Well sort of! Most people wouldn’t call my new hair colour blonde, but as a life-long brunette, this is a new level of colour for me! Soooooo almost a year ago, I took the plunge and cut off all my long, long, dark hair. It went from this……

To this……..

Yup, pretty short hey! But that’s ok. I’m glad I did it. NOW! A week after I cut it off I was in tears, I think the boy was ready to kill me if he heard my say one more time “I just want my hair long again!!!”  but safe to say it grew out and I am actually quite happy with the length now!

So of course, now that I am happily plodding along with my nice length, nice colour hair – ummmmm I think I’ll change it again! “I wanna go blonde honey! You know, that Elle McPherson, Natalie Gruzleski (or however you spell it) colour” ok, he says, but remember what happened when you cut it short? he says, you hated it after a week, he says. But who cares what he says! (well, I kinda do actually honey, it just sounded cool to say that…..love you!)

So I started doing my research (ALWAYS best to do research before a big change in the hair chair). I had seen this look around called balayage….. I think technically that is where the hairdresser paints the dye onto the hair, but more commonly, balayage is kinda that look where it looks like you just need to get your roots done REAAAAAAALLLY bad!! Know the look??

I was determined NOT to get that look (the irony of women now paying to look like they HAVE roots is not lost on me, I know how silly fashion can be sometimes, I lived through the 80’s people).

Back to the drawing board. Style icon of mine Rachael Bilson has rocked the balayage look a few times (sometimes better than others). I also think it’s a style that maybe your grandmother doesn’t get?!? I can just see my lovely dear Grandma (who is no longer with us) saying to me, “What have you done to your hair Caitlin? You look like you missed a whole section. I like it better brown, I think you should go back to brown” and she would not have meant anything mean by that, I think it’s just a style for the younger and younger at heart. (Come on, does your grandma get Harem Pants?!No? and how awesome are they?!).

I trawled the interweb and magazines (yes, another excuse to buy Madison AND Marie Claire this month!), searching for images that I could take to the hairdresser. Here are just some of the awesome people I want to look exactly like (I am being sarcastic there ok? Well some of you can’t seem to tell when I am being sarcastic….Drew).

Rachael, Alexa Chung, even the good old Natalie whatshername-ski, the more I looked at pictures of them, the more I noticed their hair all had this awesome shimmer, almost like an ombre (that is a fancy word for fading) to it! And so because I am a sheep, I wanted that look too.

But THIS was THE image that convinced me I had to have this thing where they paint the dye onto you hair……

I took this into the genius that is Troy at The Hair Room in Teneriffe (they are also the guys that I trusted to cut about 14 inches off my looooooong hair) I even waited a month JUST so I could get an appointment with Troy, the owner and senior colourist. I didn’t want no junior making me blonde (said with absolutely no disrespect to juniors in hair salons, but you know, a girl and her hair….)

So here are some shots of before (I did actually take a ‘before’ shot but it didn’t really work, so here are some random pics of me with dark hair….)

And here is the act being done (I’m so hot right now….)

And here is the final product…..

Do you like my paparazzi-style pic bottom left!? (too cool for school!)

 The jury is still out with me, sometimes I ab.sol.ute.ly love it, and other times I want my dark hair back, like NOW, but I think that is just me getting used to it. I have noticed that it looks better with a eave or curl in it, so much so that I invested in a new bottle of sea salt spray STRAIGHT away.

I also have found that I need to wear slightly different coloured clothes and make-up, but I will get used to that. The good thing about going lighter, is that it’s easier to go darker again, so if I get sick of it, I can go back to my gorgeous chocolate-brown that I will always love.

The other good thing about the balayage look is that it’s quite a low maintenance colour, because of the natural fade look it creates, you can just grow it out as your hair grows out, no need to retouch. Super for me being a full-time student (and only part-time glamazon). Low maintenance = low-cost! So that definitely puts it in the ‘hairstyle to keep’ column.

So what do you think? Do you still love me even though I am blonde now?! (Well, you know, blonde for me anyway!) Would you consider balayage in your hair? or have you already had it done?! (because you are super-cool like me!)