How to get that white Sweeney Todd streak in your hair.

by Ivy (deathtoll1912 @ dA )

Since people keep asking me how I did my Sweeney white streak, and I’ve been meaning to do a tutorial for a while anyway, here it is.  ^_^

Keep in mind that I am NOT a professional. But I’ve done a lot of weird stuff to my poor hair (I’ve got green dye soaking in as I type this) and have learned a thing or three.

I’m sick and tired of seeing frustratingly uninformative tutorials written by people who haven’t actually done it themselves and are just theorizing. Hopefully this is better.

I screwed up a lot doing mine but in the end it was worth it, and I still have that white streak a year later. So here we go.

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WHAT YOU NEED

-Strong hair bleach (one kit should do it unless your hair is artificially dyed black already. That might take two kits to get out)

-Toner (I recommend Virgin Snow or Silver Lady)

-Application brush (a paintbrush works fine)

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1. BLEACHING

Select the section of hair you wish to be white. Make absolutely sure it’s in the right place and not too big or too small, because once you do this there’s no going back. Put the rest of your hair back in a bun or something to keep it well out of the way.

Follow the instructions on the bleach kit box. DO NOT use household bleach like Clorox unless you want to get seriously fried.

Make sure you thoroughly saturate the hair. Start at the ends and work up to the roots, as the area closest to your scalp will lighten much faster from your body heat.

It will take a while for any results to start showing, but be patient. Sometimes you won’t see any lightening going on for an hour or so. The darker your hair, the longer it will take. If you’re trying to bleach it out from dark brown or black, be prepared to use at least two bleach kits if necessary. I used two kits, using each one at least twice, to get it light enough.

If your hair is natural and un-dyed, it will be drastically easier. My hair was dyed black, and even though it had been fading for a few months it was still a battle bleaching two thirds of it. Whereas my natural deep brown regrowth at the roots bleached right out to yellow within about two hours.

I leave bleach in for about three hours. It’s hard on your hair but it maximizes results.

You can wrap the section of hair up in plastic and run a blow dryer on it to hasten bleaching.

You can do two applications of bleach from one bottle when you’re just doing the one streak. I did that so each box got several uses. Use half the bottle, leave that in for a few hours, then use the rest of the bottle.

The bleach won’t make your hair white. Assuming you’re going from a very dark color, it will lighten in these stages: black, brown, dark red, light red, orange, yellow, pale yellow, almost-white yellow.

BE WARNED that since hair bleach is a harsh chemical, it WILL fry your hair. The longer it’s on, the worse the damage, but that’s unavoidable and you have to get over it if you’re going to go through with this. Be prepared for much of the hair to turn into gooey mush. It will come out in handfuls if you’re not careful and it’s freaking scary. This is even worse when it dries, because the ends tend to snap off like dry straw.

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2. TONER


This is where you turn that yellow streak silver. Toner is a weak purple or blue dye used to cancel out yellow and orange tones from bleached hair. It will only work once you’ve bleached your hair to the lightest possible shade of lemon yellow. You simply cannot achieve pure silver-white using only bleach.  

After you’ve lightened the hair as much as you possibly can, either let it dry by itself or do it with a dryer. The instructions for Manic Panic’s Virgin Snow say you can just towel dry before applying the toner, but that didn’t work at all for me.

Apply the toner evenly, saturating the hair, and leave it in for ten to fifteen minutes, or until the yellow tones are gone and it looks snow white instead. BE CAREFUL not to leave it in too long because after a certain point it stops just subduing yellow tones and starts dying your hair purple. That looks bad.

Remember that toner will ONLY work on the very lightest yellow hair. I don’t know about other people, but I used Virgin Snow and it didn’t do a darn thing on anything but the roots, which were nearly white from the bleach. I haven’t tried Wella’s Silver Lady myself but I’ve heard it’s better. It’s blue and should theoretically ditch any slightly darker tones like pale orange.

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TIPS

--You absolutely MUST use a heavy, deep conditioner after you finish all this. The bleach by now has cooked your hair and if you don’t put in deep conditioner and leave it there for at least an hour, it’ll all break off.

--My hair was so badly fried that I had to cut the frizzled ends off. It looked HORRIBLE, because it was two inches shorter than the rest of my hair, cut straight across the bottom and completely un-Sweeneylike. But it grew out within two months and looked just fine.

--It'll be like dry straw for a week or two after bleaching it, but if you keep using that deep conditioner it improves pretty quickly.


MAINTENANCE

--You’ll have to re-bleach the roots every month or two when new regrowth comes in. It looks especially bad if you have naturally dark hair. My hair’s naturally dark brown so the slightest bit of roots look like crap. It’s too expensive to bleach it every time a little bit is visible though, so I just wait until there’s an inch or two. Make sure you leave the bleach in until they’re almost white, because if you rinse it out too soon you’ll have orange roots and it looks nasty. I’ve done that a few times by accident and it looks stupid. After a few months when you've bleached the roots several times, there will be a line between the pure white and the yellow roots. It's time to get some more toner when this happens.

--The toner isn't permanent and will wash out after 6 or 7 shampoos. You can get more toner and re-apply it when the old stuff fades off.

--Use shampoo and conditioner especially made for silver/grey hair. It’s usually purple and keeps the hair looking very nice and white. I use Pantene Silver Expressions and it works like a charm. Since you’re only using it on the one white shock it will last a while (I’m on the same bottle of silver shampoo I bought last August)

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Oh, and a tip if you’re going for the whole Sweeney look with dark brown hair as well as the streak? Unless it’s already dark brown, if you dye it that way and then try to bleach the streak it might not work on the fresh dark dye. Put the brown on everything EXCEPT the streak you want to bleach. It’ll make your life a lot easier.

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Hope this helps ^____^