Rocky Barnes Inspired Spring Color

Every once in a while, a hairdresser gets to choose the fate of their clients hair. It is an honorable privilege to have another person’s hair as your personal canvas. In this scenario, my gorgeous guest allowed me to make a suggestion about highlights for the spring season. Luckily, I had been inspired by model “Rocky Barnes”.  Rocky is a model for all things bohemian and tropical. Her style is everything inside a gypsy’s dream, including her HAIR. Rocky’s hair consists of gorgeous hair painting and babylights to blend the dark root of her hair into the painted ash brown ends. My guest mentioned getting highlights but didn’t know exactly what to ask for. I asked if I could make a suggestion (being that I found my new obsession with Rocky Barnes) based on her facial features and skin tone. She actually resembled the model closely in those aspects and would look great with this highlight technique and color. After showing her the photo, she became obsessed as well!
So here is my starting canvas. The root color resembled Rocky’s.

And this was our final result.

My first step was to weave lighter pieces of hair. I chose to frame her face closely with the highlights matching Rocky’s technique and did a couple pieces throughout her hair. For these highlights I used Oxycur lightener with 30 volume developer.

The second step was to create the hairpainting in between the foils. I used Oxycur lightener with 10 volume just to shift the color and create a chocolate backdrop for the lighter babylights.

After processing, I first rinsed out the pieces lightened with 10 volume and toned them with 6BP in Colorance with blue lotion. That processed for 15 minutes and was rinsed along with the babylight foils.

My final step was to tone the babylights. I used 9GB and 9BA in equal parts to tone her babylights and processed for 15 minutes also.

And this is the final result!