So much for the spice

I wanted to add some spice to my look - so I decided that a bit of color in my hair would be the way to go. I wasn't interested in coloring my hair, because I like the color of my hair, but adding a touch of color. Well, if you don't know, I have brown hair. In the summer it has red highlights from the sun, but it's just brown. I wanted some bright pink or purple, and since the holidays were coming up, I figured that it would be best to get the purple as I wear lots of reds over the winter and I figure that purple would look better. Well, my stylist was all over this. She hunted up some temporary color for me and we went to work. A good, oh, 20 minutes later we were rinsing and I could tell from her facial expression that something was wrong - terribly wrong. She told me to come sit back down and we'd dry to see if it "worked." I was afraid from her look that my hair had fallen out or it was green or something strange like that. But no, there was nothing. I don't mean there was nothing wrong, but there was nothing at all. My brown hair was still brown with maybe one or two STRANDS of hair purple. So, we went back and did a larger chunk of hair (since it only takes about 20 minutes total), and we sat down again with the mirror and looked. Well, there was a bit more purple in my hair, but again, nothing visible without the mirror up close. Dangit. I want my purple hair but the purple hair doesn't want me. Deflated, my stylist and I decided that we'd think on it and see what we could come up with - maybe using actual hair color that is semi-permanent (the purple was also semi-permanent and would wash out in a bout 6 weeks, but shw ants to use actual real hair color) so that it shows in my hair. But, this would only be red as real hair color doens't come in wild colors. The temporary pink may or may not work - same kind as the purple but lighter.

What we think happened is that it blended right in with my lovely brown hair (GRRR). If you look very, very closely I do have some purple strands here and there, but overall I look no different. We aren't sure that the gray hair took any of the color, but I'm not one for bleach so the whole bleaching to get the pink or purple in my hair isn't an option at this point. But, I do have an e-mail out to my cousin, who does this professionally (and has dark hair). I'm hoping that she comes through for me so that I can get that cool purple hair - it's not like I'm asking for world peace here (although that would be nice too), just a touch of color in my hair.