by Can D. Caine

Created on: June 20, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Let me just start by saying that I am the QUEEN OF HOME HAIR DYE DISASTERS! You'd think I would have learned my lesson after the first time or five, oh but no, I just never gave up on getting that perfect shade at home!

The first time I screwed up my hair color was when I let my good friend Karen dye my hair when we were in high school. My hair is a natural dark blond, and it had highlights at the time. We had gone to Wal-Mart and looked at hair color kits, and decided we'd dye my hair blond all over.

We had picked out this pretty golden blond. At least it was pretty on the box. Neither of us realized at the time that you had to pre-lighten your hair before adding the blond color most of the time, to get the result on the box.

Then end result was orange roots, bright yellow strands, and white strands where my hair had previously been highlighted. My mother was furious with me when I got home! She made me got to the drugstore with her and get a box of a sensible reddish brown color to cover up the orange and gold.

The next few times I screwed up my hair, it was all on my own. Once I went from blond to brown and got green in the process, another time I got Ronald McDonald red when I tried to dye my blond hair a pretty auburn (the STOPLIGHT RED name should have given me a hint), and yet another time I wound up with pink streaks in my blond hair (that was on purpose actually for a concert, but it never washed out like it was supposed to).

Oh yeah, and then there was the time that a STYLIST actually screwed up my hair color. I had been going to her for about six months or so, and she had always done a pretty good job on my hair. I showed her a picture of a pretty strawberry blond color that had light golden blond highlights streaked through it.

About an hour later, I faced a horror show spectacle in the mirror. My hair was sort of a magenta color with white streaks. And she had the nerve to tell me it looked good! Needless to say, I didn't go back to her again.

My friend Karen that had messed up my hair color the first time we experimented with it, is now a licensed cosmetologist. I usually consult her first before I try any at-home projects and she gives me good advice. But I pretty much try to stick with letting the salons do my hair now.

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