Blond Brilliance: Ombre Kit
First off, this kit really does have everything you need, so don't sweat the small stuff. I would recommend for those who have dark hair to grab a deep conditioner for after and I'll explain later on.
When reading the instructions, it's a little confusing. To put it simply you need to part your friend's hair (it will be so much easier if there are two people in this equation) along their crown, and then pin it up. You will not be bleaching this part at all. Next, you split the left over hair into four parts, then divide each of the four parts into two layers: top and bottom. Pin the top layer up for later use.
Now for the actual bleaching. You can start with any of the four sections you want, but mix the ingredients first. You can mix all of the Booster, Developer, and Lightening powder together if you're doing long hair. My friend has fairly long hair and I mixed all of the needed packets together of which I still had some bleach left over.
Once you've mixed it, start applying the solution to the bottom half of the first section of hair with the special ombre brush. The brush is made to make the line of bleach uneven so it looks natural. Make sure to have tin foil underneath the area you're bleaching, and cover every angle of the hair, then wrap it up in the foil. Now finish the rest of the bottom halves of hair and once you finish that layer move on to the upper section. Repeat all of the steps until you have no sections left.
The timing for how long you leave the solution on your hair varies: light to dark hair 20-60 mins; light brown hair 20-90 mins; medium brown hair 40-90 mins; dark brown hair 60-90 mins. My friend has dark brown hair and we checked at 60 minutes when we decided to go for the full 90 minutes.
As you can see from the picture above my friend's hair came out amazingly, but also note that it isn't white like what normal bleach mix would have made it in that length of time. See the box says "natural" looking ombre, and that's exactly what we got. However, her hair still ended up being fried, which should be somewhat expected when going up so many levels. This is why I said to grab that deep conditioner because you will definitely need it if you're jumping from a dark color to a lighter color. It's my opinion, though, that if we had used normal bleach at a 30 or 40 level developer, her hair would have broken completely off. So for us it was a fair trade, but it might not be for you. I'm sure the fairer haired people using this won't have such a feel to their hair, but I can't know for sure until I try it myself (I have a lighter level than my friend).
I loved this and my friend loved this, so I will definitely be using the 9 Level lifter by Blond Brilliance very soon!