Hair Color Adventures

So, recently I decided I wanted to dye my hair. I didn't just want to dye it a slight different shade, I wanted something drastic. I had tried other L'Oreal Feria colors. I think I went with a dark ash blonde, then when that shade didn't take and washed out in 2 weeks, I went with a medium brown:

So this is the most similar to what my hair looked like before. It looks pretty natural on me, but I was wanting a more drastic color change. I picked L'Oreal Couleur Experte 3.5. This color says on the box "Best to use on dark brown to black hair". As you can see, my hair is neither, but I thought, well why not. The color on the box looked really pretty, so I thought I'd try it anyway. Here it is, the one I picked. And here is how my hair turned out. I left the color in for 35 minutes, because my hair is SO stubborn when it comes to color.

I think it turned out pretty good! In the sun, it does look similar to what is on the box. We didn't keep the highlightener in for very long, because we didn't want it to look unnatural. However, this made them impossible to see in anything but natural light. I'll probably redye my hair this way in a couple months to keep the color, and also use more lightener to make the highlights more visible. I really like it! It's the darkest my hair has been. Also, my hair is EXTREMELY soft right now. It's been in for a day, and I left the conditioner (the one that came in the pack) in my hair for almost two hours while I did some chores around the house. Then I rinsed that out, put conditioner in again and sat in the steam for 5 minutes. I'm not sure my hair has ever been this soft. I hear L'Oreal has a side effect of drying hair out horribly after a week or so, so I will probably continue to deep condition my hair.