Bizarro hair color... I am a poster child for...

gcvmom

Here we go again!
what happens when you find some really old hair color waaay in the back of the cabinet and decide to give it a try!
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl::rofl:

Okay, my NORMAL pre-marriage-kids-chaos hair color is a medium brown. I think I got my first gray hair at 18, and it's been steadily morphing into salt 'n' peppa in the back of my head, with a definitive silvery white headband around my face. I think it would actually look half-way decent if I just let it all grow out. But I digress....

About 5 years ago, husband convinced me to go blonde. Well, it's actually a warmer/lighter brown with a blonde weave. I was told I look younger (okay, you won me right there), and I thought it was a nice change. PLUS when the roots grow out, the grey/silver/white blends in with the blonde very nicely, so I can go well beyond the usual 6-week re-dos, which typically run me about $100 -- which is actually a pretty decent price for the cut, color AND weave combined (and includes tip).

Well, with husband out of work, I cannot in good conscience justify this level of vain indulgence. And considering it's been since MAY 23rd that I had my hair colored, there is a considerable amount of "real" color now showing.

So today I remembered seeing a box of the Loving Care wash-in temporary (thank God!) color in Warm Golden Brown (or something like that). I can't remember how long it's been in the bathroom cabinet, but suffice to say, it's MORE than 5 years.

So I get all the supplies out and lay the instruction sheet on the bathroom counter -- lock the door and strip down into an old t-shirt and my skivvies. I put on the plastic gloves, shake up the bottle real good, then proceed to squirt the gooey brown liquid all over my grey first, then work my way back until my entire head is saturated with the stuff. They give you this plastic thingy to put on your head, so I manage to get that clipped on, then go lay on my bed to watch TV for the 45 minutes I figure I need to give it (since grey hair is notoriously stubborn when it comes to color adhesion).

The time flies by (since everyone else is downstairs and I'm free to watch whatever I want), and I head downstairs to our only working shower to rinse out the gunk and condition per the instructions.

After stepping out and wrapping my head in a towel, I decide to wipe the steam off the mirror to assess my new 'do.

Well, ladies, I can tell you that Warm Golden Brown ages to a rather glaring Rusty Orange Bucket after years of fermentation in my bathroom! :surprise:

So place your bets... how long will it take husband to notice? (As I sit here typing with wet hair, he's only noticed that I showered, not that the color has changed. difficult child 2 just came up and said my hair looks like it's "newly colored" :tongue:)

I give husband about an hour... unless he hears one of the kids say something.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...
 
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Marguerite

Active Member
After years of home colouring, I had to do something when I looked at difficult child 1's wedding photos and saw myself with ORANGE hair, over my red dress. I had just coloured my hair, I thought it looked good at home in the mirror, but I find being out in the sun makes my hair colour rapidly fade to orange.

So I've begun seeing a hairdresser. I origiinally asked for foils (what they call streaks these days) because a friend of mine had her hair done at this hairdresser and it looked lovely at her 50th birthday party. I wanted to look good for the next wedding - easy child's. And it did look good, the photos were fabulous. No orange!
And a couple of useful things my hairdresser told me (in the seveal hours the whole process took):

1) Commercial hair colours bought in the store, have been simplified to be as idiot-proof as possible. The range is a lot smaller so you have to choose carefully. PLus they all use too much orange in them, so finding one that looks OK on your hair if you have hair that holds orange more (like mine) is a problem.

2) If you have hair that grabs and hold orange colour above all others (as mine does) then even a temporary is unlikely to fade completely. Once you colour grey hair, it stays coloured permanently to some extent, unless the colour has merely coated the outside of the hair strand. But grey hair tends to be porous so it 'grabs' the colour and won't let it go. Because I was trying that trick - using a semi-permanent to cover root greys and let it all grow out hopefully more naturally. Result - ALL colour was looking orange.

3) You need to move to a lighter shade as you get older, even if your face is unlined and your natural colour is quite dark. The problem is, your face can still look 'hard' if you have a dark helmet of hair over an older face. Going slightly softer and paler is a younger look. Streaks can automatically give this effect, but again - watch out for the orange effect!

