Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

[merimask]

I got a wild hair yesterday, literally, and decided to utterly change my hair color.   I've had to color it for some time now, 'cause of the gray (it's the most undignified gray pattern ever...like a skunk stripe along my center part), but I've been doing it the same way for years and I thought it might be time for something different.

Actually, it's closer to my real hair color, which is a sort of chestnut brown.  I think it's a tad too dark, but I spend so much time in the sun that I'm sure it'll lighten up a bit.  I had Tracy put red highlights in it, so to me it seems pretty gaudy.

Greg likes it though (I think).

I'm doing a small SCA event tomorrow.  It's nearby, they don't have many merchants showing up, and I think it'll be fun.  Plus OMG I need the money...I spent 300.00 yesterday on supplies.  O_O

Comments

[shvetufae.livejournal.com]

Ooh, your hair looks great! I love the color; it makes your skin creamy.

Supplies costing money = not fun. I feel guilty that I'm thinking about buying cocoa absolute and some other yummy things, seeing as how I've already spent so much money on just beginning perfumery. . .*grin*

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-) I'm still not quite comfortable with how DARK it is. Every time I see myself in the mirror I'm momentarily startled.

[moko-moko.livejournal.com]

Your hair looks fabulous! It's so you, and with that cute smile and happy green backgraound, is so appropriately summer :D

(Ugh, buying supplies always both fun and painful. But no pain, no gain in the art world, right? Le sigh)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-) I think I might go lighter in the winter (when my coloring's less likely to be damaged by the sun), but for now I think I need the change.

Dad always said you have to spend money to make money. :-/

[ramblinsuze.livejournal.com]

Gray hair is seriously, seriously annoying (I have the lovely halo around my face...argh). I love the color you picked! Between the sun and washings, it'll lighten up a bit in no time (and it always seems uber dark when you first change the color). And I can only barely see one or two red highlights, so...NOT gaudy! lol

Hmm. I should go do the same thing. I'm not so thrilled with this odd reddish/blondish color that I ended up with. Not schnazzy enough for me! :D

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yeah, getting the hair done always makes me feel a bit better about everything in general. I take my ego boost wherever I can find 'em. ;-)

Ooo...try a shade darker. It really does make the hair very shiny, and shiny = good.

[ermine-rat.livejournal.com]

Too bad we spend some much of our youth fighting nature to look 'different' and then we spend our middle age trying to look like the average teenager we didn't want to look like to begin with.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

lol...you know it! When I was a kid (& had beautiful rich coppery-brown hair) I was forever bleaching it with lemon juice and "sun in" (remember that crap?)...I wish someone would have shaken me & told me that if I'd just wait twenty years I would be coloring it ALL the time. ;-)

[indigos-angel.livejournal.com]

Wow!!! It's gorgeous!!!! I lOVE IT!!!!

In that pic, it softens your skin and makes you look very very feminine :) I actually prefer the darker shade on you, it makes you look very soft :)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-) I've always had fair skin and my natural hair color is pretty red, so I guess it works for me. I just feel funny about it 'cause I'm not used to it...I look like a stranger to myself!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

That's lovely, it goes well with your skin and doesn't seem garish or unnatural at all. (And trust me, if you could see the color I'm cooking on streaks in the front right now, you'd see that I know from gaudy and fake! *grins*)

Although, if you went a little redder AND let the skunk stripe come in, you'd be all set for X-Men cosplay!

[merimask.livejournal.com]

lol! Funny story time!

After seeing the first X-men movie my husband (who is younger than me & used to tease me about the little white hairs until he started growing his own) said "Stop coloring your hair & let the white come in...it might be cool!" OBVIOUSLY he was thinking of Rogue.

So I sez "OK" 'cause why should I pay 60 bucks every two months if he doesn't care if I go gray? Four months later I look twenty years older with a VERY unattractive thatch of the ugliest salt & pepper bangs you've ever seen.

He meekly suggests that maybe I should go get my hair "done". I agree heartily & now I keep up my coloring appointments come hell or high water. :-) When your younger husband says "Maybe you should color your hair", you don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out to the salon!

