Destined to be Red

I remember years ago when I was living in PEI I decided I wanted to have caramel blond hair. I went to the hairdresser and spent hours, upon hours, upon hours while they tried to make me that color… and all they could seem to get is various shades of red and orange. Even when they bleached the bejesus out of my hair it would only go a strawberry color rather than blond. It pissed me off.

This is me last night after I dyed my hair.  See that red tint?  Yeah, it’s not supposed to be there.  Granted, it does look different under those lights in my bathroom but it still has the red in it no matter what light I look under.

You see, my goal was to get a color that has a lot of purple in it, but is almost black.  Not the reddish type purple I got, but a more blueish color.   I tried a number of different dyes but I keep having the same problem. RED RED RED!!

This is the dye I got to try last night.   Shit, the girl on the box looks pleased enough with it.  I’m pretty sure the dude is only smiling because she looks like she’ll be dropping to her knees any minute… but, moving on.

See, purple.  Not red.  PURPLE. 

I know that colors never come out exactly like on the box but to come on!  I should see a significant difference from the color I had before using it!

Oh, and although I’ve used this brand when dying my hair before, for some reason this one stung my scalp like a S.O.B!

The last color I tried looked seriously purple on the box, after a few weeks it just looked like ordinary old red.   It’s not a bad color but it’s not the color I wanted, argh!  Plus, I was starting to get roots and I hate that, especially when I see the twinkling of gray hair when under bright lights.

I’m so not ready for gray hair.

Here is the before and after’s from last night.  There is a difference of course and yeah there is a purple hue to it, but as you can see in the very first photo of this post, in many lights it just still looks red.   I don’t get it.   I do like it but not as much as I would if it had come out like on the box. 

I’ll leave it like this for now.  When I get back from Canada though, I don’t want to mess with it too much when I am leaving for Canada so soon.   Knowing my luck I’d end up burning all my hair off or something.   When I get back I can experiment some more and figure out what is going on.

Any hairdressers out there that can tell me why I get red in my hair no matter what I do?

P.S.  Only 12 sleeps until we leave for Canada!