"Chunk" highlights. Who thought of this and WHY?!?!?

I have done "chunk" highlights twice in the last 3 weeks.  I think they are the ugliest highlights I've ever done, period.  Why anybody would want them is beyond me, but, hey...I'm here to serve you.

What they are:  Large bands of color throughout the head, as opposed to small, more natural looking highlights.  While this falls under the more "creative" side of hair coloring, I have a really hard time with it.  Mostly because I'm a little stuck in my ways, and really, I need to branch out a bit.

Anyway.  The first time I did them, I truly had no idea what the heck I was doing.  And they came out too subtle for my client.  She wanted BOLD highlights.  The blonde ones needed to be an INCH wide.  Which, in hair, is HUGE in size.  So, she came back a week later for me to fix them.  Because her hair is so long, (shoulder blades), it took me 3 hours to get all the foils in.  Part of that, I believe, is over thinking on my part.  Anyway.  In the end, she liked the colors, but it wasn't bold enough.  So, she came back.  That appointment still took two hours to complete.  Again, mostly because of the length of her hair.  However, when I was done, she had wide BOLD stripes in her hair.  (Don't you know, she wondered if the blonde was too much after I was done??  Sigh...)

The second one was just this Friday night.  A partial highlight, so not as lengthy, but it still took some serious time.  Again, her hair was long, however, not as dense as the last one.  I did the highs/lows first:  Lightener & 20 vol on regrowth, lightener & 10 vol on ends (previous lightening done) for blonde, 3/4 6N & 1/4 5N for dark stripe, and 6RV & 15 vol for the red stripe.  Since this was a partial, I only had to deal with from the crown forward.  The underneath stuff in the back was the 6N/5N mixture.  Let it process (took a haircut while she was processing, so that made timing that much easier!), then rinsed it off, taking the stripes out, one section at a time and rinsing the daylights out of it so they wouldn't bleed.  And they came out just as she wanted them (THANK GOD).  Cut her hair, dried it up, checked her out, sent her on her merry way.  PHEW!

Something else I discovered about this:  I don't charge enough for this one.  Need to figure it out for next time!