how to: 5 steps to fuck up a $200 balayage during lockdown

this diy comes with quite a few steps (and a lot of selfies) so get comfy…

step 1. visit your favorite hair goddess and spend $200 on a beautiful hand-painted balayage and hair cut.

step 2. decide since you’re now working from home and there are no rules to dying your hair. two of your employees have dyed their hair blue. you watch a TON of brad mondo videos on facebook to scare yourself out of it. if you haven’t watched brad mondo, check him out. realize that you’re too scared to do it yourself. text your hair goddess for advice. she will either talk you out of it or she will help you out. she suggests a pigmented conditioner and brings over a baby pink. it only deposits into your blonde balayage, as expected. at this point you decide it is just not enough. so you go to articfoxhaircolor.com and you order frosé. it’s slightly brighter but not too bold because you don’t want to ruin everything. (i’d like to remind you now, i’m awful at taking pictures and by no means an Instagram pro.)

step 3. after this pink starts to fade, order more. feel ballsy and order a deep red to make it a bit brighter pink. this fades quickly and you don’t want to order more pink dye. you start eyeballing that practically full bottle of red called wrath sitting on the bathroom counter. finally, you work up the confidence and you go for it because frankly, the pink has faded into a strange orange. so, you do it and jokes on you, it looks worse. so bad in fact you only take one selfie that is with a filter which makes you look like the little mermaid in the red light district. zoom calls are made with the camera off. after many washes it’s just not fading from your ends. i’m actually too embarrassed to show a picture of this one.

now you’re desperate for step 4 but it’s nowhere to be found. google incessantly. watch more brad mondo videos. there are no solutions on the internet you’re willing to try. color oops smells awful and going to the store sounds like a bad idea.

at this point in the lockdown you have been entering every Instagram giveaway possible. it is pretty much the only thing to do considering no one is leaving their homes. finally, you win one! and congrats, it’s a hair one. free cut and dye job!

step 4. go to this instagram hair goddess smirking because she has no idea that the hairs on your head are in complete disarray. she also has no idea that you’re about to ask her to bleach your hair blonde after she clearly said, “no color corrections”. have small talk through the mirror and watch the horror melt over her face as you break the news you’ve always wanted to try out blonde. she says, “red heads don’t ‘go blonde’ well but i’ll do my best” through her teeth. she gives you the hair cut then tells you she’ll fix the disaster you’ve done to yourself with a color correction but that you have to come back another day. you decide to try and help her out by getting some fader from sally’s with curbside pickup. this doesn’t do much at all.

2 weeks later you darken her door once more and she’s reminded of just how terrible your hair really is, but she’s ready for a challenge this time around. she begins her concoction of miracle potions and brings you a few shades lighter, with some pink streaks that just wouldn’t let go.

step 5. after a few months of having blonde hair, that is quite brassy because of the toner she chose for you…you’ll decide you can’t do it anymore. you’ve always wanted vivids and that’s obviously the goal you’ve had all lockdown so you order some purple people eater from gooddyeyoung.com. you mix that with conditioner from the 4 bottles you have left of different brands. this time, do a test strand. be okay with that test strand, do your whole head. now you have silver hair. do it again, now you have lavender. after a couple washes you have this odd oil spill look.

but here’s the ultimate thing about lavender vivids, there’s a lot of upkeep. i’m not too good at upkeep when it comes to anything so that lavender has turned slowly to blue and then to green. it looks cool until you’re full green. it might work for some but i don’t love it on me just yet. so, i have to do my purple conditioner mix every few days so i don’t have this gross green thing.

the lesson here is, if you pay $200 for a balayage and the world goes to shit resulting in not being able to leave your house for going on 9+ months…don’t start fucking with your hair. leave it alone and watch makeup youtube instead. or cross stitch, anything other than this.

much love,

B