I love the Pureology products. I alternate then with Bumble &Bumble. I have long hair and we play a lot with the color. I always though salon products were a way too expensive but I finally decided to invest in a couple of giant bottles. I paid around $80 or $90 for those first two bottles. I found that you use so much less of the good stuff that those bottles lasted me two years plus! That's pennies on the dollar I was paying when I was spending around 10 dollars a month on drugstore products. I've found in my area at least the salon products are cheaper in my salon than they are are Target etc.

As a person who owned a salon, let me say that it's very easy to remove. Wash the front of your hair with a liquid dishwashing soap. Leave it on for 15 minutes and then rinse. You'd be better served if you used a lighter shade. Coloring your own hair is tricky as it looks so easy on t.v. You have two choices use a semi permanent tint or use a permanent tint. The first fades off with washing and the second stays until you need a touchup. It's not a good idea to touch up just one area of the head as it's almost impossible to choose a color that is an accurate match to the rest of your hair. In the salons we use several colors plus grey magic which is a small bottle of a medium that helps to keep the color on the gray. Next time buy a neutral medium brown shade, I say neutral so you won't have any green or gold caste to your hair. If you like a warm tone use it. I wouldn't suggest using a cool tone on any of the brown choices. If worse comes to worse and you can't get it out, sprinkle some talc or baby powder in your dark area and brush it through. Works like a charm.

Great thread. I've made many mistakes over the years. When I needed drapes for 5 very tall and wide windows, I thought I would save money by making them myself. I ended up buying 30+ yards of a synthetic moire on sale at a chain fabric store, along with drapery lining, and after making up one panel, found that even with lining, the light coming through the fabric made the color brighter and kind of gaudy. The bolt is still in an upstairs closet, and I found 96" crushed voile panels online that I like very much for about $20 each. Lesson: keep it simple. A couple of years ago, I hired a local designer mainly to help me choose paint colors and advise on accessories/tweaking. In the master bedroom, I had some custom green silk drapes that I never liked that much, and she talked me into spending the money to have them interlined and a printed fabric border added, along with custom shams with the same fabric. I had already spent $2000 on the drapes, and now I spent another $1000, and I still didn't like them. I took them down, and they and the matching euro shams are in the closet in the guest room. I put up natural linen-look semi sheers from target, and I like them better. Lesson: keep it simple, and don't throw good money after bad. We weren't using our formal dining room much, and the same designer suggested moving the dining furniture into one end of our large living room, and making the old dining room into a den and the old den into a home office, which was really needed. Since I wanted to replace the old LR sofa anyway, I moved the den furniture into the living room and had a custom ($$$)sofa made for the new den. It was not a huge space, and we tried to keep the sofa scaled down. When it arrived, the fabric was gorgeous, the style just what I wanted, but the seat depth was so shallow that it was not very comfortable. I had also slipcovered the old den chairs to go with the new sofa ($$). I ended up moving the new sofa to the living room, where it was more appropriate for perching ladies than lounging TV viewers, and now none of the colors I had chosen (with help paid for by the hour) for the LR and new den would work. Plus, the newly slipcovered den chairs (on swivel rocker bases, I love them) don't work that well with the old sofa color. Fortunately, I hadn't painted yet. Lessons: Don't buy furniture without sitting on it. Choose paint colors after you are certain of your fabrics. Don't let your designer talk you into stuff you don't really need. Keep your major pieces fairly neutral. The worst was the master bath update. I had chosen tile for the walls and floor, and the tile vendor gave me a couple of names for the installation. The guy with the higher quote was very highly recommended but I went with the other guy because he said he could also do some other work I needed done. Even though I had a gut feeling I was making a mistake. He did a horrible job on the tile, broke my toilet, and disappeared. I had to buy more wall tile and pay another contractor to replace it, and I'm still stuck with a bad job on the floor. Between the cost of doing the job, redoing the job, and buying a new toilet, I could have had the better contractor do the job, and replaced the vanity and sink as well, and upgraded to a better tile. Lessons: A jack of all trades might be a master of none. Go with your gut. Ask contractors for their license numbers and CHECK IT online with your state to see if it's in effect. I've made more, but these are the recent highlights, LOL. I feel better having confessed them here.

If you want the spiky look, then mousse would probably give you the finish you want. My hair has gotten some curl in it which tends to get unruly in the summer, so I've found "It's a 10" leave in conditioner which seems to control and add a lot of shine. I get the walmart equate version though. I figure if it's popular enough for walmart to copy it, it must be well received in general. This is me on vacation in ID, just toodling around...I also don't color my hair...never have and am delighted to not have to start...yet anyway. But short hair is wonderful. It takes me 30 sec to dry my hair and go. Last thing I want to do is complicate my life. Congrats on the new do!