Hair Magic *bling!*

Okay.... so my hair is done!  There was a scary moment in their for a second - but that was swiftly repaired this morning.

So - here is me with freshly tighted up hair (see how dark my roots are):

Now - the first thing I have to do, is bleach my hair (as I've tried to dye red on my natural hair and I end up with NOTHING!)  So - I mix up a double serving of Manic Panic's Bleaching kit, and tossed it in my hair. I had snipped a loc from right above my rear hairline, and had tested it in the bleach so that I could be sure about how long it would take...I figured something along the lines of 90 minutes, based on the test loc.
Here I am, AFTER the bleach job:

Can I TELLL you how much I loved the blond??? Oh my god - my hair is DEFINITELY going to go blond at some point - HOT I'm telling you!! But..... I wanted to go for red this time.....so - I took the next step of dying. Now, for some dumb ass reason (I think it was beause I liked the blond so much, I didn't want to go TOOO red) I mixed the hiar dye together in different proportions for my hair than I had used on the test lock (which came out GOREGOUS). I also made the mistake of not leaving the dye on long enough (another straying from the test loc) and washed the dye out of my hair. I could IMMEADIATELY tell my hair was pink. I'm talking - it was a pale pretty pink - the red had just not been on long enough to REALLY take.  I went 'EEEEKKKKKKKK!' ran downstairs, mixed up the remaining red hair dye, and sat my ass down for 90 more mintues with that on my hair.  I rinsed it out - and while it was still kinda pale, it wasn't OBVIOUSLY pink, so - I figured I'd live with that for the night, and get another box of red hair dye Sunday morning.

This is me Sunday Morning:

Kinda hard to tell here, but my hair is still pretty pale - goldenpale under the red enough that it looks like a off dye job rather than a semi-natural color of hair.

I used a box of Feria in the red color that I wanted, mixed it up, left it on for MY usual 90 minutes, washed it out, conditoned it with their stuff, and ended up with this:

which I LOVE!! This picture was taken while it was still wet - it's got all ofthe gorgeous little golden blond strands going through it - I can't WAIT to see how it lightens up in the sun.

So....all together, I went from this to this:

Which, now that I look at them side by side, is more or less EXACTLY what I wanted - a rich red with blond highlight (I can't wait to see what colors the tips are going to turn - I think that the red is going to fade out and I'll have blond tips) AND - it's dark enough that as my roots grow out, it won't be toooo noticable.

*sigh* Now, it I can just figure out how to give my hair some volume (maybe I'll braid it before it completely dries) I'd be SET.

P.S. - This is dedicated to everyone who asked where I was in the picture request section - my hair was too icky to take pictures of......