What my hairdresser did - she used an overall blue-toned colour (not available in the supermarket, except in the almost black shades). She also has been leaving SOME of my roots untouched, and touching up roots to the root in other aras. The idea is, to break up the grey root line and make it grow out naturally. However, I am finding it too distressing to let it all grow out so fast, I think I'll get ALL my roots done for the next wedding (easy child 2/difficult child 2's, in four weeks' time - hmm, time to make the appointment!). THEN maybe I'll let myself turn into an old woman slowly as she suggests.

Also what the hairdresser did (after putting in the streaks I wanted - using colour, not just bleach) was, she got me to use a blue shampoo. Look for one designed for bottle blondes or grey old ladies. You shampoo it in, leave it for three minutes 9with blue dye dripping all over your shoulder!) then wash it out. I got a special deal on the shampoo and conditioner (bought at a different hairdresser) and I also got a free black clutch purse I'll probably use for the next wedding. I sometimes find the blue shampoo doesn't lather enough, I don't like how it makes my hair feel (it's just that brand, though) so the haidresser said I can add a bit of my old favourite shampoo and together, it's taking out the orange in my hair AND I'm happy with how it feels.

When I saw the hairdresser for my follow-up, she had a good look and said my hair still is showing a lot of orange, but the blue shampoo is doing its job.

So maybe in the meantime - you can either get the blue shampoo (any brand) or if it's available, look for a product widely available in the 60s for the blue-rinse set, "Magic Silver White". My bottle-blonde sister used to use it to take the brassiness out of her bleached hair, it turned it from brassy orange to smoky ash. It looked much more natural.

If I hadn't had three of my kids' weddings within 12 months, I wouldn't have seen a hairdresser even now. But I'm glad I did!

Marg
 
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gcvmom

Here we go again!
Well, it's been 90 minutes, and he still hasn't noticed. I'm not surprised. It will probably take the kids saying something for it to register.

I mean, we're talking going from dark blonde with-highlights to something like THIS. He must be color-blind! :p
 

Lothlorien

Active Member
All I can say is.....ooooh! I guess you'll be calling your hairdresser in the morning, heh? I hope she can fix it the way you like it.
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
Nope. I'll live with this for another week I think, then I'll look for another box of temporary hair color to try. I'll have to reread Marg's advice about the whole orange issue. Since my "old" hair is color treated, that probably explains why it grabbed onto the orange in the first place. Hmmm... I wonder how I'd look with pink... although, Halloween is coming. Maybe a BRIGHTER orange would be more fitting. Something to rival Carrot Top! :p

Oh, and by the way, it's now been over TWO HOURS and no mention of it from husband! His powers of observation are SORELY lacking... but then, I already knew that!
 

flutterby

Fly away!
Gray is hard to color and you were going over blond which means you need to get a color that is darker than what you want the end result to be. I don't know what Marg uses or if it's because my mom and I color our hair red and red fades fast, but if you have gray hair you have to color more often. The do-it yourself hair colors show you what the color will look like depending on the hair color you're starting with.

So sorry. I'm so glad that my mom did hair for 30+ years. I never have to worry. :)

I could tell you the story of my friend who colored her hair and somehow ended up with polka dots. Not kidding. Somehow, I think the orange is better. ;)
 

KTMom91

Well-Known Member
I sympathize. Many years ago, I tried to go back to my natural boring light brown from platinum blonde...instead of orange, I got avocado green.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
GCV...that exact same thing happened to me.

Here is how I solved it.

I went to Walmart and bought the color stripper stuff they sell. It is on the bottom shelf I think with the actual bleaching kits and it actually strips all color out of your hair. It will leave your hair a nice banana color. Kinda the inside of the banana. Now...pick out one of those better kits that put in the highlights and lowlights into your hair in one box. Spend a little more on this box of dye. Or you could go to Sally's and get the light ash brown shade for all over and then get your new sister in law to come over and pull your hair through one of those caps to get the streaks.

Make sure you do a really good deep moisturizer after this escapade.
 

ThreeShadows

Quid me anxia?
:rofl:
If you wore your hair in a long gray braid you wouldn't be having this problem...

