Test Driven ::: Nice & Easy Root Touchup

All photos by {accordingtoame}

I have walked by this box and have seen the pretty convincing commercials for years now, and couldn't convince myself to try it. There wasn't really a red shade that worked for me, and the closest one, Light Auburn, sure looked awfully brown on the box, in a way that made me nervous. But I figured the only way to know if it was going to work was to try it. So I did.

And...let's say I learned a very valuable lesson about "bad ideas." The lesson in this case is don't mess with perfection, and when the model's "auburn" hair looks brown, trust that your's will be as well.   I am just damn glad that I didn't do this experiment prior to a major event or anything important, and that I had plenty of time to fix it before going out of town for my Girl's Weekend. Because the 24 hours I had to walk around looking like dogshit...that was just way too long.

I decided to try this out last week on Tuesday night. I opened the package a few days early to take a few photos, and read the directions to make sure I was clear on them, because you never know if there's a different rulebook with something like this.

I went into the bathroom, detangled my rats nest, sectioned my hair along the parts appropriately and clipped as needed. Then I mixed up the goods. 

I quickly applied along my hairline, and parted all the areas I normally part along, quickly applying the mixture.  This is brave, showing you all these photos...

Then I applied a light coating to my brows (and apparently half of my forehead), just to see how that turned out. 

Hey, good lookin'. How you doin'?

Then I set my timer and watched in the mirror as that time passed. It flew by, surprisingly, compared to the normal amount of time I take to do my roots.

Seriously, from this image, wouldn't you expect maybe for the hair to be red? 

After exactly 11 minutes, I jumped in the shower and rinsed well, sticking my head out occasionally to see what the roots turned out as in the mirror. And as I feared, brown. And by brown, I mean REALLY brown, darker than my natural shade and not a pretty brown, either... 

After I cussed loudly at myself, I grabbed the Ted Gibson copper conditioner, and a dye brush and I started to work the Ted Gibson copper conditioner into my scalp to see if that would tone the brown to a nicer redder shade..., set a timer for 5 minutes (longer than usual, but in corrective situations, a good amount of time) and alas, no luck. No change at all, even. 

So at that point I said "forget it" (ok maybe not that exact f word...) and grabbed the Prell I keep on hand for emergencies and "color prep" and lathered it up into my roots to try to pull this fresh pigment back out. I rinsed and did it once more before working some deep conditioner through.  After rinsing and finishing my shower, I towel dried, blotted with paper towels, and sprayed K-Pak, and threw every other leave-in I had nearby at my hair, just as a layer of protection.

The next night, I got home and mixed up a lighter batch of my usual to correct the mess, and again deep conditioned after rinsing.  The following night, I redid a few of my highlights close to my temples and throughout just to break that hot mess up, and it helped, but overall it is still not right, since I had to blend all over.   

I am obviously annoyed that I had to blow three evenings correcting this experiment, but at least I now know, and can share with my dear readers, that this is probably something to avoid...

I went on my girls weekend with my hair dry and overworked but better looking than on Tuesday night, and let myself wait until I returned to finish this post--which for a serious pre-planner who likes to write and schedule her posts WELL in advance (yea, that's a secret of my blogging I just shared!) was very hard... And due to that wait I am able to see that there ARE a few positives to this product. And I do mean a FEW.

So...the review? Get comfortable...

First, it's a genius idea and if the color itself didn't suck, the idea would be well executed. The brush is great and I actually kept it for use later on other touchups with better products, and the tray is a great idea, and again will be reused for smaller projects like mini touchups, brow jobs or mini highlighting touchups. I suppose if you're a brunette, it's probably a great product. In theory, it's a 10-15 minute job, and should cover most grays, etc. It's great for people who are less anal-retentive about their hair, and hair color, than I am. 

The cons? For starters, it didn't cover my grays (yes, I have them.) And now that it's been a little over a full week since the initial misadventure started I can tell you that my roots are looking all sorts of not quite right, the line of demarcation is becoming significantly more evident and my regular dye which could otherwise penetrate a hermetic seal couldn't apparently break through this stuff, so now I have offcolor roots AND grays showing. I have a feeling that I will be doing some serious conditioning, and potentially a full on color removal and redo in the not too distant future. 

Here is how they look one week later, AFTER I redid them 
with REAL red dye..Yes I am pretty pissed in this photo.

As I said before, this stuff is NOT for a redhead.   The only "red" option is Light Auburn, which as I said before, is BROWN. Not a hint of red, or any warmth at all, really. I think my first hint of that should've been when the skin along my hairline turned a greenish black color as this stuff dried.  I didn't know if that was a trademark of Nice & Easy or due to the actual color itself not being remotely red.  But at that moment I knew this was not going to end well.  And even though I thought "oh I think a little Ted Gibson could tone it." Well, this stuff was no match for even Ted's amazing products because it was still super brown.  

So...yes, I tried, but no I will NEVER try it again.  Let that be a warning to you!  If you would like to venture into such territory (WHY), it's available at drugstores and big box stores like Le Tarjay. 

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