I am scared to death...

[brok3nwings]

I got a stupid urge and did something stupid...
i regreted a lot but i cant go back in time. So i have to look forward...
this is what happenend:
My ends were much blonder then my roots, although looked very natural.. this was because of a dye job last year. I didnt want to change my natural colour, just add some highlights to make a better blend.
i thought i was able cause i did a great job with my sisters hair (also blonde, but cooler).
I wasnt able. I failed :(
I tested first and it seamed to be what i wanted.
i did the first time with 20 vol peroxide for 20 min with a ASH LIGHT BLONDE. Results??? Brassy colour
I tried the second time the same. BRASSY AGAIN
That night i cried... i thought it wasnt real.
Yesterday i tried again cause i DIDNT WANT TO GO to a HAIRDRESSER. this time 30 vol peroxide for 35 min and again BRASSY colour on my roots. Even worst.

Now this is what i have:
Nice sandy/golden colour on my ends
Terrible medium golden colour on my roots

i am sick of testing testing testing, i do a previous test, it seams ok, and then it turns out terrible. i dont want to keep doing this myself. I am really scared to death from hairdressers (although i am not cuting anything..)
I tried to find in the internet a good colourist but its hard, so i found one that seams to be a good one. I want to do just a semi-permanent colour to let my hair grow until the brassy turns again... (brassy at roots its the most terrible thing...i can support it a bit on the lenght). I will take pictures. i will try to make myself really clear...
i cant accept my hair as it is right now, and it wont go better so i have to fix it with the less damage possible.
The thing is... i am really scared of what they can do.. i will ask to work only on the peaces of hair that i did this, about 7 or 8 foils (the problem is, at the top of my head). Do you think i could ask for a previous test at one foil to see the colour? Is it possible? Any sugestions?
i am really sad about this, so sad that i havent been sleeping, eating, not even coming here... i am really ashamed of myself :(

[eadwine]

Baby your hair, don't color it anymore, ever again. Your own color I am sure is fabulous!

[NurseMama]

It sounds like you need a blue toner to cover up the brassiness to get back to an ash. (limited coloring experience talking here)

I know that there are a few hairdressers here- hopefully one will weigh in and help.

[VanillaTresses]

brok3nwings, please don't panic! Put the peroxide down for now, you need time to "cool off" before you do anything else to your hair. For now, put your hair up in a bandana or nice scarf and try to forget about it for a while. Do some nice things for yourself and calm down. You can go to the hairdresser for a consultation only if you are very nervous. Go in and see what they have to suggest and sit on it for a couple of days before deciding what you want to do. Above all, don't worry too much, because hair grows back... I myself (as I am sure of many here) have had my share of self-inflicted mishaps. It will be ok. Seriously! :blossom:

[brok3nwings]

the toner is what i am going to do in the hairdresser... i cant do it myself cause i have two tone and now i know that i cant fix this myself... i have tried in one piece of foil a medium ash blonde and it did nothing... but i dont want to keep using high values of peroxide. i dont want to see bleach in front of me also, so i know i am having to go darker... (darker then i started with)
By the way, my hair still looks shiny and in good condition, but i know that it can look like this one day and in the other with some chemical, it can ruin it completly

[brok3nwings]

thank you all for your support
VanillaTresses i used to be more impulsive that i am now, now i think very well about it, i have looked for everything i could in the internet about hair colouring, etc, i know now that my hair doesnt go blonde with only peroxide, although it is blonde, it would have to get some bleach. and i dont want bleach so i am stoping to fix the colour and i will listen to what the hairdresser has to say... and i would specificly ask for a tint without amonnia and very little peroxide

[Nes]

Sadly I know nothing about hair colour. Just wanted to come and give you a hug because it sounds like you need one.

So here it is -----> *hug*

Take gentle care of yourself and your hair.

