So, thinking I would be smart, I decided to boost my naturally brown hair - but faded with redness from the summer sun and hot styling - using hair dye instead of going to the hairdresser. The reason is that I'm terrified that I will leave without what seems to have been years of trying to let my hair grow.
The problem is that I started to cover my hair with a shade that turned out much darker than I wanted... uneven and dry on top of that! So I had to try and turn that around as well, while avoiding any redness!
To keep it short: I ended buying 7 boxes of hair dye and spending nearly 70 euros, the price of a visit to the hair dresser (well, minimally). I thought I was never going to get my hair back to normal...but thanks to a very natural brown shade of Schwarzkopf my life was saved!
Now here it comes in detail.
This is what my hair looked like from the start (curled a bit with a curling iron). Looks like normal hair...but way too light for my complexion and as you can see there is redness in there, but the lighting wasn't very good.
I was looking at a favourite childhood film of mine: Problem Child 2, and fell in love with Amy Yasbeck's hair... she looked so stunning with that chocolate brown hair... and I felt so sad knowing I was a natural dark brunette as well but had played with my hair so often that it had these weird copper like shades.
I wanted to be darker so badly that I got a pretty dark shade from the start.
This is the shade 4 Tahiti from the L'Oreal Récital Preference cream. It looked very cool, ashy and natural on the box and in the color table on the back, so I went for it.
Unfortunately...it looked like nothing had changed after blow drying...
Sigh... I went to buy another, darker shade. This time the shade 4 Mid Brown by L'Oreal Excellence Cream. The lady on the box looked so angelic... I feel bad for saying it but I wanted to be like this girl "on the cover". It looked like such a feminin, warm shade, perfect for autumn.
But this was the result...
My hair looked striped... grey? black? blue? brown? red? And so dry! Also the smell was overwhelming. Mind that this all happened in a few days!
In different light it just looked simple...black...flat black... where was the shine? The angelic golden hints?
I decided to use my old tric...using an ashy blonde to convert my black back to brown.
I used a familiar shade, Garnier Nutrisse 81. For some reason it did smell very harsh for a brand that claims to be oh so natural all the time. I thought I was going to pass out when I was applying the dye!
And for what...because the tric didn't work this time... probably because the first dye was uneven... My hair had turned into a complete mess! Only my roots had lightened! Check this out!
I was mortified and went to the hairdresser the next morning, only to find that one had no decoloring left and the other one couldn't give me an appointment in time. I had an exam to study and I really needed my hair to look good before showing up at university! My crush runs around there and everything!
So I focused and popped into the drugstore once more. I would need a serious plan. I got a box of bleach (Garnier D+, the only one they had) and TWO boxes of an unkown brand: Schwarzkopf Nectra in the shade 600 Mid Brown.
Bleach! Aaah! After bleaching my hair looked something like this:
You can imagine how I felt, and all that while studying...my brain was fuzzy from all the chemicals... I knew that everything relied on the new brand...
While letting the Schwarzkopf 600 Mid Brown work into my hair (for an extra long time just to be sure), I did some research and found a lovely video from Schwarzkopf about this line , Nectra, that instantly reasured me that this brand was going to help.
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOVJK3m1yZM
Hey, that's the woman I wanted to be in the first place! Haha. No, the video is so cute, I was touched. Her hair is dark but not even as dark as mine after that terrible L'Oreal dye...hahaha. Love creates beauty is a good message... At least when love is mutual... When you're hungering for a crush it kind of eats you...lol.
So I had created these enormous expectations from this dye, not only because of the add, but also because the product was completely odourless, drip-free and just enough to cover all my hair!
After rinsing I was very relieved. My hair looked normal, even after just bleaching before!
Look at this:
Do I see shine and body? Yes! Wow!
Sure, it wasn't perfectly even, but I blame the Garnier blonde dye for that! Stupid root lightener! My hair looked too light still overall but then again the shade 600 did not mention that it was suitable for (bleached) blondes. I was fed up with dyeing by that time, so I kept the second box of Schwarzkopf Nectra for the next day, almost impatient to use it! My hair was suitable for going in public!
See... you can still feel the bleachedness...hahaha.
Surprisingly it had sorted out the root problem quite well:
The next day I packed on the delightful product (the slogan says: the hair color your hair will love, I guess they were right!) and couldn't wait for the result (of course I did otherwise my hair would be f***** again).
After drying and straightening, my hair looked somewhat like this:
Well, I certainly can't complain about Schwarzkopf Nectra!... on the contrary...I'm very happy with this shade and I'm going to keep it. It's not exactly what I wanted, but I blame Garnier and most certainly L'Oreal (but they're the same in the end).
The roots looked almost even again!
The shade in all it's glory, without previous wackiness and with proper after care (and a hint of photoshop).
It comes in 14 different shades, and isn't available in every drugstore, let alone supermarket. It's not pricey, I think it was around 8 euros. So if you feel like freshing up that natural mid brown, this is this way to go!
Thank you Schwarzkopf for saving my life!
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