Joleen, stop right where you are. First of all, the reason you kept seeing your hair get lighter is that each time you color it Champagne, more peroxide hits it. So in effect, over time you're more or less bleaching your hair.

What hair color is SUPPOSED to do is to lift your color (peroxide) and replace it with the gorgeous color on the box. It might do that...the first time. After that, more and more peroxide hits your locks and even though the replacement color does go on, your hair is now so porous that it washes right out again...leaving you with just the bleached hair.

The reason the darker color came out so dark is that your hair is very porous (see above). It "drank" in a whole lot of color. But by the same token, because of that very porosity, it's destined to all wash out again. People who have colored their hair lighter don't usually have much success getting it darker again. The porosity just allows any and every color to leak out again with shampooings.

You need a filler in your hair. Go to Sally's--I've heard some people here say you can actually buy a filler. The filler will basically spackle (sp?) your hair shafts, filling in the holes, missing scales, etc., etc. Then you can color with the color you want.

Your other option is to go to a salon and let them do the filler and all that for you.

But before you do any of this, you need to wait. Don't do anything else to your hair right now. I've given this advice a few times today so I probably sound like a broken record, but you need to let all this coloring settle down (and probably leak out) before using fillers or more colors or anything else. Give it a good month. Don't worry. This is fixable.