Taking the plunge

[WritingMum]

Well, after a two year hiatus, I've decided to to color my hair again. However, this time I'm not going to the salon. I did the patch test this week and tonight, for the first time, I am going to do it myself. Wish me well!

[WritingMum]

P.S. Don't tell Writing Daddy ;)

[GlennaGirl]

Good luck! What color will it be?

[EvaSimone]

Good Luck and please show pictures of the finished hair! ;)

[longhairedfairy]

Good luck! I'm sure it'll turn out fine:) Post pics, please:)

[Addy]

OOOOO~ Please do post before and after pics!! Pretty please! :D

[bunnii]

:D good luck, and yes! We want pics!! :D

[paper]

Good luck. I'd love to see pics too! :D

I dye my own hair too. Well, with help of DH. :D

[Garnet66]

Good luck with coloring your hair. I'm sure it'll turn out great.

[girlcat36]

Good luck, and let us know what you are using!

[Gumball]

Good luck! I'm sure it will turn out wonderfully and that you'll be really happy with it. :)

[WritingPrincess]

(Writing Mum, here. I see WritingPrincess never logged out; I'll repost under my own name.)

[Islandgrrl]

Please post pictures! I'm sure it will be lovely!

[jojo]

sounds good, what colour you going for? and pretty please share the result with us.

good luck xxx

[WritingMum]

My goal was to take the silver "natural highlights" and turn them back into golden ones-- without compromising my higher contrast coloring, which would end up looking mousy. It had to look natural, and it had to wear off, not grow out. I've had Shades put in at the salon -- originally formulated as 1 oz of 07G +1 oz of 06G +1 capful of 08N-- and loved it! But 07G was discontinued, and the suddenly silvered hair at my scalp grew longer, so the formula was switched to 2 ozes of 06G.

I also spent 15-20 minutes under the dryer at the salon with the color in my hair to make it last longer. (I know; blasphemous in this realm. It's the only time I use a dryer in my hair care. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.)

I used Shades because it slowly faces, rather than grows out. I can't stand the skunk stripe look-- and if I ever quit and had that stripe thing going I'd probably cut it all off-- and I'm not interested in doing that!

I was getting it redone about every eight weeks, which was too long, but it worked.

I don't wish to spend $60-$80 a pop for coloring.

I was in Sally's and asked the sales woman if they had something comparable to Shades -- and she turned out to be a professional colorist with 30 years of experience! She spent a lot of time talking with me, answering my questions about hair damage, permenance of color, etc. and showed me a product called Complements. I hadn't known that the color system seems to be standardized between brands, so I was able to select the right shades easily. And the patch test went well.

Okay, here's what I did: I Mixed just under 2 oz of 6G (7G is discontinued in this brand as well) with 2 oz of the same brand of "color prompter" in a squirt bottle and scrubbed it through my hair, a little at a time, with my fingertips as if I was scrubbing my scalp when washing my hair. I wore gloves and a rag towel around my neck. I combed through, made sure to get the hairline well, added more where needed, then went after the length.

I put a cap on my head and sat under a bonnet dryer for fifteen minutes. (I bought the dryer just for this experiment-- I figure that if I like it well enough to do this again, it's here, if not, well, I've just spent less than I would have at the salon.) Then I washed it out in the shower.
Now, this part was scary again, since I switched to WO over a year ago, and I didn't want to strip my scalp over this. (A week or two ahead of this I did use a BS/ACV combo, since I didn't want to end up with colored sebum, and not colored hair.) So I rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed . . . scrubbing and scrubbing my scalp with my fingertips, hoping and praying I wouldn't wake up with all my hair on my pillow or my scalp in a rash. It worked, I think.

The color is a little darker than my preference, but the silver strands are all gold, and other than prorating the cost of the dryer, I think it will be about $5 a shot for me to maintain it if I decide to keep coloring. That's more reasonable, in my book. And I can experiment with combining shades if I want to.

Writing Princess took pictures two nights ago, but they didn't turn out, so I'll ask WritingDad to take some for me later. Then you can see the before and after shots.

[WritingMum]

Thanks again for all your support. You encouraged me!