Nes x

[LutraLutra]

Hey you, it'll be ok, ok? Don't try anything else right now, and just pamper your hair to make it feel better. Then, when you want to, go and have a consultation with a haidresser that specialises in fixing colour boo boos, and once you've found someone you trust with your hair let them sort it out for you. No more at home trying to fix things, ok? I've been there myself, and sometimes you just have to let go and let the proffessionals take over. They'll have seen worse, promise. :grouphug:

[brok3nwings]

thank you all for your support ...really. I was really needing someone that really understand my sadness about this. My boyfriend, mother, father, sister none of them seam to understand my pain. First they say "why did you do that?" yeah right, i should know better but sometimes its the thing i love the most that suffers... and second, they always think i am exagerating. They dont see what i see (that i can understand). Oh well... i have the consultation for friday until then i will CO a lot, no shampoo, a lot of oils and good things to my hair. I will have to show you a picture... i am only sad that the only way i get comments about my hair is when i messed it up... like... "your hair colour was so beautiful, why did you try to change it?" . yes. I probably was very insecure. I had forgotten to take my birthcontrol pill two days before ... and oh well, will it ever end my stupidity eeheh

[Pegasus Marsters]

Yes, toner. Put the bleach down. Don't touch it again. That stuff is lethal. I had two beautiful white streaks 2 years ago (think Rogue from X-Men) and loved them... until they started to break off at an inch long after I kept bleaching the roots. :rolleyes: Don't do it again, it's not smart and it's really hard to do if you don't really know what you're doing. I once burned my scalp whilst bleaching, I still don't know what happened but I had blisters on my scalp. Ouchies.

Let the hairdresser do it, she'll know what to do. Toner really is what you need.

[Beloved]

Barbara, first of all, put your hair up and take a step back. You can wear your hair up in a bun or french roll indefinitely and no one will know you made a mistake. Do you have a pretty ficcare? There are so many pretty ones. This would be a good time to get yourself one you love.

This feeling that "I have to fix this right now!" is what gets people into trouble. You have an unlimited amount of time to find a hairdresser to fix this for you. Start looking for stylists, ask around here for recommendations in your area. But please, please, don't make any decisions until you have cooled down.

I once had a stylist put big chunky peroxide blonde skunk highlights, as I like to call them, in my dark brown hair. I was very upset. But after a dye job by a different stylist (my mother's stylist) you would have never known. It's going to be ok.

[CopperHead]

Last summer I got an urgent call from my neice from college. She had let a friend try to blend in her roots and it turned out orange. She has bleached, straightened hair so this was quite a mistake! I told her to go to a stylist and have a consultation to see what could be done. The stylist was able to tone down the orange and she gave my neice a blue shampoo to use. I did very much the same thing when I was my neice's age. It is a live and learn situation that can be fixed. :)

[jera]

Hi sweetie,

So sorry about your bad color experience. Your hair is so thick and healthy looking. I agree with the others who've already said you need a toner. Please try to relax and eat something. You're making me sad with all this desperate talk. :(

[Nevermore]

I'm with everyone else, back away from the bleach/toner/dye/whatever else. Put your hair up and forget about it until you can get a colorist to fix it. Remember, your hair WILL grow. This isn't forever. Good luck fixing it.

[brok3nwings]

Pegasus i know its letal...that is the why i am not using it no matter how. If they tell me that they cant give me a nice dark blonde with only a toner i can ask even for a light brown in those foils. i dont care, just dont give me any bleach or any high peroxide.

Beloved thank you for your suggestions, thats what im doing...using it up, or pushing the foils to one side so that all my natural appears. How do i know if a stylist is good? My friends dont use colour in their hair...only black home dye..only one used to have nice really light blonde and she was a natural dark blonde...so i will ask her and see what she has to tell me. I am so much better now... when it happened i only thought "what can i put in my hair to fix this?" it was a crazy, high adernaline feeling..

Cooperhead its the pain of blonde hair... i know because this is not the first mistake i take, unfortunatly. hoppefully i am wizer now and at least i can calm down quicker...

jera thank you so much for your kindness, i really am much better now... i really passed this last few days (4 days) trying to figure out how to "fix" it without damage, without going to the hairdresser. At least i figured that i cant do it myself, no way, so now i have to concentrate myself in being strong and dont let people touch my hair just because i am desperate...unfortunatly i dont know any good colourist, but i will do my best to find one. And someone that understands and is able to listen to be for half an hour before the procedure :)

[Melisande]

Dear Barbara, I understand your pain. I have only one thing to add: NOBODY who sees you knows how you wanted your hair to look. Nowadays people run around with the craziest dye jobs. Just pretend it's on purpose. It's next year's hottest look. It's exactly what you wanted. Unusual, a bit crazy, different.

Okay?

