I've always or as long I can remember coloured my hair. I've tried different colours from light blond to finally blue black.

In the old days when I was young and brave I used to do it myself (the colour being either blond or red) but at some point I've got fed, too much trouble, so I've ended up going to the hairdresser's

My current hairdresser is a good friend of mine who has seen me change all the colours of the rainbow on my head. As I said she's very good and professional and always helped me with the colour I'd chosen.

For the last few years though I've changed to permanent black for many reasons, one of them was the fact that I didn't like to see after only a week of colouring my hair, my very dark roots shouting at me: "here we are either you like us or not".

I'm sure you understand me when I say that dark roots on blonde hair is just plain horrible, no trendy or fashionable, just awful. And it’s not just the fact that then everybody knows you're not a natural born blond (who are we kidding?) but the simply fact that make your hair looks dirty even if you've just washed it.

Besides I love black and I like the idea of having a goth-like style ( it goes well with long hair).

But after a couple of years of just plain black colour I wanted to experiment a little bit more and I thought I'll try the blue black instead.

The problem with hairdressers is that they always try to convince you that wherever they are using is for your own good and the best there is. In my case my friend thought I was colour blinded too as she was trying to convince me that the colour she was using it was blue black and not plain black.. I don't think so…

Anyway because of that and plus that fact that doing your hair at the a saloon is much too expensive especially if you are struggling to pay your basic bills each month and
still have enough left to eat and go to work, I decided to colour my hair myself with a proper blue-black dye.

And this is how I find out why almost everybody colours his or her hair blond or red because you can't find a decent a black dye, even the ones they advertise on TV.

I looked at the local Boots and the range was going as far as "dark brown"; not exactly what I had in mind. Another search at Asda gave almost the same results, I came across another dark brown dye but a lots of blond, blonder and almost white hair products.

Now I was getting kinda desperate and I didn't want to go back to my friend defeated and accept my fate that I would never have blue-black hair (obsessed? I think not).
Either that or I would have to go farther away than my local shops for a better result.
Luckily I've decided to visit the local chemist and there it was, finally I came across to my cosmic blue from Schwarzkopf and it was on sale too. £3.99 instead of the normal price of £5.99.

Finally I found the colour of my dreams (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here).

Now, I know that there are a few basic differences between a blond and a black dye and one of them is the fact that black goes everywhere if you aren't careful and that is difficult to get rid it from face.

The packet has (as I presume most of today's other easy colouring systems) the colour and the cream or peroxide which you mix with the colour by screwing firmly the bottle with the colour at the bottom of the bottle with the peroxide.
Then you shake the now one bottle thoroughly and when you are ready and after you have wet and towel dry you hair you put those horrible awkward plastic, huge gloves and you start the procedure which I call how to mess up an entire room and have black spots on your face or otherwise known as dying your hair on your own.

The whole thing is straightforward, you start f
rom the roots and you finish with covering the whole head. There is enough for a whole head and in my case I had some left at the end.

The problem with the black colour that is stains "badly" and you can't afford to wait till you finish to start washing up, you have to do it straight away or you'll suffer later by rubbing and rubbing and scrubbing your face away. Black is there to stay especially if it's a permanent colour. I guess this is where a hairdresser comes really handy.

You leave the colour for approximately 30 minutes (you're suppose to do the roots for the first thirty minutes and then to do the ends for another 10 but you can do it straight away and avoid the extra waiting, it doesn't make any difference).

The only thing is, that you must stay in safety grounds while you're waiting if you don't want black spots on your furniture, that is.

Finally after 30 minutes you can wash the colour….Easy said than done.

This is where I got vastly disappointed with the package. It contained conditioner which supposedly conditions you hair and keeps the colour vibrant for weeks….but if you weren't supposed to wash your hair prior to colouring, just wet it, why then didn't include a shampoo with the set to wash and then condition your hair? It will make some kind of sense.

In overall it was a good package and the results weren't so bad either, although you have to be careful when changing colour it might not come out as you're hoping, the first time anyway. The only thing I didn't really like was the smell and of course the mess.