OH SHIT: Hair Edition

So, as you know I have been doing a Trial and Error series with the new Ouai shampoo. Well, funny story (it’s actually not that funny). In between, I decided to do an at-home hair gloss by the amazing Kristin Ess. No big deal, I’ve done it before and it worked beautifully…until now. So here is the backstory.

On Wednesday of last week, I decided okay I don’t want my highlights to get yellow-y while we’re at home so I’m going to do the hair gloss again. I had done it before, worked great, no big deal or so I thought. The gloss I had purchased was expired. Of course, KJ is not used to checking expiration dates on things (I barely do it with milk). I proceeded to do the gloss per the instructions, washed it out like normal and let my hair dry.

Fast forward to Friday, I got up and washed my hair. I had been doing some things around my room and while I worked my hair just got really gross so I washed it. No big deal. Since it was Friday, I actually blow dried my hair for the first time in probably a month. Just to look good for a change. It was freaking Friday.

Fast forward again, this time to Saturday, when I decided to go with my aunt on the Pinch-A-Penny and Target run. I’m sitting in the car, I take a selfie to post on IG stories and I happen to notice my hair looked a little pink? What is this, maybe it’s the lighting. It was an overcast day, not very nice, so I turned the lights on in the car and on the mirror and took the picture again (without a filter) and with flash. PINK. Wait, when the hell did my hair turn pink? I hadn’t noticed it before.

I started thinking back, it couldn’t be the gloss. I’ve done it before! What the hell, that’s crazy. Maybe I got the wrong color? Did I even check the box?? So I go about my day as usual and not freak out – because I can’t tell my aunt (she would kill me). I get home and ran straight to the bathroom trash. I picked up the box, nope definitely didn’t get the wrong color. I happen to look at the expiration date. SHIT.

Now I start to panic. Well, there’s nothing I can do at this moment my hair dresser is not taking clients (and we actually can’t go anywhere) so I decide to just suck it up. Whatever, it’s an accident. No one will see my hair. That mentality lasted about six minutes.

Panic really started to come over me so I grabbed my laptop (not my iPad, so imagine I meant real business) and started googling. What to do when you accidentally make your hair pink. Didn’t get much, so I tried again. What to do when you hate your hair color. Bingo. Finally something I could use, or so I thought.

Here were some steps: 1. don’t do it yourself, 2. if you did it yourself and hate it, go to your hair dresser (no shit Sherlock, I would if I could), 3. Use shampoo with Sulfates. BINGO. Now we’re talking. I can do that, although I usually try not to but if it speeds up this mess FINE. Next, wash your hair daily. WHAT? Isn’t that BAD for your hair (yes, they don’t recommend it). So why would they suggest this? Well it strips your hair color. BINGO. Ok there has to be something else. Keep googling, reading articles on blogs, Allure, Refinery29, anything and everything. Another one, wash your hair with the hottest level water you can physically take. Okay, well I do love to shower with really hot water this doesn’t seem hard (again, not recommended – it also strips your color).

So now we are on day 3, I have washed my pink hair once with burning hot water. That’s about it. Clearly, I am bad at listening to directions so I will be washing my hair tonight – with sulfate carrying shampoo (I had to dig through a lot of bottles for this, we don’t use that in this house), and burning hot water. Then tomorrow I will do it again, and again, and again. Seven washes (attempts) is what usually get a product to work on your hair to show some kind of results with new products.

I will be doing the seven straight days of washing with sulfate and hot, hot, hot water starting today. Because I need this color out. And then at the end of the seven days, I will be putting a purple mask on (taking advantage of trying the new DryBar purple mask – maybe this was a blessing in disguise!) to help even out the blonde color that hopefully I didn’t completely stip.

I’ll keep you posted!