Hair today, Hair tomorrow

So, the time came for me to have a trim on my hair.. Anyone that knows me personally knows what trials I've been through recently, for those who don't, here's the "Hair saga".

Once upon a time there was a girl, who started to go grey at 19, so she hit the bottle. Her hair was every shade of every colour over that time, until she reached 40 (well, 41 and a few years of growing it, after deciding to go "au naturel", then henna red). By that time she had decided that a nice chocolately brown would be nice. So picked a lovely shade, according to the packet.. put it on her hair and waited. What resulted was black hair!!

So here we have, rather dark chocolate brown.. More commonly known as black hair!!

Of course I'm never satisfied, so decided to return to my reddish colour, choosing "Natural Copper Auburn Brown" - well, that's what it said on the box! 

The photo really doesn't do justice to the sheer brilliance of the red, it came out a kind of vermillion, nay scarlet, which would have been OK, if that was the colour I was aiming for. No, I wanted a nice coppery brown, with more brown than anything. I trawled the internet for help. Bearing in min I'd dyed my hair 2 days previous and simply couldn't live with it. Any sane person would have gone to the hairdresser... Not me. I took matters into my own hands once more. 

Before I trash any more and complain about products, this is simply amazing, it removes the colour element from the hair, obviously if the hair is over dyed, like mine was, then it will only remove so much.. So, I put it on and the result is below.

So here, we have a rather nice chocolatey, hazel brown. Now this I did like, but the ends were still very dark, from being overdyed, so rather than wait for my next box of Colour B4 to arrive, I got itchy fingers and bought a couple of boxes of bleach, and a rather nice permanent Dark Blonde.....

So this, is apparently "dark blonde"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The colour in the photo kinda looks OK, a sort of auburny colour.. In fact the colour was more like banana yellow.. and the condition... My poor hair was starting to snap!!!! My lovely long hair that I had been growing for a couple of years was flipping ruined!!!! So I got the scissors out and hacked at it, such was my disgust with myself for being so stupid.. Yes folks, even women in their forties make mistakes!!!

I woke up, having had a revelation... I needed to go to the hairdresser, or I was going to get my fella's clippers out and trim it to a number 1!!

So I got up the guts, walked into a local salon and said, "Help me".. when asked "What can we do for you?", I replied with "Cut off my hands, so I can't do anything else to my hair"

Fortunately they were very sympathetic, through the stifled laughter, I realised there was no point in crying about it, I was just going to have to take it on the chin and deal with it. 

 So, carefully and considerately, the lovely Rachel washed, and cut my hair. So here we have the results. I was sent away with a set of conditioning treatments to try on it, and advised to not dye it for the time being, but go away having had a strand test, in case I did decide to go for a colour. Having chatted to my lovely boyfriend about it, I decided to let it go "au naturel" again. As dyeing  and bleaching it had been so stressful for me. This cut was done in late March.

 TODAY!! 24th May 2013

BEFORE

AFTER

 So, I decided to go back and have a follow up appointment, 8 weeks on from "the chop".. The before pic, showing how wild my uncut hair was getting, the trouble with very dry hair, like mine has become, is that there is so little you can actually do, apart from re-moisturise like a demon and keep having it cut, until there is enough healthy hair to grow it. So today I decided to have more layers put in, just to help with getting rid of this dry broken mess I have, but to only have a tiny amount taken off the length, it feels much better so I'm  happier. Nothing worse than having your crowning glory taken away!

I've also been sent away with some proper shampoo and conditioner, while double the price of what I usually use, I've been told is perfect for hair in the condition that mine is in, and it should help. 

I'm back to the hairdressers in July... so I'll follow up then!

Remember folks, let this saga be a lesson to you!!

1) Don't bleach your hair from black go to a hairdresser

2) Don't cut your own hair after damaging it

3) Go to a hairdresser in the first place to have it coloured the colour you want to go

4) Going to the salon is expensive, but so is dyeing, redyeing, overdyeing, stripping and bleaching and bleaching and colouring your hair yourself.

5) Just go to the hairdresser

I only have myself to blame and I accept full responsibility for what I have done.