Bitter Sweet Chocolate shiny hair! (Schwarzkopf Live)

Member Name: burtybookworm

Product:	Schwarzkopf Live
Date:	20/11/08 (1484 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great results, shiny gorgeous hair the shade you expect it to be

Disadvantages: Stains suck! Its hard to apply this to long hair if you don't have help!

I am naturally dark haired - I'd say a shade below black and quite often I am told that I must be Spanish/Italian etc etc due to this and my general olive complexion...I would love to say that I am one of those things, but digging around my family it seems that I am not at all, just purely English! Like many girls I got bored of the dark haired look and tried many alternatives over the years, and once I went all over blonde (a TOTAL mistake with dark eyebrows and complexion, I couldn't pull it off and even worse, it was right before one of my University balls, those pictures are pretty awful!)

Quite recently, well at least over the last 18 months I've decided that being a dark haired girl just really isn't that bad, and so to spice things up I have been dying my hair black which has worked very well, but since I've come back from holiday, my hair has lightened up a fair bit and so I needed another dye to give it a more even tone. Instead of black..this time I picked up Bitter Sweet Chocolate - a shade below!

About the product
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I have used dyes by Schwarzkopf many times before, like I have said, I usually pick up the Deep Black or some sort. They give a great vibrancy, and the last one I bought from here last me a fair while - I used this back in August and I only started to really notice that my hair was lightening up again whilst on holiday - and of course this is due to the sunlight on my hair for that week. Schwarzkopf in general are a brand that I would assume you could trust as a consumer - they have a range of products for the hair and this seems to be their area of expertise. I certainly have had no ill effects from using their dyes before this one so I didn't hesitate to pick this one up from boots amongst the many colours in their "Live" Range. I picked this up for £4.69 in Boots.

Included in the box is one tube of live colour crème (60ml), 1 bottle of developer (60ml) and one tube of live colour conditioner (22.5ml), 1 pair of gloves as well as the instruction leaflet. The box shows a smiley lady with shiny dark hair (ooh that's what I want!) on the front - and what draws me in the most to this product is that in big letters is says "WATERPROOFED." Apparently this dye has "built-in wash-out protection to prevent colour fade. For extra long-lasting intensity and shine."

I won't bore you with the facts of what the dye includes, needless to say that it should be used with caution, it obviously does stain and you should do a test first to make sure that there is no adverse reactions to the dye.

Ease of Application
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The instructions on how to apply the dye are very straight forward and offered up no problems for me - even on my first application of using this dye it was simple enough. The gloves should be worn at all times to avoid any dye stains and you should wrap a towel around your clothes to avoid staining them too. I also put old newspapers on the floor and apply Vaseline around my forehead and neck as my hair is long and it does tend to whip my neck and stain! Vaseline (as some of you hard core dye ladies will already know!) will stop this staining to your skin.
The two bottles are mixed (squeezing the tube in to the bottle was a bit of a hassle, I wanted to make sure I got my moneys worth out which took me a while!) and the product is then immediately applied to the head, from roots to tips (there is a section also on the instructions for re-application of dye, for root regrowth, as I am using a different colour this time, I used the instructions for first time dye.) The bottle is extremely easy to use and the thin nozzle means that the dye comes out in a thin strip - excellent for applying to the roots of your hair. My only negative is that with my hair being so thick and long (reaches just past my shoulder blades) that it's hard to make sure I have covered every inch of my hair correctly. In the past I have roped my mum/housemate/best mate in to help me but no one was around so I did this myself. Luckily another bonus is that you are given an awful lot of dye that would suit even rapunzels length hair so I easily managed to cover the whole lot twice over to make sure!

The wait time is 20-30 minutes for this but as I have applied dye before on my hair (and I don't want it to fall out!) I left it on for 20 minutes before washing it out with luke warm water. Again, due to the length of my hair, this takes a considerable amount of time! You wash your hair until the dye runs clear and then apply the conditioner which smells lovely (plus if you have shorter hair you can get a couple of applications out of this stuff!) voila! My hair is dyed.

Results
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I dyed my hair last night, and because I am always fairly confident of the results and I don't like blow drying/styling my hair too much I let it dry naturally and didn't really bother to check until I woke up this morning. The results, as I predicted were excellent. My hair is a lovely shade of rich dark brown - and I'm pleased as it looks like my natural hair colour! The colour is bright and shiny and my hair feels soft and smells gorgeous due to the conditioner that I put on my hair. It's also worth noting that when you apply the hair dye you should be applying it to dry unwashed hair - and yesterday my hair really needed a wash! So applying this to my hair has had a wonderful affect considering the state it was in before I washed it!

Lasting?
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Well as I have mentioned, I only applied this last night but I can speak from experience and say - as I have already mentioned above - that the claims are true and it is a long lasting vibrant colour. It is definitely one of my favourite brands to use, and I will definitely be using Bitter Sweet Chocolate again anyway!

Summary: Something I go back to again and again....