hair-dressing

❀ last night's after-work mission: to successfully apply professional-looking blonde highlights to jerry and jesper's hair.
tools: 1 packet hair dye, 2 plastic bags, 1 chopstick.

i was a little stressed about the mission since both clients are highly image-sensitive, vain to the point of narcissistic and a little bit psycho. plus it was very late at night.

with the plastic bags pulled tight over both heads, (cutting off circulation on jerry's), i poked holes using the chopstick and pulled the hair through, then smeared on the bleach. pretty simple really.... the biggest fear; of the highlights turning orange instead of blonde, was pretty unavoidable really... half way through the mission, with two tense clients looking like peter andre, we were already planning early morning supermarket runs for purple shampoo. jesper was nearly glueing his beanie to his head.

but miraculously, after a thorough washing and blowdrying, both heads came out looking fabulously sun-kissed, bonnie and blonde.....like a real pro job! i was quite impressed with myself! if waitressing doesn't work out for me, there's always hairdressing! ;o)

in the pre-wash anxiety, i was taken back to a home-job hair incident many years ago.... after home bleaching my own hair for several years, i decided, for a change, to apply a strawberry blonde tint, inspired by a drew barrymore picture in a magazine that i'd seen. considering myself a totally capable hairdresser, i decided to do the tint myself with a packet dye.

my hair turned dark mulberry purple and was so damaged, dry and brittle that whole clumps had even broken off in short tufts that stuck up in spikes on top of my head and needed waxing down. the colour was totally blotchy 1990's white trash and clashed so badly with my skin that i was really considering the shave for a cure.
i was actually in tears, sitting on my bed, with my three female housemates sitting with me for support, all with similar expressions of shock horror mixed with stifled laughter. my mum ended up paying for me to go to the most expensive hairdresser in melbourne to get it fixed and they made me sign a document saying they would not be held responsible if all my hair fell out!

funnily enough, that didn't stop me dabbling in hairdressing! i continued bleaching, dyeing and cutting my own hair, (and anyone else's willing) until this day!