Rainbow French Braid by wisely-chosen on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Technically it's a rainbow French herringbone braid, and yes, my hair is real. This self portrait has been stolen so many times - including by some on DA. In at least one case it made it to the front page. Sad. Meanwhile on Flickr (where I originally posted it) it hasn't even made it to Explore. Watch, now that I've finally put in on DA myself it won't get any recognition at all

As a thank you to everyone who has been helpful in tracking down photo thieves and supportive of art in general, I thought I would tell you all how I created this color combination. I haven't posted those directions anywhere else. On Flickr I listed the products I used in the tags, but that's as far as I went. Soooo....

The red on my left hand side is Manic Panic Pillarbox Red. The orange next to it is a combination of the Pillarbox Red and Manic Panic Electric Banana (I would've used Manic Panic Electric Lava if I'd had it). The yellow next to that is more Electric Banana. The green is where it starts to get tricky. If I'd had them on hand I would've used Manic Panic Electric Lizard (with a little Electric Banana mixed in to make it more neon) for the green and Manic Panic Bad Boy Blue for the blue. Unfortunately I didn't have the green or the blue. But I did have Manic Panic Shocking Blue, Electric Banana and a lot of Herbal Essences Tousle Me Softly Conditioner. I mixed the conditioner with the Shocking Blue until I got the shade you see on my hair in this photo. The green is some of this blue/conditioner mixture with some Electric Banana mixed in. Which brings us to the lavender - Manic Panic Ultra Violet. Followed by the pink - Manic Panic Red Passion (it shows up pink on my hair) and we've come back around to Pillarbox Red.

I bleach my hair with Manic Panic 30 vol. and I usually only bleach my roots. In between dyeing I'll let the colors fade to pastels on their own so I can cover them up with new colors without having to bleach the majority of my hair.

The original self portrait that I posted on Flickr is here: [link]

If you want to know my haircare routine, I put it in the description of this photo: [link]

Also, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this self portrait here. And I'm REALLY SUPER sorry that I'm such an impossible person to get into contact with.

**********UPDATE*********So it's been six days, front page, 547 comments, 6,005 favorites and 33,540 views later and some have asked me how I created the pattern in my hair, which made me realize I forgot to describe how I sectioned my hair before dyeing -- oops! Anyway, I parted my hair completely down the middle and put my hair in pigtails. Then I parted each pigtail the exact same way, forming four pigtails. Then I did the same thing with those four, making eight pigtails. Starting on my left hand side, I dyed the section over my ear Pillarbox Red, then dyed the section above that orange, the one above that yellow, and so on.

Thank you so much for all the favorites, views and kind comments! I was completely stunned to see myself on the front page!