DIY Hairspiration

I have only ever dyed my hair twice, but after contemplating the ombre look (much to the dismay of my boyfriend), I ended up falling in love with this slightly grown-out natural highlights look that is created with the balayage technique. My previous hair-dying experience is limited to getting professional highlights in high school (so subtle that no one noticed) and using a box dye just barely different than my hair color in college while my blonde friends gave themselves highlights. So, attempting this look at home is a little scary, but I've never been one to spend much money at the salon, so I'm taking the gamble and hoping that all the YouTube research I've done will pay off.

The ombre look has been super popular the past couple years and I've always contemplated trying it, but I love that these balayage highlights are similarly low-maintenance (no root line needing to be touched up all the time) but look a bit more natural and a little less trendy. I've always had dark hair so I love the idea of getting that sun-kissed look to brighten up my hair with golden/coppery tones instead of blonde. Apparently balayage means "to sweep" in French and involves painting strands of hair with a light hand to create the natural look, instead of using foils, which will give you very stripe-like results. 

Just to clarify, I am not going for one of the blonder looks above, but I do really love the highlight placement in those photos. I actually bought a light golden brown hair color the other day, thinking I would use that instead of a bleach highlighting kit to get color just a shade or two lighter than my own, but I did a strand-test and it barely showed up! I decided to pick up a box of the L'oreal Wild Ombre 060 (for medium to dark brown hair) and use that to paint on my highlights instead of ombre. Most of the results I've seen for that kit have turned out a light coppery-brown color, which is what I'm going for so hopefully it will work! 

Unless this fails miserably and I'm too embarrassed to take a photo, expect another post soon with how it turned out! Cross your fingers for me...

xoxo

k