FOLLICLES

Happy Hair Day!

/ MANY BRAVE FOOLS / Leave a comment

I’ve decided it is happy hair day, because look:

Wowee, it is like a hair care bonanza! {OMG is she going to link to — yep, there she goes again… *heaves huge sigh*.}

So, what have we got here? From Revlon, the new Equave Instant Beauty line is all about the keratin. it offers a conditioner for four different conditions of hair, to be wedded with one shampoo. Now, as you can imagine, I would be a heartfelt advocate for a million kinds of shampoo, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of my shampoo-addicted doubt.

What is keratin, you may ask? Why, it refers to a family of fibrous structural proteins, of course. Also, this:

Hair starts growing from a bulb which is lodged just under the skin. The beginning of a hair is made up of cells, which are bulging with keratin. The cells lengthen and then die, leaving behind protein bundles. There are two types of keratin: I and II. And their intertwining form long coils which accumulate in hair.*

Wooo-ooo, you know me and the science. Anyway, from what I gather, the keratin treatments that you get in the salon are the heavy-duty, hardcore hair straightening yokes, and this keratin-enriched shampoo and conditioner is what you can use at home to gentler effect. I haven’t cracked these open yet, so I don’t know from experience.

Cannot wait to experience! What we’ve got is:
> Hydro Detangling Shampoo
> Hydro Nutritive Detangling Conditioner, which you leave in
> Volumizing Detangling Conditioner, which is also a leave-in conditioner, for fine hair
> Blonde Detangling Conditioner, which is for me because I am ‘blonde’
> Sun Protection Detangling Conditioner, which is for your hollllidaaaaays. And also everyday, because of the UV damage that is always happening, right???!

Also! For the stylin’: Volumizing Foam, Substance Styling Cream, and Shine Serum.

Prices range from €10.99 to €14.99, which is excellent value for what is salon-calibre stuff.

I will let you know how I get on…

*Via…

Houses of the Curly

/ brightandbeautyfull / Leave a comment

STAIRWAY TO HAIR HEAVEN? I like to browse through old photos, past clippings, and all manner of the weird bits and pieces I have kept over the years. I got rid of a bunch of stuff in the move, which I may regret at some stage, but there’s a whole world of nostalgia knocking around my hard drive.

I sometimes launch Photo Booth on my Mac because I need to check my amazing brows yet again, or apply a lipstick I’m testing. Trust me, this is in no way a vain exercise because I don’t think I ever look worse than when that programme launches, and I am caught unawares. I never click the red button to snap those pictures, but when I start throwing shapes, all is at least OK with the world.

At almost the same time as I was perusing Photo Booth, I was also googling some old columns from the Herald. In an amazing example of synchronicity, I came upon this Gadget Gal column, a review of the Yogi Wand, after I had found this photo:

Post-Wand, and it totally looks worth it, although I have to say I was surprised I didn’t have to ring for an ambulance, as I feel like I burnt the beejayziz out of my ears, from knocking into them with the Wand.

At that very moment, in the photo, I was Skyping Karen, and the stupid video wasn’t working, and I wanted her to see my haaaaaair, so I took the photo with the computer and then emailed. O brave new world that has such gadgets in it!

Now everybody can see my hair, and I’m kind of getting a buzz to curl it up again. I’ve got a Remington Pearl Pro-Styler that looks pretty interesting… hmmm. Maybe I’ll play with that later. I really do have to psyche myself up for it, because I am not the most patient person in the world, and just want the hair to be done. Oh, sure, I start out slowly, but the hanks of hair get bigger and bigger the more bored I get by the process.

But! I end up looking like Robert Plant, which I feel is actually a good thing…

The Yogi Wand is available at Peter Mark for €69; ring round first, because there seems to be a dearth of wands in Dublin at the moment.

From the Archives: Stylin’ Hair

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I admit, I feel somewhat lost without another ♥Day post to write. And also: relieved. Sheesh, that was crazy, remind me not to do that next year.

I’m in the process of winnowing, and faced with my multitude of hair styling products, I thought the best thing to do would be to consult my own archive, and lo, here is a linkety link to an Evening Herald Tried & Tested column.

Hmmm. Only two of these are still in rotation, which makes me feel hopeful about my ability to streamline. After you read the reviews, can you guess which two? I was surprised, myself…

Haiku Review: Beauty Trimmer

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Let’s face it, ladies:
As we age, the hair does grow,
Not just from the scalp.

