[Showgirl]

Aha, Feria "Starry Starry Night", how long did I wear that stuff, years and years... it looks beautiful on you luv!!

It's not shall we say, however, the gentlest dye on the block, you might find after a couple of uses your hair begins to show the wear and tear a little. It was OK on me cos I had extremely oily hair at the time I used it and my hair actually benefitted from something a little "stripping". My advice to you is live with it and see how you get on. Personally I'd not use it again (my hair's a lot drier and more sensitive these days, after 20 years of horrible use and abuse), but it is a really great colour.

If you find yourself preferring a gentler, less chemical dye when you come to touch up in a few weeks, Lush's "Les Cacas Noir" is a completely natural and pretty "blue black" henna dye when let air dry (it goes reddish black if you cover up your hair when the dye's on, and bluer when air dried) but unfortunately it takes ages to do (at least an hour) and is messy as hell... but it comes in a bar so if you're just doing roots, you can get lots of "goes" by just crumbling off what you need from the bar for each application. You melt it with hot water and then put it on - it smells horrible and is full of "organicy" lumps like stems and leaves - but there's no doubt at all it's natural and kind to your hair.

The advice you've had here from other Specktrites on "undoing" black is exactly the experience I had myself when I wanted to change from years of wearing Starry Starry Night to a less intense look. It's hard work and involves shedloads of chemicals. I went to a salon and took advice (which I'd recommend), they bleached the hell out of the top section of my hair and dyed it a dark coppery brown to soften the look, but they absolutely refused to use such strong bleach on my whole head in one go - they pointed out that everyone's hair is naturally a whole range of shades, and having black sections through a dark brown would actually just look natural and give my hair some "breathing space". Then a few weeks later I went back and they added a couple more shades of different dark copper on different sections of hair. The final result was a natural chestnut brown, and the fact that my top sections were done first gave the lower layers time to naturally grow most of the residual black out.

... of course the first thing I did once my hair was back to a medium toasty coppery brown all over was bleach the hell out of it and dye it scarlet, as I'd got fed up with the "natural look" by this time, lol!!!