How many people do you see every day with hair in a much worse state than yours (which looks beautiful, btw), and they paid heaps of money for it! So forget your hair. Just put it up and forget your mishap. Over time, your hair will grow, the different tones will blend, and if you pamper it, the shine will continue. Don't do anything right now.

And don't be so perfectionist next time, for your own sake. The more liberty we give to our hair, its structure and color and character, the better it looks.

And don't be sad. You will never make the same mistake again (maybe a different one, but never this specific mistake!). And you may have saved with your story another woman's head whose hand was stretching out for the bleach bottle.

Many good wishes from me. Lovely hair you have!!!!

[Kirin]

You'll be okay..... the best advice is don't do anything crazy. Get the toner done, and then leave it alone. It really will be alright.

[Lamb]

NOBODY who sees you knows how you wanted your hair to look.

Yes, I think this is the point. You may be very disappointed and mad, but we are our own worst critics. Don't be hasty, don't do anything to your hair except condition, condition, and then condition some more. A good colorist will know what they can do without inflicting more damage. Just calm down, put your hair up, and forget it!

[brok3nwings]

thank you all again for your advice... it really matters a LOT to me. I know that people are a bit "sick" of the miserable ones that keep doing stupid things like cuting when they want it long, dying went they want natural... i know. I know that this is not different from many other situations, but we all see the pain in others, and think we woudnt do something like that to our hair cause we love it TOO much.
I can trully be glad that my hair isnt damaged as if i had used bleach, actually it is pretty shiny and soft (for now, i dont know if with time it will open the cuticle because of the peroxide used..). I will do my best, i am now in a state of "loving" again my hair the best i can... i know i cant freak out. i know that stress is the worst thing that can happen to us when having to decide something. I just wish everything goes for the best...

[Beloved]

How do i know if a stylist is good? My friends dont use colour in their hair...only black home dye..only one used to have nice really light blonde and she was a natural dark blonde...so i will ask her and see what she has to tell me. I am so much better now... when it happened i only thought "what can i put in my hair to fix this?" it was a crazy, high adernaline feeling..

My advice on finding a colorist, is to look at stylist's bios online. The Aveda salons near me have a lot of info on what type of color work each colorist likes to do most. I would schedule a consult with a colorist and ask them if they had ever handled this problem before, what they did about it and what they think would work best with my hair.

Otherwise, call a salon that looks good to you and ask if there is someone who is good with color correction on light hair. Then schedule a consult. I wouldn't let a new colorist touch my hair without talking to them about their game plan first.

[Demetrue]

First of all, stop beating yourself up over this. It's not like you murdered a little old lady or something - you tried to make yourself look more like you wanted to and the experiment didn't pan out. It took me 30 years to stop coloring my hair and I am still fighting the urge. It's because the picture on the box gives us a certain hope, but often there is no guarantee that your hair will look anything like the color on the box when you use the product. You were just trying something out and you don't like the current results. It is NOT a moral issue - coloring your hair is not a sin and sometimes it looks great and sometimes the end result is not the look we were trying to achieve. Do some SMT's, hang out with your hair up in plastic wrap and a towel and give yourself some love. I am pretty sure a deposit only toner should get rid of the brass - just be kind to yourself!

[brok3nwings]

Beloved, the colourist i found was because i was looking in the internet and the magazine "maxima" (good one i think) had an article about blonde colour and he says that he works with 12 basic blonde colours and he personalizes the colour, he seamed to know what he was talking about. But again, it can "look" good...but i will only decide myself after talking a lot and taking all my doughts. At least im not letting them cut my hair. And also only about 1/10 of hair is to be fixed. Until then i found out that if i put my hair into one side i can hide the foils and look as i looked before

[brok3nwings]

Demetrue i know, you are right, its just that for me bad hair colour is like a bad hair cut that you are ashamed of. i am a painting student and i can really get frustrated about this. And it bothers me more than it would to someone else

[LaurelSpring]

Its not so bad. A toner should fix you up then lots of hair pampering.

