It's not easy being green (especially when you have purple hair)

When I dyed my hair Thursday, it was a lovely color which lasted through Sunday morning. Now admittedly I was a bit rushed getting ready this (errr, every) Sunday morning and wasn't really paying attention to my hair. So when we left church after the service and my husband goes "Uh, your hair is purple..." it was quite a shock. And of course, I was wearing the color that most brings out purple chartreuse.

And this is the dress that I was going to wear to Wicked but didn't finish. Here are the details:

Fabric: some chartreuse linen or linen look fabric I got from my friend's destash (free)
Pattern: Butterick 5281
Year: 1946 reprint
Notions: Vintage snaps (free), zipper (stash), vintage buttons (came with this fabric)
Time to complete: three days
First worn: to church and my niece's graduation party
Wear again? Yes, but after my hair is no longer purple! I really like the color a lot more now that it's in dress form than I did when it was just a roll of fabric in my stash.
Total cost: free! Yay!

I paired it with brown wedges and my new tan 50s style purse. I've found some lovely vintage inspired pieces in the stores lately (some didn't come home with me though!) and I'm planning on a post on where to find them later this week.

Of course, today had to be the day of my niece's graduation party so gobs of people saw my purple hair. (My husband is older than me and he's the youngest in his family by a lot so I do have a niece who's graduated high school and another who's actually a few months older than me!) I only got a few shots since the camera battery decided to die. This camera didn't capture the color very well but it looked more like this:

Plum-y purple with red "shine"! Mine's not quite so dark but it's what I imagine this looks like after it's faded a bit. Lots of people told me they loved it and didn't really think it looked purple but I'm so not into it. I should have known that this was coming since I did notice some hairs in the shower while I was rinsing out the color that were definitely purple. But since my hair looked fine when I blow dried it, I didn't think anything of it.

**The rest of this post is a review of the color.**

The color I used was Garnier Nutrisse Ultra Color BL 26 Reflective Auburn Black. It's a special line designed for people with naturally dark hair so I thought it'd be a good fit for me. I thought this shade would be a good option to go dark since a bit of red would help keep the black from looking too flat and unnatural. There are 3 red shades, 3 brown shades and 3 black shades in this line and my hair looks much more like the picture on the box of R1 Dark Intense Auburn. I did read some reviews that said that there were some plumy results but the Garnier website just lumps all of the reviews for the entire line together rather than separating them out by shade so I assumed it went with the R1 because it did look a bit plumy on the box. The other bad thing about this color is that it still runs in the shower! Since I love doing pin curls, this is a big no no for me. There were also reviews that mentioned this but again, I assumed they went with the actually red shades!

Now I will say some good things about this product. It did actually dye some red over my dark hair which is really hard for me to do. If it had stayed the original color, I'd be all over this dye. It smelled really good for a hair dye and came with an extra add in with some oils and such that smelled lovely. The gloves that came with it are much nicer than the gloves that usually come with hair dye. Normally I have to use my own gloves because I hate the super cheap ones that are usually included. My hair feels pretty good too and the conditioner that was included is really good.

In general, I do like Garnier products and I'll probably even use a different hair dye color from them in the future but I do have one more major beef with their colored hair products. I use their shampoo and conditioner when I don't color treat my hair but their color treated line contains citric acid. I'm sure many of you have heard that you can use lemon juice to lighten your hair. Well, citric acid is the stuff in lemon juice that lightens your hair! I'm sure they use citric acid and lemon extract to get the signature Garnier fruity scent, but there are some other great naturally occurring chemicals in lemons and other fruits that smell yummy besides citric acid! (Yay chemistry!)

I'm not sure how much citric acid they do put in their shampoos and conditioners but I don't want to wash anymore hair dye down the drain than I have to. So, I opt to purchase other brands of shampoo and conditioner when my hair is color treated.

I'm going to try and get some video of my hair before I dye it again and do a video review.