Tiny Plastic Houses

The Great Hair Debacle

I’ve had a rough few days. Ok, a rough couple months, but the last week or so has been, shall we say, less than pleasant. Between allergic skin reactions, general meanness from people I trusted, being dumped (via text, I might add), a tremendously laughable arts fair and country music fest, and the odd insult, I was pretty much tired of being me for a while.

So I decided I would change my hair color this weekend. I’ve always said it’s like being a whole new person every time you change your hair color and it was time to be a whole new me!

Last Friday, I went to Sally’s (Liberty, MO, location) and perused the odd hair color section. I’d had some pretty bright colors lately, but none that I’d call wacky or fun in quite some time and I was ready for something completely different. I had, for the past few years, had my hair done professionally at a salon, but due to monetary constraints (Ok, I’m a broke bitch …) I had enlisted the help of my ex-husband to complete this grand opus of a black base and some sort of color. I had foiled hair before and had every confidence I could instruct him in the proper method.

Even though I had dyed my hair varying shades of green and blue in the past, I had told myself I’d never go with those tones again. My pale skin and light coloring make me look like the undead with bluish hair and sickly with green. Neither of these things were desirable

Still, Beyond the Zone’s “Not So Shy Violet” was very appealing and certainly different from the orange and red tones I’d been using for the past few years. Plus, I told myself, it had enough red in it that it’d look more like the purple shades I’d used with varying success in my youth. I purchased it, some blue black dye, bleach, developers, foils, and all the trappings of hair dying at home. All in all I spent about $30.

I went over everything with Jas one more time, really feeling this was going to go well. Once started, however, it was clear very quickly that Jas wasn’t very good at this. He’d seen it done a time or two, but hadn’t paid attention, he hadn’t really listened to me when I was explaining the procedure and … well … his ADD started kicking in at a certain point, leading me to be very, very concerned for the safety of my hair! As it took him over 2 hours to apply the bleach, then another 40 to paint on the black dye around the foils, I started getting very, very concerned that all my hair would be melted off by the time the black had developed.

I immediately jumped in the shower and watched the river of black dye and bleach swish down the drain. I combed the mop out and looked in the mirror. Finding myself surprised to see very little blond, white or yellow showing at all. No matter how I moved my hair, it seemed there was very little blond but I thought it worth our while to put some color in. I slopped the violet dye over all and waited well over 40 minutes for it to set. I hopped in the shower, again, rinsing all the color out.

By this time, I was exhausted. It was 2 in the morning and I had to work the next day. I looked in the mirror at the wet hair and saw that there was some blue-tinged streaks, but it was too wet and I was too tired to see what it really looked like … I fell asleep with visions of violet blue hair clouding my dreams …

Which should have been nightmares! When I woke and looked at the mirror at the foot of the bed I actually, audibly gasped. What stared back at me was a puffy old woman with black and gray hair. I moved closer and shuffled through my hair. Each streak was a bluish gray color, making me look like a little, blue-haired old lady with pale skin.  I got up and tried to get ready for work, but nothing I did looked good. I had royally fucked up my hair, no two ways about that!  No hairstyle or make-up was fixing this. I had to fix it! I couldn’t go to work like this!

After about 30 minutes of panicked rushing about and freaked out phone calls, my ex, who’d come by to take the girls to school, said he’d give it another go. I was very apprehensive about this, but since I didn’t have the $200-300 it would cost to fix this at a salon, I agreed. I called in to work, he called in to work … we took the girls to school and headed to Sally’s for a restock. This time I really thought this through. I purchased some more bleach, 2 shades of pinkish dye (Bubble Head Pink (purplish) and Party Time Pink (reddish)) and Candy Apple Red (All Beyond the Zone brand).

We went back to my house and sat up shop in the kitchen. This time I instructed him to carefully pick out all the blue patches and to add a little extra of the black into each foil, saturating all with the bleach.  My reasoning was that the bleach would get the blue out and lift the black to an orange color that would give a variety of color once the dye was placed on it. This time it only took him about 1.5 hours to finish up the bleach (including the heat we applied to the last sections set up to help them catch up with the first half). We rinsed this out in the kitchen sink and I mixed 2 custom colors … one consisting of Candy Apple Red  + Virgin Rose Pink  and the other of Candy Apple Red  + Cherry Bomb Red . Then we began applying the dye and foiling the pink portions. We applied heat to the whole mess under a plastic cap for well over an hour.

So, now I have glorious pink and black hair. So loving this right now! Better than I could have hoped (especially after waking up with gray hair Monday morning).

See ya’ on the flip side,
~H

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 4:33 pm. It is filed under Blog, Connect. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.