This woman's fake tan disaster meant she couldn't leave the house for days

Have you ever stopped and looked at yourself in the mirror while clamping tight an eyelash curler and thought about the things we put ourselves through just to spruce up a little? You've probably thought about it while uselessly lying there waiting for the mud slathered over your face to dry, and you've definitely thought about it during any kind of waxing appointment.

But you know, that's just what girls do. Until... it all goes disastrously wrong.

One woman from Bury, in the UK's Greater Manchester area, was house-bound for a few days after a fake tan incident that was nothing short of a catastrophe.

Credit: Facebook / Ebony Foley

Ebony Foley, a 20-year-old energy consultant decided to try out a new product when she couldn't get her usual stuff, and naively took the advice of a shop assistant who pushed St Moriz's Darker Than Dark mousse into her hands.

Credit: Facebook / Ebony Foley

Ebony is well practiced in her beauty routine, being a regular user of spray tans and other fake tan products for many years. But this... this was totally unforeseen. After putting on the mousse, Ebony saw her arms and entire face turn black.

Ebony had asked the shop assistant for something that would make her "nice and brown", but it looks like the assistant in question had no clue what she was doing, and didn't realise the Darker Than Dark mousse was actually darker than dark. My personal favourite theory however, is a little naughtier – that the shop assistant was just having a crappy day and decided to prank one of her customers for the hell of it...

Credit: Facebook / Ebony Foley

Either way, the look was bold, you've got to admit that. "As soon as I put it on it went black!" she said. "I laughed my head off, I thought it was hilarious."

Despite her sense of humour, she said that she was forced to cancel her Saturday night plans to go for cocktails with friends AND frightened her boyfriend's son so much that he started crying.

Credit: Facebook / Ebony Foley

"I’ve made a terrible mistake, so tried out a new false tan tonight. NEVER AGAIN," she wrote on Facebook, alongside some well-justified crying and laughing emojis.

In the comments section, Ebony wrote:

"My legs and body are a well nice colour and then I put it on my face and THIS HAPPENED.

"Everything else has gone nice then this happened to my face."

Her friends added their own comments – mainly consisting of more crying-laughing emojis. Not entirely supportive, but at least they're honest.

Recruiting the help of her boyfriend Dean, they were able to scrub the very fake tan from Ebony's face using a hard sponge, but they couldn't quite get it off her arms. While no one else burst into tears, the remnants of Ebony's fake tan disaster were still met with laughter by colleagues after she decided she'd return to work after the incident.

It's a mistake Ebony probably won't make again in the future, and she's also shared her sage wisdom for the rest of us to learn from. "Don’t use a darker than dark one," she wrote. "Stick to what you know".