It all started on the chin, I think. Or maybe it was the upper lip. As I mentioned here, I had hit the waxing scene rather early, so unwieldy facial hair has always been a thing. Once it started to look like I was going to give those dudes from ZZ Top some serious competition, I started to look for some equally serious epilatory solutions.

Okay, so it wasn’t as bad as all that. And the hair itself was and mostly continues to be light blonde. This is great because one learns not to sit in the windows of cafés in direct sunlight, for example, and one therefore can stretch out the time between the employment of epilatory techniques. It is not great when one is a beauty journo/blogger, with many opportunities to review laser hair removal, only to be told that one’s hair is too light for it to work.

Grrrrrr. <A sound appropriate to my hirsuteness.

There were several approaches to solve this problem: I got the lip and chin waxed. I got the at-home waxing strips. I quite like this, from Boots, only it takes planning. Do not even suggest putting a tweezer anywhere near my lip, my eyes have just started watering.

When the neck hair got really out of control, I bit the bullet and started using the Braun Silk Epil 7. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It took some seasoning of the skin, but once I became inured to all the little spinning razors yanking the hair out, I wouldn’t be without it. Some of the finer hairs haven’t grown back!

But there was no. way. in. hell I was going to run that over my lip. Of all the whiskers, I dislike these the most. So when the Beauty Trimmer landed on my desk, and purported to be more than able to deal with hairs other than my brows (for which I had requested this, initially), I though, ah, sure why not?

I liked its sleekness, right off the bat. It’s something that you could easily slip into your make up bag, as easily as a pair {set?} of tweezers. There’s only one setting — gentle buzz — and to be honest, it didn’t feel like it was doing anything as I stroked it over my lip, until I realised I was stroking it over a clean, hairless lip. ! It’s also fairly good on the goatee, but it really is all about the lip area for me.

Painless, quick, easy… the longer hairs around the edges of my mouth tend to grow in darker, where they didn’t before, but bright side! I can go get those zapped now.

The pink thing in the picture is a thing to put on the end to use on your brows? I haven’t gone there yet, mainly because I haven’t figured out in my head how it could possibly work. Combing? There’s a video, but I don’t feel enlightened. And oh yes she did at :53.

€11.99/£9.99, via jmldirect.com

My World of Shampoo, Part III: John Freida Sheer Blonde

/ brightandbeautyfull / 2 Comments

{Speaking of shampoo!}

Here’s me, with freshly highlighted hair, and I am all out of this stuff <.

Sheer Blonde, by John Freida, was my go-to combo when my lights were fadin’ fast. It says it right there on the tube, Highlight Activating, and yes indeed, both the shampoo and conditioner totally activated my highlights. Thing is, I would like to have been able to use this on the enlivened lights, just to see how well they would look.

I’m betting they would be lightin’ up my head, in an off-the-charts fashion, because Sheer Blonde did an amazing job on my hair when it wasn’t at it lightest and brightest.

Bummer.

The other thing is, sometimes I find that these ‘specialised’ S&Cs don’t do such a great job making your hair look great. Like, your highlights might look highlighty-er, but the general texture and healthiness of you hair might suffer. In this case, I got a freshened look and a good hair day.

At the prices below, I’ve no excuse. Great hair, great value.

€6.19 for both/£5.49 for both/$6.49 (shampoo), $6.99 (conditioner)

Having Said All That About Dry Shampoos…

/ brightandbeautyfull / 2 Comments

… I gave this stuff a go. It works rather differently than a powder. While this may not, technically, be a dry shampoo, it does the same business: it lets you off the shampooing hook.

As it says on the tin, the Ojon™ Full Detox Rub-Out™ Dry Cleansing Spray has Ojon oil in it. I am a fan of the Ojon range, in particular the Restorative Hair Treatment, a little tub of goodness, of which more will be spoken at a later date.

Despite the interesting advice that one should dry shampoo one’s locks the night before the day you’re going to skip shampooing, I shook this up on the skip-a-day morning and gave my head a spritz. Hmmm. I was pretty impressed with the first first impression, and so really went at my roots and scalp. I have to say, if I was the type of person to walk around with bed head {I am so not} then just spraying and massaging it through my hair would result in bed-head extraordinaire.

As it was, I was pretty happy with the result, even once I brushed everything back into order. My hair combed down rather flatly, but it actually felt clean. I was having an unwashed pony tail day, but my hair looked sleek rather than hauled-back-and-greasy. In fact, it looked like a magazine pony tail, which is pretty magical.