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heee, Rogue fanboys are EVERYWHERE!

Char's pining for blonde has me giggling because I'm secretly blonde under all the dye (ssssh don't tell anyone) and was just THRILLED when I finally worked up the nerve to go fake, I hated being blonde! Mind you, growing up someplace where that coloring is very unusual didn't help any, nor did having weird undertones in my skin that clashed with the hair...but what really clinched it was seeing how much differently I got treated as a redhead. With my natural color, far too often people seemed surprised I had a brain in my head (and a sharp tongue to match) -- I guess there are folks who actually BELIEVE those awful dumb-blonde-bimbo stereotypes! Red, well, they EXPECT you to have a temper, so you get treated with a bit more of a healthy sense of respect. ;)

(And you'll probably laugh at me for being a little jealous of the gray, as aside from one possible white hair a year ago...and it's hard to tell for sure because I have some natural platinum streaks that are pretty damn close to white...I still can't find anything noticeable when my roots come in. Looks like I'll be following the typical pattern of my mother's side of going grey very very slowly and very very late. Which means my dreams of having hair like Emmylou Harris must stay on the shelf, le sigh.)

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I've done dark and tried light once or twice but dark wins every time, it's just so rich and shiny and doesn't damage your hair like going lighter does...makes it thicker rather than thinner/more brittle. This is why my hair is always in better condition than my blonde mother and my two blonde sisters.

I don't think it's too dark, looks just right to me. Mine when I first do it is BLACK, and I'm a shade or so fairer than you are, so you can imagine how that looks. But it fades out pretty quickly, the perfect stage seems to be somewhere around three weeks. It's a nice chestnut shade, what you have there, that's the colour I'd want to have all the time if my hair was straight brown. Alas, the red always comes through in a couple of washes...pure brown doesn't last at all on me and I get so sick of the red!

For all I get bored so often, I just couldn't go blonde, not ever...being dark-haired is part of my personality. Probably partially because my three female family members all went the opposite way :)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

It's funny...if I had known how nearly IMPOSSIBLE it is to achieve that wonderful rich coppery-brown that I had as a kid & young adult, I'd have cherished it more. ANYone can have blond hair. That's easy. It's those rich browns that are hard to find in a bottle. I keep telling Charlotte this (her hair is almost the same color mine was) but she doesn't believe me. :-/

I love your hair & your color experiments. :-) Wild hair colors are SO cute on short hair.

OOOH! I Love it!

[bonnietognetti.livejournal.com]

That is a great color on you! but keep it out of the sun or it will orange up, not lighten up and you could end up with a traffic cone orange highlight or two. Which wold not be good. BTW, my friend, Claudette, who I have said you must meet because you "mirror" her? Well, we went to the wine country together. Check my blog to see her pix. Love, Me

Re: OOOH! I Love it!

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :-) I'm not too worried about it fading...that's the best part about getting your hair done professionally at a salon (you get free touch-ups!). Plus, whatever products Tracy uses are pretty durable.

Will visit your site ASAP. It's been a busy weekend!

[rumdiculous.livejournal.com]

Oh I love that hair color! It looks very lovely.

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm beginning to get used to it. I've been a tawny almost-blond for almost a decade & this was a pretty drastic change.

The funniest part is; I can't tell if my face is actually getting thinner or if the dark hair around it just makes it LOOK thinner! Either way, I like it. :-)

[rumdiculous.livejournal.com]

I liked when I died my hair a copper color. Everyone did a double take. I think I'll do that again one day. :)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I bet that'd look fab on you -- blonde complexions seem to work really well with red shades.

Funnily enough, I got more "did you dye those?" remarks in all the years when my hair was natural than I ever did when I was using even some rather unusual deep violet-reds; my real color grows in such variegated streaks, including a couple of really fake-looking platinum streaks at the temples, that people thought it must have been highlighted. ;)

[rumdiculous.livejournal.com]

I loved the copper look. It was supposed to be "Macadamia Nut", a dark brown, but it came out a reddish copper.

lol My hair used to be super blonde. Now it's a very dull blonde. If I was out in the sun more they'd have lovely highlights but I don't dig too much sunlight.