Frugal Fridays - Hair Chalking

For those of you that like to add fun colors to your hair, this Frugal Friday post is for you! When I was a teenager, I loved dying my hair. I would usually choose to dye it red and for the first 2 weeks or so it would look really good.  After that, it would start to fade to a pink color and the roots would show as the color grew out.  Let's just say it was not a very good look.  I've always been looking for a way to add some funky color to my hair without having to deal with the whole fading and growing out thing.  I had given up on coloring my hair until I recently came across an article on hair chalking.  The idea is that you use a soft pastel chalk to color your hair, it adds a fun vibrant color and washes out at the end of the day. I could not resist the urge to try this out!

What you will need:

• Spray bottle filled with water 
• Package of soft pastels chalk (Do not purchase any of the wax or oil based chalks!!  Soft Pastels ONLY)
• Pair of gloves as this does get a bit messy
• Hair dryer
• Flat iron or Curling iron

First things first, find a place that you can potentially make a mess out of (I chose my bathroom sink), put on a crummy t-shirt that you don't mind getting chalk all over and put on the gloves. 

• If you have blond hair, skip to the next step!  If you have darker hair, take a piece of hair that you want to add color to and wet it down with the spray bottle 
• Choose a color (I decided to use green for this little experiment) 
• Start coloring your hair in a downward motion.  Repeat in a downward motion (do not move the chalk up and down as this could damage your hair) 
• Twist the hair as you chalk as this makes the chalk release more pigment
• Continue until the portion of your hair that you have selected is completely colored in (You can choose to just do the tips of the hair or you can color all the way up to the root - it's up to you!)
• Repeat the above steps until you are happy with the amount of hair you've colored

• Do not brush your hair as all of the chalk will simply brush out
• Use a hair dryer to completely dry each piece
• Once dry, run a flat iron or a curling iron over each piece of colored hair - this locks the color in
• Do not use any hairspray or other hair products or you will have a bit of a mess on your hands...

While this process was rather simple and the immediate end result looked really neat, the color did not last that long.  After a few hours, the green had almost completely faded as if I had never chalked my hair at all.  The conclusion I have come to is that I need to try this with a higher quality chalk.  I read a few reviews on hair chalking and they all advised that you purchase a high quality chalk such as Sennelier Soft Pastels.  These are said to work really well and there are a lot of vibrant colors to choose from.  The downside is that they run at about $4 a piece.

Pros:

1. The process was simple
2. The supplies were inexpensive
3. The initial result looked really neat

Cons:

1. The color faded within about 5 hours BUT this could just be because I used a lower quality chalk
2. If you don't brush or wash it out at the end of the night, you will wake up to a very colorful pillowcase
3. The color can come off onto your clothes so it is best to put your hair into an up-do once you've chalked it or just prepare yourself to have a little extra color (that will wash out) on your clothes

Have you tried chalking your hair before?  Do you have any tips or ideas on how to make the process even easier?  If you haven't tried it before and are interested, give hair chalking a try and let me know how it goes!!

Lots of Love,
Meg