Clairol 'N Easy COLOR BLEND FOAM

What's she smiling about?

My (naturally curly) hair can be a bitch most days, and since I'm not a girly-girl, I usually lose the battle for (not perfect but) personally aesthetically pleasing hair.  I'm not picky.  I just don't want it to be huge and frizzed out like I just played tonsil hockey with a light socket.

Being the diva that it always is, it doesn't leave me with very many options on stuff to do to it.  It used to go down to my ass, but my mom cut it hella short the middle of my third grade year, and that little choice took FOREVER to grow out.

I never want to cut it due to losing length.  (Trust me.  I DO NOT look good with short hair.)  I don't need a perm.  Straightening too often can damage hair, and it costs A LOT of money (which is something I do not have at the moment).

So that leaves coloring.

I could pull this color off, right?

Back in the day when things were growing out, I only needed one box to take care of things.  When my hair got longer, it eventually took two.  And now, I'm at three.  As the number of boxes needed increases, the likelihood of me finding three boxes of the same brand lessens.  Even if it's a common color (like BROWN).  For the longest time, I wanted red - not like Crayola red, but a burgundy color (my favorite color), but that would require bleaching my entire head before dying (I'm naturally a dark brown), and the red fades quickly - quicker than I would like - leaving the blonde, and my hair does not like bleach.  Last time a friend did "highlights" in a few places, the color washed out leaving the bleached bits, and it didn't matter how much conditioner I put in... combing through the blonde parts was cutting my own leg off without anaesthesia using one prong of a spork.

Needless to say... it was uncomfortable.

More "me-looking"... if I had a personal stylist.

The only time it's never uncomfortable is when I get it professionally done, but that costs a lot of money and also fades.  (sigh)  So I've given up on doing anything elaborate with my hair (since it doesn't usually last that long anyway) and have stuck to box dyes and trying to get back to my natural shade which is essentially darkest brown.  (Not black.  Brown.)

Due to my many hair dying experiments (Yes, I was even blonde for a bit.  Don't try to imagine it, it damages the brain.), my hair has become this myriad of colors which aggravates my OCD.  When I wanted my hair to look like Joss Stone's in her "Tell Me 'Bout It" video, that was one thing.  I didn't care that I had various shades and colors in my curls.  But now when I want just ONE color, I get the exact opposite.

I don't give a frak about my white hairs.  I think they add character... like my widow's peak.  It's the light brown on top, dark on bottom, blonde streaks here, weird reddish color there that bothers me.  It lasts much longer than the red does, but it eventually fades (which is irksome), so I dye it again.  I usually save my dye jobs for my mom when I visit her.  It's usually a messy though entertaining experience.  This past Turkey day proved to be more on the messy said.

One of the colors I used.

We went to various stores, and when I would settle on a brand or a color, they'd end up only having one box.  My mom's always suggesting something different than what I told her that I wanted.  But when she suggested the Nice 'N Easy brand, I saw they had a foam option right next to it.  My mom was doubtful, but I continued to look.  They didn't have much in the dark brown department (they had medium brown and lighter), but they had one box of the dark reddish brown which for some reason I was drawn to.  So we snatched it up and headed to another drugstore (same chain, different location) and checked out their stock.  They had no dark reddish brown, but they had the original color brown I wanted so getting tired of driving around for hair dye, I decided to get the two boxes of brown and I'd mix in the little bit of reddish dark brown I had.  (I did this before a long time ago with a different line of Clairol hair dye, and it worked out fine.)  So Mom and I went home, I mixed the dyes evenly (it was standard like all hair dye - add the color to the developer, shake/mix until blended).  Mom applied each bottle to my hair and ta da!

The first bottle I mixed became all light brown bubbles on the inside. Mom used that one first, when she squeezed the bottle, barely anything came out.  The "foam" was the consistency of bubbles, not foam.  Then after after done with that bottle, she used the second bottle I had prepared which had settled to look like cola.  Mom thought it wasn't mixed since it didn't look like the first bottle, but when she squeezed the bottle, it was fine.  The third bottle resembled the second but acted like the first.  My mom ended up taking the caps off and pouring the dye directly onto my head.  Bottle empty.  Hair clipped into place.  I left it in for 20-30 minutes per the directions.

After the time allotted, I hopped the shower and followed the directions and rinsed my hair until the water went clear.  Then I applied the conditioner, let it sit for two minutes at least (I rapped "Bust A Move" by Young MC to help time it and pass the time).  When I got out of the shower, I noticed that the dye my mother tried to clean from my temples, hairline, ears and neck were not completely gone.  She also started giving me grief for not cleaning my hair correctly.  When I questioned what she was talking about, she pointed out the little bits of residue in my hair in various places which I thought was ridiculous since I had paid attention and scrubbed hoping the dye on my skin would go away as well.  Nope.

Since then, when I go to scratch my hair/head, I draw my hand back to find dye residue under my nails.  It's not as thick as it was the day after my hair was dyed, but it's still there, and it's driving me nuts.  It's been about two weeks now, and I'm still getting icky under my nails?  I will concede that maybe that first time I didn't get it all which would explain my mom's findings, but two weeks?  I have washed my hair and even made a conscious point to scrub (once with nails, once with fingertips, once with both) my head from stem to stern, but I'm still getting hair dye gunk under my nails.

This was also the only dye that ever made my head tingle and itch.  The last time that happened was when I got my hair straightened in a salon, but I held out as long as I could and lasted until the timer dinged.  My head didn't start to tingle until my mother was on the second bottle.  I had my own gloves on so I'd itch a bit here and there.  It wasn't constant, and I learned to ignore it, but still.

Neither the ick under my nails or the almost immediate irritation had ever happened before.  I think my hair looks fine though it looked oddly a little reddish on the top.  I think it'd faded since then, but even though my hair looks fine, something isn't sitting well with me.  Also the process in getting to this point wasn't very happy-making at all.


Would I ever try this again?  Most likely not.  The faulty bottles.  The irritating formula.  The only plus through all this was the conditioner, but then again the conditioner is always awesome.  Yeah no. I don't think I'll be foam-dying my hair again (unless they perfect the process a little more).  Too many things went wrong or were something of a problem to make me want to try it one more time.  I think I'll stick to cremes. 


http://www.clairol.com/
http://www.clairol.com/en-US/how-to-page.aspx?collectionid=46&gclid=COO_lPeS7awCFQN-hwodIhfILw 

From their website:

• Call us Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST, or Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EST.
• In the U.S., you can call 1-800-CLAIROL (1-800-252-4765) for English, or 1-800-HISPANA (1-800-477-7262) for Spanish.