My husband wouldn't notice either. WHEN HE WAS STILL WORKING, BEFORE HE RETIRED TOO EARLY, people used to try to get him to gossip about which intern was messing with which nurse in which closet. I used to tell the gossip-hungry that he was so out of it that if Marilyn Monroe were to walk down the hall entirely naked he would not notice, he wouldn't even notice that she was dead! LOL!
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
So we get to call you pumpkinhead this week? Or carrot-top? How about the fire goddess?

:rofl:

by the way, my hair looked very nice when it was pink, thank-you-very-much!
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I was too embarrassed to post this before. Last Wednesday Onyxx wanted to touch up the underside of her hair (black on top, very blonde underneath). Since there was a lot of bleach left I decided to do blonde on top of the cherry red underneath.

Ohhhhh. BAD idea.

I had WHITE roots and ends and ORANGE - not rusty, more like Halloween Orange - stripes on the top of my head.

I "fixed" it Thursday. It's still too light on top but I'm just conditioning it to death for a week or so before I hit it with a darker blonde.

So... GCV... We're twins! And FWIW, I picked up Colorstay in Medium Blonde. Too light still but it killed the orange. Cost me $3 plus tax.
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
Well I've never colored my hair and I haven't cut it since Dude was born. You would think it would be down to my ankles by now - but nope. I'm just now starting to get silver streaks so in that respect I"m lucky. I've never colored or done anything to it - always very scared of my parents reaction - and never brave enough to "go for it"

WITH THAT SAID -

I hope today brings a really good color out of the mishap of the orange. I have no courage and I'm not sure that I'm going to go into grrrr um SILVER lovingly either. But I think you're beautiful whatever color your hair is.

I DO know that there are a multitude of teaching colleges here that will do hair for next to nothing and some walk-ins for free. I don't know about where you are, OC is probably different, but it was a thought if you add up the cost of stuff and the frustration - ????

Whatever color you end up with? You're still a sexy Momma! - So there. :tongue:

Hugs
Star
 

Abbey

Spork Queen
Sorry to laugh at your expense, but TOO DARN FUNNY!!!:tongue:

Since I lost my stylist when I moved, I had not had a cut nor color in 7 months. I looked like a Shetland Sheep dog. So I get this brilliant idea to do it myself as I had no money to go to a salon. I finish the coloring, have scissors in hand when my friend comes home. He's screaming...WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? Ummm..just cutting my hair. (This was the day before the roadtrip to the reunion.)

He's digging in his pockets pulling out money...GO TO A SALON!! I just cracked up. Sorry, dear, but $40 won't get you squat in a salon. Toss in another $100 then we'll talk.

I ended up pulling it up into a twist anyways most of the time as it was raining.

I want photos of the orange hair.

Abbey
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
Luuuuuuuuuuuuccccyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, we have a proooooobbbllllllleeeemmmmm...

I remember the day Rob did that. In his case he was trying to bleach his dark brown hair blonde and he ended up orange. He thought it was a hoot and pretended it was on purpose.

Did husband ever notice?

Suz
 

mstang67chic

Going Green
Maybe he DID notice but had a partial moment of spousal lucidity and is afraid to say anything.

This is why I don't self-color! LOL I KNOW something like that will happen.
 

rejectedmom

New Member
Must be the week for hair disasters. I went to get mine cut and ended up with bangs that only reach a a little over a third of the way down my forhead whren they are supposed to be right at my brows. I look like I am wearing a wig that belongs to a 10 year old girl. Only time will fix this UG! -RM
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I badly need to get mine cut but I'm dreading it. The girl who cuts my hair is really good and I've known her forever ... her husband is my landlord. But we get to talking and the more we talk the more she cuts. My hair is straight as a stick, all one length and about to my shoulders. Last time, before I realized it, she had cut layers into it on the top! With hair as straight as mine, those layers end up sticking straight out to the sides, no matter what I do to them! Not good.
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
OMG....I have a hair appointment on Wednesday for a trim and highlight...this thread is making me very nervous...if the pattern continues I might end up with an orange pixie haircut!

Suz
 
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