
Took me about a month to finally get this thing up, so I hope you guys know where this is going. Let’s jump into it anyways.
As most basic bitches in LA, I wanted to lighten my hair. There’s something about the year round sunshine that I guess makes you want to blend in. I think my natural hair colors something is too heavy looking for my skin tone. I wanted to give my hair some dimension and joozsh it up a bit.
That’s not what I got.
I went in somewhat confident, and by confident I mean I was terrified to have a 4 hour conversation with a strange and give them the majority of my checking account after, but I wasn’t as worried about my hair. Remember, it had been 3 years. It had been almost 3 years of me cutting my own hair – how could it possibly get worse than that.
Man, it could get a hell of a lot worse.
I asked for caramel balayage, and I asked for it to be more of my natural tone, less yellow and more copper, but I still wanted caramel. I showed her a bunch of pictures and basically told her I think making my natural hair darker and my highlights the color of my hair would work, then just brighten some areas.
Girl.
My hair came out red.
She mentioned she would add a little red into the toner, but how the hell am I supposed to know what that meant. I was like okay, sounds good. I asked for a more natural caramel rather than yellow so it made sense to me. As she was washing the toner out of my hair she said, “oh it’s gorgeous, it’s a nice cinnamon color”.
Please hold.
I think from that moment on I started sweating, and I honestly knew deep down in my soul that I was going to spend the rest of the day crying – and my ass handed her a $55 tip. Ugh, why.
I never went back – this is an anti-climatic story because I immediately booked a flight home and called my hair stylist at home to book a cut and color while I visit home. But, she did give me an excellent tip for washing toner out of your hair fast – dawn dish soap. Your hair will feel like hay, but it’ll tone that toner down enough for you to be able to leave the house without crying. Win-win?


About 2-3 weeks after I also bought Kristin Ess Smoky Topaz toner, which definitely helped tone down the red.
Moral of the story – follow your gut (I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like her style,) be very clear about what you want (aka I should have asked way more questions,) bring your most outgoing friend (I shouldn’t known I couldn’t handle 4 hours with a stranger alone,) and don’t over tip for bullshit (working in food ruined me for tipping, I overtip everyone).
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