Sunday 1 June 2014

Experimenting with the hair chalk trend

Last week, I was chatting to a girl at work who came in sporting a very on-trend, summery pink tipped, ombre look and she said she'd used hair chalk which just washes out. I was impressed with how effective the result was, given it wasn't even hair dye, although she is a blonde, and I was initially skeptical as to how well it would work on my brown hair...

After a bit of research, I concluded that it does work on dark hair, hooray!! You have to use a bit more, and it washes straight out (where as for blondes, it lasts quite a few washes - good for blondes as it stops the chalky, dry look once you've washed your hair but bad because you'll probably have  to go to work/school).

I had a look on amazon and bought 36 chalks for 7 or 8 quid. The box included every colour from blues, purples to a few too many shades of khaki... (I think these chalks were initially for art work on paper, not hair!)

As soon as they'd arrived, that evening I wet the tips of my hair and tried out a pink shade, then a purple shade and then blue. This first go wasn't all that successful - and my tips turned into a dry birds nest with vague hints of colour - my hands however were very pink as was the bathroom sink... The next morning my hair was a mess, and there was no way I could get a hair brush through it! I washed it out.

2nd attempt was much for successful. Instead of going to town on all of my hair, I chose one tasteful strand. I dampened the strand, as well as the chalk (turquoise) and put some frizz ease hair serum on the strand in attempt to counteract my previous bird nest issue. I also made sure to use the chalk the hair going root to tip (if run it on at all angle you get a back comb knotted effect which isn't what I was going for). Once I had the desired level of colour, I let it dry naturally and them curled it into a ringlet/wave with my GHDs. I added a tiny bit of hairspray to stop the colour rubbing off on my clothes - tip: avoid white clothing if you've gone to town with the chalks!!
It last a day or so and came out easily the next time I washed my hair. Work would never know! 

My lovely journo housemate wrote a fab article for Grazia about a festival in Bristol and included my hair chalking photo, check it out; www.graziadaily.co.uk/Festivals/festival-blaggers-guide--how-to-pretend-you-were-at-love-saves-the-day

Try it out and share the look! I have seen some cool hair chalked fishtail plaits about... X