was in Utrecht I aired this idea with my friend, Nikki, and she said she'd been thinking about a major change too, going from her natural light auburn to lilac! We figured that the best plan of action would be to bleach and then dye our hair to get the best out of our chosen colours.
After some serious thought we decided we would both take the plunge and have a hair dying day together.

First things first we had to acquire the products. After a short walk we found a hair salon that stocked Directions dye, a brand I had read plenty of good things about and knew was available cheaply online, but when the girl at the desk told us it was €14 a pot, we decided to look elsewhere before making a decision.
Five minutes down the road and we came across a clothes store that stocked Stargazer dye and bleach kits. I'd not read a huge amount about Stargazer but at less than half the price of the Directions we thought it was a safe bet to try it out, so we each bought a bleach kit and a bottle of dye (Rouge for me and Purple for Nikki) and headed home.
Youtube tutorials were the ultimate guidance from this point on. Neither of us had bleached our hair before so we were a little nervous and watched a few videos before even opening the boxes, which was helpful because the instructions in the kit were almost non-existent. We got mixing and helped each other with applying the bleach. It was tricky to work with because of the way the mixture dries out on the hair and having thick hair meant that there were some patches that didn't get as good a coating as others, but I wasn't going for anything more than 'a bit lighter' just to help the red come out brighter so that didn't matter too much to me.
we rinsed it all out after the allotted waiting time and got on with the dye. I started out and quickly realised I would have nowhere near enough, so Arjan hopped on his bike and ran out for another bottle. Then I started helping Nikki, having read up on achieving a pastel hair colour I suggested mixing the colour with a good bit of conditioner, we assumed that this would also make the dye go far enough as Nikki has much thinner hair. We were wrong. Off Arjan went again and brought back more dye.
A bit more waiting and a good rinse brings us to the end of this tale, we both ended up with patchy, multicoloured hair.  I think the problem with my hair was the uneven result of the bleaching and with Nikki's it was a mix of that and the conditioner, on closer inspection I found that Stargazer already has a conditioning agent in it, so it probably prevented enough of the dye getting to the hair.
I didn't actually mind the colour of mine, it was leaning a touch towards the fluorescent side, but it was a fun change. The patchiness though, I could not deal with. I had to wear my hair up every day because there were some very noticeable orangey patches when it was loose.

My hair just before re-dying with the Olia (hence the grossness), you can see the patchy dark/orange bits and just how bright it was! 

Nikki messaged me a couple of days later saying she'd gone and bought a pot of Directions dye and it was much better now, but I decided I couldn't bare waiting for delivery time (having no places nearby that I could get hold of it) and bought a pack of Olia in Intense Red. I've used this numerous times before and always found it came out a little darker than I liked, but with my hair already lightened I figured it was worth a try, plus it's far better for my hair than most of the other permanent dyes available.
I'm back to my usual red again and I'm happy enough, what I actually quite like about this shade now is that because of the bleaching and the other red beneath, there are some little glimmers of brighter red that shine through and make the colour more multidimensional.
I'm pleased that I had my little dalliance with super bright hair and I'll probably try again some time in the future, but for now I'll stick with what I know.

(p.s. this is no reflection on Stargazer products, it is based solely on my experience and it probably would have gone a lot better if I'd had some more practice with these products.)