Adventures in Hair Color

When will I learn?

OK, so... I got my hair cut on Friday. Nice cut. Nothing too flashy, but definitely workable. I couldn't afford to get the color refreshed, however, so I decided to do it myself at home. I have done this in the past with good results using a Loreal color and highlight kit. No sweat. This time, I decided to go a shade darker, in deference to the season, and I chose a different brand of hair color.

Mistake Number 1.

When I had rinsed the color out and pulled the towel off my head, my hair was MAGENTA.

Let me say that again.

MA.GEN.TA.

AAAAAGH! I dried it, hoping the color would be less purple when dry, but when I stepped out of the bathroom, Grayson looked up and said "Purple?"

So I grabbed my keys and rushed to Walgreens, where I purchased the same Loreal brand I had used before, with notable success. I ran back home and quickly colored my hair a second time.

Now my hair was the color of old dried blood. Completely devoid of any depth or highlight. But at least it wasn't Magenta. B came for dinner and said "Hm."

"Hm." is not good.

So I got out the highlight kit that came with the second color kit and proceeded to put in highlights. Here a highlight, there a highlight. Oh what the hell, I smeared highlighter all over my head.

Mistake Number 2.

This time the product is a sort of dark Bonnie Raitt look. Deep auburn with red highlights. In other words, I am an unintentional redhead.

It's not bad, really. Not horrifying. But not at all what I had in mind. How did I get purple and red out of a brown hair color kit? I would color it again, (a nice safe deep brown, with no hint of red anywhere in sight)... but I'm afraid coloring your hair four times in a weekend could add up to baldness or something worse than magenta as a final product, so I have opted to play it safe for a couple of weeks and see what it mellows into.

In the meantime, I surprise myself every time I look in the mirror.