Do It Yourself: Lemon Juice Or Hair Dye?

Although I don't like to admit it, I did get a little bored during the two weeks I was home between leaving school and the start of work. Laying around and watching T.V. took up most of my time, with a few workouts here and lots of driving my new car there ;). But one day, I decided to actually act on my constant wish to be blonde. Not that it would go with my skin tone at all, but because the gold strands are so pretty on other heads, so I thought I would give it a try. I went with the lemon juice approach, and here are the steps I took:

1. Prep

Lemon juice stains, or at least if the squirting juices got on my shirt I was in mood to wash it out- I've been doing my own laundry for a year! Gimme a break. So this child-like bib was very necessary to block the yellowness from getting on my shirt (out of my own idiocy I wore a white t-shirt)

2. Ingredients

I got four lemons, to play it safe, because I didn't know how much lemon juice one would produce. Turns out I was able to squeeze exactly 1/4 of a cup of citrus from each lemon, and only used three lemons- although I ended up throwing out most of the unused juice later.

I wasn't planning on spending big bucks on this little test of mine so the spray bottle I bought is pretty dink- super fun and cheap though! And the nozzle only has one tiny hole to spray the concoction out of, which at first I was hesitant about, but don't worry, you'll cover your head with this highlight-inducing potion in no time.

3. The Process

It was somewhat tedious, because I didn't want to lose any juice to dripping, but really the entire squeezing-out-of-the-lemon-juice took about 15 minutes.

After squeezing out the acidic liquid from yellow rinds, I had to make sure to remove all the seeds! Using a strainer-like spoon makes sure that you don't waste any of the lemon juice you have accrued.

4. Ready to Apply

***WHAT YOU MUST REMEMBER is to pour in however much water as lemon juice there was, to dilute it. Directly applying the lemon juice, or even the lemon + water concoction too long and/or often, will dry out your hair!!
I had a lot of the hair dye, way more than I needed, but as I always say- it's always good to have options! And having more of something just in case falls under that category.

I like to be very organized so prior to spraying my hair I laid out everything I would need outside. The outdoor duration would be about 30 minutes, so I set up my chair with magazines to keep me busy.

And I made sure to put sunscreen on all body parts that would be exposed to the sun. I am a very strong advocate for sunscreen, because in my opinion, you can still get color from the sun but with a bonus of cancer protection!!

Before (hair sprayed):

After (about 35 minutes later- hair was stiff):

Although there is bright light in these pictures, you can tell that my hair is very dark brown, and nothing changed in the color.

Sadly my hair color did not change; one of the many genetic grievances I blame on my mother is the dark hair she gave me, it was a pretty fun thing to try. And fingers crossed it would actually work on someone with already-light hair!! Good luck and have fun kids, you CAN try this at home.