If you don't want to use bleach you can use Sun-in or Lemon juice and sit out in the sun, but the bleach will give you a more even coverage. You could pick up a bleaching kit from Walgreens or wherever, or you can go to a place like Sally's Beauty and pick up a bleach powder and a developer and mix it yourself. The developer I've been using is a 20 volume and doesn't leave my hair completely destroyed.

I would use a Special Effects dye, or Splat. Carrie Ann uses a combination of Splat's pink and SE's Atomic Pink to get the pink she has in her hair, but the cupcake pink is supposed to be a pretty light pink too. Reds normally fade to pinks, and pinks fade to lighter pinks. The nice thing about pinks is that even when they're pretty faded, they're usually still a pretty color.

My hair is basically a different color each week. My hair is extremely dark, so it must be bleached. Don't bleach too often or it will cause damage and the hair and it will break and fall off (gross!). I think the most permanent of insane colors tend to come from SFX (Special Effects), although I have never used it since I like to change my hair color all the time.

What I do when I want bright hair is use a hair color remover to lighten my hair, (then bleach if it's not light enough, but if your hair is already light you might not need it) then toner (you can buy it at beauty supply stores). Then I use manic panic, a little comes out with each wash. I've never heard of SFX, but that sounds good

Toner basically just lightens it a little bit, a friend with a light brown hair just uses some to lighten her hair to almost blonde, so that could work for you.

There's also some (kind of spendy) shampoo that will lighten your hair a little with each wash at beauty supply stores.

When I did my hair pink, I first bleached it and removed the yellow with some hair stripper (terrible for your hair). You can get purple shampoo and conditioner to balance out the color tone. I would recommend Manic Panic too.