I recenTwrecked the ends of my hair in an attempt to achieve a light blonde ombre effect. To cut a long story short it didn't go blonde, it went custard yellow. I tried dying over it with a light auburn hair dye (Loreal Preference 7.34 Sardinia)but the colour fell out of my damaged ends very quickly. I wanted a more uniform rich auburn colour so I decided to try using the Aphogee Two-Step Protein Treatment to revive and fill in my bleached ends. I don't think protein fillers are actually sold commercially in the UK so I purchased this off eBay for around £7. It is also currently available on Amazon here.
Before treatment (not styled, no products)
In the pictures above you can see the colour and condition of my hair, my roots are quite shiny but my ends are dry and straw like.
Mid-treatment
I applied the first step to my hair. It was custard yellow, the viscosity of milkshake and smelt like rotten eggs mixed with alcohol. So basically stale eggnog!
I dried it with a hairdryer until mostly dry, then let it air dry for a further hour before washing out. The treatment hardens as it dries, so my hair became solid. You are directed not to agitate the hair at this point, I'm imagining it becomes quite fragile and could break easily. Above is a picture I took at the 'crispy' stage.
In the shower I used the second step of the treatment, the balancing moisturiser. I have to admit, this smelt possibly even worse that the first step! The smell is of pine toilet bleach, and it's strong too. The formula was more synthetic than oily, but I am guessing this is actually more of a ph-neutraliser than a conditioner.
after treatment (again not styled and no products)
I let my hair air-dry so I didn't damage the hair, so I only found out the results the next morning. When I awoke I immediately noticed that my hair felt very soft. However, it wasn't the 'good' soft one attributes with healthy hair, it felt 'over bleached and damaged' soft. It had that strange limp and weak texture to it that you get when you get 'chewing gum hair'. As you can see from the pictures My hair was extremely fluffy, and I think it was actually less shiny than before!
I was expecting my hair to be dry, as I have done homemade protein treatments before, but I wasn't expecting it to feel....damaged?? It is the second day after doing the treatment now and my hair feels almost back to the way it did before. I guess the true test (and why I used it in the first place) is whether the dye sticks to my hair now, or whether it just falls out as quickly as before.
All in all I probably would not repurchase this product again (for the moment) but will certainly update this post should I discover my hair now has super dye holding capacities!
Update: I can confirm the aphogee treatment did help dye attach to my ends! After the initial dryness my hair felt much stronger than it had previously and I would certainly reccomend this to anyone with severely chemically damaged hair.
