u/_Dances_with_cats_

Every 8 months or so I get my hair balayage lightened in the salon and then spend the next 8 months using Arctic Fox to get vivid colors. I've been doing that for about 6 years with no issues. I wash every 3-5 days, most wash days blow dry the roots with heat protectant and mid to ends about 70% and then air dry, and I use the straightener at 340° to either straighten or curl maybe half the time. My previous stylist always raved about how easy it was to lift the color out of my hair, how soft my hair was, etc.

I recently moved to a new city, so I had to find a new stylist. The one I picked has a good number of pictures of previous vivid work on her socials.

My first experience with her lightening my hair was a disaster. 15 or so minutes after finishing the foils, my scalp started burning, and she had to take them off. The top half of my hair is hella damaged. I had chest length hair when I went in, intended to cut it a little below shoulder length, and ended up with chin length from cutting off damaged hair. It's visibly damaged a couple of inches from the root where it never would have been bleached previously.

I used Manic Panic Hot Hot Pink on it the last time I colored it at home a couple of months ago because the store was out of pink Arctic Fox. It's the first and only time I've ever used it. I usually don't stray from AF unless my previous stylist was putting color in my hair. The new stylist blamed the bleach issue on the Manic Panic and said it had a metallic base, but nothing I've read online so far seems to support that. I just want to figure out if it's most likely that she just made a mistake or if there's something else that may have happened so I can try to avoid it in the future if it's something I can control.

Things I can think of that have changed:

- Single use of Manic Panic

- New city/city water (low levels of iron and copper in water)

- New house, no shower filter, some copper pipes

- Changed from OGX Coconut shampoo to Nexxus Ultralight Smooth shampoo

- Started using Raw Sugar The Multi Miracle Spray

- Started using Pantene Volume Texture Hairspray

- Sometimes using Cantu Weightless Smooth + Hold Gel

- Sometimes using Upcircle Hair Serum

- Sometimes using Nexxus hair oil

Happy to add any other details that might be helpful.

Just venting. I know some people think winding their own cakes is fun. To me, it's just an extra barrier to starting a project. I have a winder and a swift. I CAN make a cake, but it just feels like total bullshit that these yarn people are like "Oh would you like to do a hobby? Well first, chores!" I have plenty of my own chores, thanks, I don't want to spend a bunch of money on fancy yarn for the privilege of having to also do part of the work to make it useful. Hanks are trash.

I've been using the lamp that came with the kit I bought, but it seems like it takes forever to cure and doesn't always get the sides, so I'm looking at other options.

Could I use something like this one to flash cure and then something like this one to do a full cure on all five at once? Do you guys have any other lamp recommendations?