[Demetrue]

Demetrue i know, you are right, its just that for me bad hair colour is like a bad hair cut that you are ashamed of. i am a painting student and i can really get frustrated about this. And it bothers me more than it would to someone else

Believe me, I understand, which is why I responded to your initial post. I am very visual, with an artistic temperamant, and looking back at my own life, I can see how my own compulsions with visual perfection and my deep need to have my outer appearance match my inner perception of self led to a lot of suffering for me every time I tried to color my hair and it didn't come out right. There were times when I used successively higher peroxide volumes in attempt to get the right blonde - not too brassy, not too green, not too violet. Sometimes I colored my hair 3 times in one day to try to get it perfect. That is why my hair is now growing out from a pixie cut because my hair could only take so much chemical damage before it started to break off. That is why I have pledged, for the hundredth time, not to color any more and just use natural products and see what happens - even if that means gray hair and demarcation lines between my colored hair and the new roots. I understand those restless urges that lead to hair disasters! I also know that right now, my hair has looked the best it has in years since I started used LHC methods and natural treatments, like catnip, cassia, jojoba/aloe. Your hair color will get corrected and then you can go on to baby it and let it grow long and beautiful.

[spidermom]

Best wishes for a good correction/result.

[brok3nwings]

Demetrue i know, it can also be compared to an addiction... i have never thought that an artificial colour in my hair looked better then my own but since i tried it the first time is like having the possibility open. The door was closed for a year and it only took me a bad day to ruin it.
Spidermom, thank you i really need it to happen for the best.

And i have discovered more about hair colouring and what i did wrong... i went to the Hair Boutique as someone told me to, and its incredible how many people get the same problem as i did.. brassiness from trying it at home. This is a big lesson for me, i cant really think i know enought when it comes to hair colouring. Not even close! The solution here is to do the toning thing... there is someone there that is a colour expert and i basicly scared myself even more... (i dont know if its good or bad).
Basicly permanent colour doesnt lift permanent colour... so the first time i did the mistake trying to fix it with permanent colour again was only damaging my hair and changing no colour at all. I didnt know this. I know that my hair is not the same as when it was virgin but i dont feel it is too bad, it is still shinny. So i have one question for you...do you think it can go worst and worst with the time? Like having little damage and then starting to get really worst? what can i do?
my worries is that, the mistake i made was made from my roots to half my lenght (i didnt touch my ends) so cuting is not an option...

[Curlsgirl]

I'm glad you are doing better! :) I can sympathize. I have a tendency to be very critical about my haircolor as well.

[Demetrue]

I don't think it will get any worse - only if you use a high lift peroxide on the same area - OR bleach. Cassia helped me cover up a lot of my dye/bleach damage so that I won't have to cut yet.

[brok3nwings]

i actually think that the colour is doing better then the day that i did it. Is it possible? Anyway, i am looking for as much information as i can get in the internet and as far as i´ve realized i will have to use an ash-violet toner. I actually dont want to end up with completly ashy hair as thats not my natural haircolour, so i am couting that the colour expert can explain me what he is going to use and why. And i am NOT using more than a TONER in my hair. I really would rather keep my hair as it is then using bleach, or any kind of lightener...
ah, and i hope that the toner only uses 3percent of peroxide, not more than that as i am going only to change the hue not the lighteness

[Demetrue]

color oxidizes after several days and also, some dye molecules come out every time you wash and condition it, so the color can settle down over a few weeks. Sometimes you can mix toner with conditioner, leave on hair for 20 minutes and just rinse, without even using peroxide. When I have used violet toners, I use a 10V or 9V toner with 10 Vol. peroxide for deposit only, and just leave it on for 3-5 minutes to tone down the yellow. Sometimes it only needs a few minutes to get the yellow out. I don't use ash tones alone on yellow because it turns green.

[brok3nwings]

The day is comming and im starting to feel a bit nervous about it...its going to be Friday at lunch time. I´ve been searching for my photos when i had absolutly no dye colour in my hair. And guess what? Since little my hair has been a mix of golden brown, dark blonde, medium blonde. Some times i would really consider it brown! And others is a golden blonde, never a light blonde... so i think i was really stupid to think that i woudnt get any brassy tones!!!
For a long time i havent seen my natural colour (besides some undifined colour roots) nor my texture. As my sister has her hair long for a long time i was confusing my hair with hers... besides her hair was the reason i tried this foils! I did her foils and it went faboulous! Do you know why? She is so much blonde then me...and a yellow blonde not a brownish blonde! And as far from texture her hair has always been a bit fine as mine has always been medium with lots of volume.
I just have to say...this was really a surprise... i havent seen my hair for such a long time that i had forgoten how it really is. and the fact that my ends are blonder made think i was a lighter shade then i actually am. :)