It's Just Hair!

Had a little adventure with my hair this past week.  Adventure might be too positive of a word - it was more like a nightmare!  I decided that I didn't need to be spending almost $200 on my hair to get it cut and colored by the stylist that I LOVE (but who is one of the teachers at one of the beauty schools, so she's the most expensive at that salon).  So I decided to go to the Aveda Institute here in town.  I had gone to the one in Indianapolis almost the entire time that I lived there and had zero problems.  For those who don't know, at the Aveda Institutes it's students who do your hair under the of their educators.  It's fairly cheap because it's students, and I've always been happy with how they've done my hair.  Everything seemed to be going fine - I asked for my normal hair color/style - some blonde highlights (really fine, not chunky) and some copper brown lowlights (again, really fine, not chunky).  Both the student and the educator seemed to understand what I wanted, and even commented about being able to see what I had done in the past.  So I settled in to read some Jane Austen (getting ready for this month's book club) and let them get to work.  

Side note:  I love getting foils put in my hair.  It's one of my favorite sensations in the world. 

I knew things were starting to head south when we went back to shampoo.  As she was taking the foils out of my hair, she commented on how she had to hurry because she didn't want the blonde highlights and my normal hair to soak up the brown.  (I now think back to my real stylist, who would rinse the brown out first, then take out the blonde).  Anyway, it got worse when I hear her sighing - loudly - while she is rinsing my hair.  She then went to get someone else and I hear them whispering back and forth.  Never a good sign.  It was clear when we went back to our station and she says, "Now, before I take this [the towel] off, know that we give free re-dos."  Great. 

She took off the towel and it was dark brown.  Like as brown as my sister's hair.  They then 'stripped' my hair to get the brown out, which turned it into more of a reddish brown (more red, than brown).  It actually was kind of a pretty color - just NOT on me!  It was awful.  I was trying so hard not to cry there - mostly because I felt really bad for the student.  She was clearly on the verge of tears, too.  I wasn't happy, but they were trying to make it right, so I was trying to give them a chance to.  From the whispers with educators, it sounds like she did two things wrong - first, she should have rinsed the red/brown out before taking out the blonde foils.  Second, she mixed the toner too dark.  So the combination of those two things created the nightmare that was my hair.

The pictures below don't really show how dark of a red it was - only the few people who got to see me during the few days it was red got to see how really red it was.  You can compare it to the picture at the top of this blog to at least get a feel for how much darker it was.

Dan took me to Olive Garden that night for some salad and breadsticks therapy.  It sort of helped.  In the 4 days between red day and re-do day, I tried some home fix its.  A couple of hair stylist friends (who don't live here!) gave me a couple of strategies to try.  First, it was crushed up vitamin C tablets.  You crush them up and make a paste with water.  Put the paste in your hair for an hour, then rinse out.  The vitamin C is supposed to help lighten the color - and it's non-chemical, so it's supposed to be easier on your hair.  

My vitamin C paste masque...

After the vitamin C masque, I tried their second strategy.  Washing your hair with laundry detergent.  Apparently Tide is the best brand for this, but we use Gain, so I tried it.  It's hard to tell which of these lightened my hair, but the combination of the two did help some.  It was still way red (especially outside in natural light), and way too dark for my complexion.

Better...but still terrible.

So I went in on Saturday for my re-do appointment.  They basically did very heavy highlights, bleaching the red back to blonde, and leaving some fine streaks of the red to make my lowlights. 

It's still a little too bright for me - but I'm hoping over the next couple of weeks it will tame down a bit and be close to my normal. 

I was impressed with their re-do - I really didn't think there was any way to change what had been done because it was so dark.  I have to use a deep conditioner on my hair over the next couple of weeks to keep it from getting dry and brittle.  I think if I go back there, I will only do highlights and stay away from the red/copper brown.