Do I need to go lighter for pastel hair?

What pastels were you thinking of? Just coz pinks and peaches can handle a bit of yellow but silvers and blues can't so much!

Can you give us some pics of the kind of thing you are looking for. Even some pinks won't go over that, they'll just disappear.

Right now, I'm thinking a pastel blue. But eventually I'd like to explore pink, purple, green, etc.

It's  not quite light enough. But you really need to wait a month before using bleach again. It's really damaging to use bleach too soon and it can take several weeks for damage to show. I'd say a bleach bath should get you light enough for that blue.

The sea nymph was only a waste of money because your hair isn't light enough yet. You need to be close to a white blonde for most pastels. That's a slightly darker pastel so you can get away with a slightly darker shade, but paler than you have now.

Toner does not lighten hair, end of. Be aware that that's a wig, and it's a wig for a reason. You will not be able to go that pale blue, that pure of a blue, without bleaching your hair to white (which may well be impossible if you have traces of dye left in your hair), but by then your hair will have lost structural integrity and will look and feel a complete mess.

Your hair was too dark for Manic Panic Creamtones to have much of an effect on your hair, and while it is a waste of money as you can make pastel tones by diluting darker dyes waaay cheaper, it would have worked fine on the base it was designed for.

I agree to an extent, but use a purple toned blue and you could get a near perfect blue on a pale yellow base. But yeah, that is a wig and tricky to replicate, you need to be ready for a less pure blue

Thanks guys for the info! Only one more thing, can I tone it purple now and bleach later? It's just a really odd color to have for another month.  :-[ I don't want to damage it too much.

That's an odd colour? It looks like a pretty golden blonde to me 🙂

Yes, you can dye it purple. It will have to be a more vibrate purple though, but it can still be on the pastel side, it doesn't have to be full on raging purple.

Or do you actually mean tone it with diluted purple to get a more ash blonde?

Aw, thanks! 😀 It actually makes my face look very red. And it looks a bit more green in regular indoor light (that pic was in bright sunlight).

I was going to use Wella T18 toner and a 10 volume developer, to basically get as close to white-gray as I can (but if it turns purple that would be cool too lol). I know that will be damaging to my hair, right? And if I bleach again, will I have to tone again to get it truly white?

Stay away from the T18, please. It WON'T give you white blonde, certainly not yet. Your hair is too yellow. Especially if your hair is already a tiny bit green, I've found it makes hair look even more green.

Using a purple now will get you partly there as it fades. But you didn't tell me if purple is what you want, or an ashier blonde. You can use a heavily diluted purple dye to tone. It's not damaging at all and does just as good job as T18.

Just to reinforce the above, I use the T18 toner and my base is much much lighter than yours and there is times that my hair won't go white. Plus, it's damaging and it really will be a waste of time if you use it now.

Geez, I'm glad I came to this forum first, I would've royally screwed up everything... I'm fine with purple or ash blonde, as long as it gets me closer to my ultimate goal of a white-gray base for pastel dyes.

So I'm going to go pick up a manic panic purple and dilute it with conditioner, I'll post a picture once it's done. Thank you SO MUCH again for your help!!

Probably worth pointing out, start with a bowl of conditioner and add the dye bit by bit til you get the colour you want, if you do it the other way around ie. add the conditioner to the dye it'll stay quite bright as you can dilute most dyes quite a lot before they become pastel.

Hey friends. So I toned with the teeniest bit of Manic Panic Purple Haze (I figured the reddishness out help cancel the green) and half a bottle of Shea Moisture Rose Peace Oil Conditioner (do not recommend, I still smell like cheap potpourri), and my hair came out a bland blonde. Woo!