SPLAT!

My teen daughter is obsessed with changing her hair color, and I have witnessed not a few failures in her attempts to dye her own hair various colors. She announced recently that she'd decided to dye the underneath layer of her hair red. Having lived through the purple fiasco a few years ago, I tried very hard to dissuade her.

I knew I would end up having to help her, another reason I didn't want her to try it. She assured me that this time she had read all the reviews and packaging and had made good decision. Then she showed me the product - SPLAT! in Luscious Raspberry. I didn't think it sounded promising.

I must say, however, that I was surprised at how well the product worked. It's a two-step process, which wasn't as difficult as I had imagined. The instructions were a bit confusing as they told you to mix the bleach and the developer in the plastic mixing tray. We returned one kit for another because this tray was missing. Turns out it is missing from all of the kits, but the second kit had instructions that rightly explained that you must mix the bleach in the plastic bottle. Bleaching the hair was the bit that took longest, and that's really just the wait because her hair started out dark brown. Then it was time to apply the luscious raspberry.

I do think the kit should have come with two sets of plastic gloves or at least a warning: Don't throw away the gloves after you finish applying the bleach! I had some seriously pink fingers but luckily, most of the color washed off easily if I got to it quickly. Good thing, too, because it was impossible to keep from getting it on my daughters neck.

I really prefer her natural hair color but I will say that this product did the best color job at home of all the ones she has tried and the results were very much what she had hoped for when she bought it. The kit cost her about $9.00 on sale at a local drugstore and we had the whole process done in under an hour.

If you're thinking of adding strips or layers of color or even coloring your whole head, I can recommend SPLAT! for an easy at-home color job.