Technical Difficulties

Remember how I asked about Ombré highlights the other day?  Well, I decided that I love them.  My roots were getting a little out of hand, and so I decided I wanted to enhance them! I am not kidding, I've been researching this highlighting process since May, and debating on if I want to do it or not.  I finally decided, "Yes, I need a change, and if I hate it, I'll just get highlights."  Easy peezy!

My normal hair stylist is out on maternity leave... and I love her.  She has been referring all of her clients to her sister, Tammy.  I was really hesitant about letting anyone else touch my hair, but Tammy is the only person Sarah lets do her hair, and Sarah is a freak-of-nature-perfectionist, so I decided to ♪ have a little faith in her  ♫. 

I took in a bunch of photos of Hillary Duff's ombré hair, and even drew "hair chart" diagrams saying what colors I wanted and where to place them...  Like I said, I may not be a beautician, but I'm no amature!  I've been researching technique, and watching videos since May.

When I went into the Salon after work last night I asked Tammy how she wanted to go about doing this, while presenting my ideas.

1.  We can color my hair all over, and then go back through and do the ombré highlights after.

PRO: This would have been the simplest process, with only 2 shampoos and 2 blow drys, and would have gone relatively quickly.  Overall my hair would be darker, but it's cooler outside, so I guess that's OK.

CON:  It might be difficult to pull good looking blond highlights so soon from freshly deposited color, and they might look brassy or orange.

2.  We could go through and lengthen the roots with color (mine were actually only about 1" and I wanted a good 3" of roots), and with the same color add in a bunch of low lights.  Rinse that, blow dry, and then go through and do the ombré highlights. 

PRO:  More natural looking result, not as stark of a contrast between low lights/roots and blond highlights.

CON: Time consuming!  It would be like sitting through getting a full highlight... twice.

Well, my "new" stylist didn't like either of these options because, "that's not how they taught us to do them in the class we took."  "OK," I thought, I'm trusting you.  She told me that because I was already REALLY blond, she wasn't going to add anymore highlights, but instead color the roots and then add the ombré technique with the dark color. 

Long story short, instead of using my requested, natural looking 6N (level 6 Neutral- because my natural color is ashy blond) for my roots and low lights, she used an 8W (level 8 Warm).  Because an 8 is lighter than a 6, the color ended up bleaching out my roots, and because it was warm, the bleached roots turned orange.  Clearly not what we were going for...

Anyway we then decided to try to go with my suggestion #1.  I still wanted a level 6 but there was much argument over the fact that it would be way too dark, so after Tammy called Sarah for the 3rd time, it was decided between them to die my roots, and ombré ends a level 7N, and to just leave my already blond highlights alone.  It looked great!  I would have left the salon, but because my roots didnt' take the color Tammy told me I wasn't allowed in public.  I had gorgeous rich, brown and blond ombré hair and ORANGE roots.  We had to go over it again with color, only this time, she used a 6N, over my whole head. (See, I know what I'm talking about)  For whatever reason, my hair was tired of all the fuss, and didn't fully take the darker color at the ends, but sucked it up at the roots.

So, now I'm brunette, but not all the way.  I still have tons of blond ends, but super dark roots.  It's been about 10 hours, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it.  If it wasn't 12:30am when we finally stopped, I would have had her go back and put the blond ombré highlights through the ends... But I was tired and to get up early this morning.  I figure, I'll give it a week and then I'll decide what to do with it.

In a round about way, though, I sort of got what I wanted... I wanted it to be darker overall, have dark roots and light ends... funny how that worked out!  Bonus: My hair has that delicious saloon-processed smell.  Seriously, I love it.