Blonde Ambition...

Yesterday I decided to dye my hair blonde.

I've been colouring my hair since I was about 11 years old. Over the years I have been everything form platinum blonde to black and everything in between, including a spell with purple hair which occured by accident!

I have, as I got older, generally settled in the region of red. Naturally I'm a sort of strawberry blonde/auburny blonde colour but I like to emphisise the red in my hair. By emphisise I mean I dye it much redder than it is naturally. Watermelon Red, Copper Sunset, Autumn Red...all favourite shades! Last month I had a notion for a dark red so I promptly went out and dyed my hair. Thrity short minutes later and it was bye bye Watermelon Red and hello Chocolate Cherry, which was a brown/red/maroon colour. I liked it...but red hair is a pisser to keep looking healthy and the colour faded way too quick. It doesn't help that my hair grows faster then the speed of light and 3 weeks later I had one inch roots in my natural shade coming through.

My decision to go blonde was partly due to the fact it's nearer my own colour and partly due to the fact that I'm looking very pale just now and darker hair makes me look even more washed out. I slapped on a peroxide hair stripper and waited. One hour later I rinsed it off. Now I've done this before so I know how it works. I hadn't mentioned to my family though what happens when you try to strip red dye from your hair! They were in stitches as I emerged from the bedroom with my bright orange hair! You see red is bugger to get rid off and takes a couple of applications of peroxide before your done. Better Half didn't know what to do when I asked him what he thought of the colour. It took a few seconds before he realised it wasn't a finished product.

However, the laugh was on me in the end. I got through the stripping process and I'd bought a Honey Blonde shade to put over it. That worked a treat. Not. Instead of coming out a lovely honey colour like it said it would on the packet my hair went to a delightful bright ginger! For those of you in Scotland who know what I'm talking about, I'd call the end result See You Jimmy Ginger!! Definitely not the Honey Blonde I'd been after!

Now I'm not vain and I'm in no way precious about my hair, after all if you feck it up you can just cut the buggering stuff off or dye it again. I've never been one of those women for whom their hair is their crowning glory. My philosophy on hair is that it's there to be played about with. However, unvain as I am, I decided against going out myself to buy a new colour to put over my See You Jimmy Ginger, mainly because I didn't want to scare small children and because my hair was like straw...dying it 3 times in day can do that!...and my hair was at this point so straw like that I resembled Worzel Gummidge's sister. So I sent Better Half out to buy a new colour armed with instructions that it should be darker than my current colour and not a cheap brand other than that he was on his own and had free reign as to what colour it ended up. He returned in lightning time with a colour that I was reasonably happy with. He's good like that. I sent him for tampons once and he bought the right brand and absorbency without being told! He's a credit to his mother!

Thirty minutes, a good conditioner, a bit help from John Frieda in the form of some frizz ease, a blast of the hairdryer and a 20 minute session with my GHD's (the best hair straighteners in the universe) and all was well again!

So I'm not Honey Blonde but who cares? Blonde is so last season! I am now Coffee Delight. A nice warm brunette! My hair is silky smooth and so shiny people better wear shades to come near me! According to my magazine this week brunette is where it's at right now anyway. I haven't been brunette in about 6 years. Of course it means I can now change all my make up to suit my new hair! There's my cue to spend some money! Every cloud and all that!

Jenny xx