The thing about Ojon™ oil in general is that it gets right down there into the shaft of the hair and protects it from the wear and tear of sitting around exposed on the top of your head, day after day. Plus, it helps prevent future damage — look, I went for a walk the other day, in the sunshine, and even as weak as the winter version of the sun is, I felt like my hair had gotten a bit blasted. Not quite as bleached as a week in Ibiza would have made it, but still. So anything that helps me keep things right and tight up there is going to go into my good books.

Just so you know: whilst the Ojon oil is sourced in a section of the Central American rainforest, it is done so responsibly, and the indigenous people who harvest the natural ingredients are paid an income. I wouldn’t countenance this is this wasn’t so.

All of the above is serving to make this my new thing. And for someone who loves shampoo as much as I do, that’s saying something.

£18/€20/$24

My World of Shampoo: Redken Extreme

/ brightandbeautyfull / 2 Comments

I had been worrying about my hair. You can tell, can’t you, that I am a person who worries about her hair? I felt like it was thinning and that was making me nervous, and I was going to begin researching hair enhancement formulas, or whatever —

And then I came to the States for the holidays, and realized that it’s a water thing. And no, I don’t really understand. Continue reading →

Sisterhood of the Travelling Products: The Winnowing

/ brightandbeautyfull / Leave a comment

Hmmm. Is this really any improvement a’tall?

Three lip things — there’s the Lush Latte yoke that didn’t make the last photo; one foundation {although I expect the Eau Thermale Avéne compact I’m reviewing will slip itself into a coat pocket}; one hair thing, one brow thing… a new thing {upper left} that came in the fabbbb Kiehl’s gift box that my sister-in-law gifted…

I don’t know, I guess this is a good edit.

The long shiny rectangular yokie is Clinique’s Black Honey Colour Surge Eyeshadow Quad, must share my opinion on that officially. Hint: it is excellent. The product, that is, although my opinion is excellent, too.

Well, I think I did do an okay job:

Yeah, fine. Oh, and I googled the Dermalogica Multivitamin Power Recovery Mask {bottom left} and they’ve redesigned the packaging. Yup, I knew it was old, but…

Haiku Review: Head & Shoulders Itchy Scalp Care

/ brightandbeautyfull / 1 Comment

Oh, where to begin!
Let’s start with today’s shampoo —
Chosen with intent.

I think I used the H&S brand once in my life, before now. I had a touch of dandruff during adolescence, quelle horreur, and reached for the brand that said it was going to make it stop. It did, and I never thought of using it again.

Now, if I had to use a shamp/cond duo to deal with such an issue, I would most assuredly reach for the Head & Shoulders. I am also fairly certain that one’s choices have increased exponentially in the intervening years. I counted eleven different versions on the brand’s interactive web site.

I was given a sample of the Itchy Scalp Care flavour, and eh, I wasn’t really that pushed to give it a go. But give it one I did, because as I said earlier, this is my job.

Well. I assume my scalp is healthy because it doesn’t flake, and not to say that I am now given to bouts of scalp fear, but I will say that this pair, with its infusion of eucalyptus, is an enjoyably invigorating cleansing experience. It’s the shampoo that really comes across with the tingle, and if my scalp wasn’t squeaky clean before, it sure was now.

Ah: chosen with intent. The thing is, this gives me excellent second day hair, and as I am getting highlights today, I didn’t want to wash the barnet, but neither did I want to have dull hair. H&S and sorts this out completely, and I will walk into the salon with my head, complete with its itch-less scalp, held high.

€/£/$ prices vary, so I’m afraid you’ll have to google it yourself.

Haiku Review: To Clarify

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Yup: thirteen shampoos.
How many heads do I have?
Oh, right, only one.

The thing is, what kind of hair day do you want it to be?

Do you want it to be a shiny, salon kind of day?

Or do you know that you need to have good second day hair?

Or you are going out that night, and not only desire shiny salon hair, but with a difference?

What if you are just washing your hair because it needs it, and it really doesn’t matter what how it comes out?

^I don’t even know what that means, that one directly above. Just throwing the possibility out there.

I suppose the easiest answer to the question, ‘Sue, why in the world do you have thirteen shampoos and accompanying conditioners on the go?’

Well, it’s my job. I’m doing this for you.

I don’t even know where to start.