Dye It Yourself

So, in the last few weeks I've been using Head & Shoulders shampoo and conditioner to strip the dye from my hair. Today I became impatient and decided I wanted to see what was available.

I went into Boots in Portsmouth today and found a dye stripper. I've never paid that much for any kind of hair product before, not even dye, although certain dyes have cost nearly as much in the past.

It took a while to confirm my decision; I could've chosen to go natural for a while and see how I look with that, or attempt to go completely blonde which I had done before I had shaved my hair for charity a few years ago. (The damage I had done in my lack of experience was horrific)

Once I got home, I decided it would be nice to spend the evening watching My Neigbour Totoro and let my grandmother use the product on my hair. I admit, I didn't prepare the product as quickly as it wanted, but my grandmother managed to have leftover product in certain parts of my head, and needed to be reminded every few minutes how to use it.

I confess, I wasn't feeling confident with using this product either, I wasn't sure if I should treat it the same way as I would dye my hair, or whether I should follow the instructions strictly, I chose the latter option to be safe, and this is the result after forty-five minutes of the required sixty, and combing it again to see if I could spread the product about.

I rinsed it out and I started to panic. I couldn't go out the next day with patches of beautiful white blonde, ginger blonde, red and my natural colour in my hair, so I resorted to the purple dye I had left over from over a year ago.

It was a Stargazer product and I never saw how well it turned out when I used the first half of the bottle on my hair, as it was to dark to show up, so it was a risk I was willing to take in desperate measures.

This is the result of the desperate attempt to cover the patches before I can purchase another dye stripper to even out the blonde once the purple is out.

As you can see, my hair has almost returned back to the red it previously was. I believe this is because most of the stripper had left my natural colour exposed, mixing this with the purple then turned it a reddish colour, but turn the lightest of blonde into a gorgeous purple that I wish was the same all over.

The lesson I learned today? Always do it yourself if you can't get a professional hairdresser to do it for you. You only have yourself to blame instead of wondering where it went wrong and that you probably should've done it yourself since you dye your hair more regularly.