My love for Lime Crime has been documented here before, and when I purchased their Unicorn Hair dye in Leeloo I also picked up Charcoal to give it a shot because, you know, two birds with one stone and all that. I was really excited to try this color because it's marketed specifically towards darker haired gals so you know the color pigmentation should be pretty intense! My natural hair color is obvious from my roots to about the top of my ear which is to say it's naturally pretty dark brown, while the rest from ear down has been bleached over time with multiple applications of 10 volume developer and PrismLites bleach in the purple shade. I've bleached my hair in the past using a 20 volume and toner the next day, so I know how my hair reacts with the 20 volume developer. I opted for 10 volume this time around as I didn't want to go so shockingly blonde so fast, obtaining more of an ombre sort of effect by going a little higher with the bleach each application. I don't apply it to my ends every time, either. Most people won't use 10 volume developer for anything more than giving a color application a little more oomph, but my hair has reacted well to this slow-and-gentle bleaching method. That being said, I had several shades varying from deep natural brown to a light yellow going on through my hair length prior to application of the Charcoal dye. Most of the Leeloo had faded out and I gave my hair a round with the bleach the day prior to brighten it up a little further. There were still some yellow tones left, but I figured that since it was intended to give color to brunette hair it would work out on the lighter parts.
The dye itself looks sufficiently dark and once it was on my hair I was quite excited. I'd been sporting varying shades of pinkish-orange-blonde since the spring and wanted to tone it down and go cool for the winter months. In the end I succeeded in a way, though the end result wasn't quite what I anticipated.
