Friday Flop: How To Not Highlight Your Hair

Last week I happened to be at CVS browsing through the hair color when noticed certain colors of the L’Oreal Paris Couleur Experte Express were on sale half off their regular $14.99 price! (You can also find it regularly as low as $11.99 on Amazon.com.)

Not being one to pass up a good deal I took a look at the colors and was thrilled to find Chocolate Macaroon (medium golden brown) included in the sale.  Purchased it and took it right home.   Normally I just do a straight all over color, but I was feeling adventurous.  Highlights?  Why the hell not.

I was not prepared for what I would find inside the box… or just how freaking long the process would take.

See that?  That would be two sets of hair color.  While what laid ahead was not a complete Precision Foam Colour disaster, it was still pretty terrible.  First you had to open the larger box on the right of the above photo, mix, apply and leave on for 25-35 minutes.  I always do the max, just for good measure.  It all went on OK and 35 minutes later I was washing it out of my hair and conditioning (not included in the package).  Then it was time to blow dry.

So far I was liking the color and the results.  It was going to be more time consuming then I bargained for, but after drying and styling my hair (without product) I was ready to move to the next step.  I opened up the remaining box for the ‘harmonizing highlight’.  What a pain in the ass.  Mix a creme with a packet full of fine powder with a tiny spatula for 2 minutes till smooth.   Then you apply the mixture with the included wand (think the same kind you use for mascara, just a bit larger) or the Easy Glide Highlighter tool (looks like a tiny flat iron with sponges on the inside that you don’t plug in).

I actually used both.  The Easy Glide for larger chunks of highlights and the wand for some smaller ones.  The instructions said 10-15 minutes for subtle highlights and 15-25 for more visible.  I have to say I went about 20 minutes before I washed it out.

So yeah.   There I was washing my hair for a second time.  Followed by a 2 minute conditioner they included this time.  Rinse again, blow dry again… and voila.

Nothing.

Well, not nothing.  But let me tell you girls, you can barely see anything at all.  There is one faint off color streak that I can actually hide under the rest of my hair… and nothing else came out at all.  It is all one color.  No highlights.  All that work…and it didn’t work.  My husband actually joked that I spent all night coloring my hair.  But it was sort of true.

Not a fan.  Not a fan at all.  Too much work and the results…just are not worth it.  From now on I will stick to the all over color by itself.  Don’t waste your time with this ladies.

About The Author:  Liza lives in New England with her 4 favorite boys; her husband and 3 children. She started blogging in 2007, finally getting serious about her passion for writing in 2010. Always the athlete when she was younger, she did not find her inner girlie girl until college. After having 3 boys in under 2 years, she is trying to reconnect with her inner girlie girl (in a house where the toliet seat is always up), while staying on a budget.

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Got 2b Guardian Angel Is A Smooth Move

Hi. This is my hair.  No, this is not my hair just on Halloween, or at a costume gala, or even on a dare….. This is actually my hair looking pretty normal—you know, for me. It has been hot pink enough to glow under a black light. It has been golden blonde on top and jet black on the last four inches or so. It has been long, it has been short, it has been a lot of things. Damage? Oh yeah… I got that in spades, so while I was shopping with my eldest the other day, I started thinking, “Man, I do some pretty crazy stuff when styling & dying my locks, maybe I should look for something to help mend and alleviate the damage I do?” to which Eldest turned to me and also expressed, “Mooooooom! I need something to flat iron  my hair and keep it smooth!” (Just imagine that being said in a whiny teen whine.) So together we start pouring over the hair care aisle when we happen upon this little gem: Got 2b Guardian Angel Flat Iron Balm.

According to the bottle, (and several stylists I have been faithful to…), hair doesn’t like heat. Temperatures above 425 degrees make your hair brittle and split. Use high heat long enough and you end up with major breakage! Yikes! This balm claims to moisturize and insulate each and every little hair on your head to not only keep is healthy, but smooth too. I looked at Eldest, Eldest looked at me and we both looked at the price tag. It was refreshingly UNDER $5, so we chucked it into the basket and finished our shopping.

Now, since I looooooove my eldest, I let her be the guniea pig go first. We took a photo of her with the product and what her hair looked like before being straightened. It’s already pretty straight, but you can still see subtle waves and frizz. Apparently, frizz is O-U-T out in high school this year. So she took the styling balm and disappeared into her bathroom to do the flat ironing.  While she was gone doing this I emptied the dishwasher, vacuumed the living room, dusted the bookshelves, solved string theory, started dinner, and then she finally waltzed back out!

This is what she looked like after. Her hair was definitely straighter, and it felt smoother. There was a definite lack of frizz as well. Eldest was extremely pleased. I said we needed to try it for more than one outing. She squeed in agreement and made off with the bottle for the next four days. During those four days we had hot, humid weather, windy weather, and rainy weather. (We live in Florida, so there was no way we were going to be able to get some cold weather.) Eldest flat ironed her hair each morning before going to her high school and I picked her up in the afternoons. Her hair stayed straight, shiny, and without frizz, even on the rainy day! It also stayed soft and shiny.

We’ve also been checking her split ends and noticed that even those had started to number fewer and fewer. Eldest is enjoying Guardian Angel immensely! Got 2b seems to have a winner here.  I know if I can ever pry the bottle out of her teenage clutches I may actually get to try it for myself, although I think I’d probably go for their other product, Guardian Angel Heat Protect & Blow Out since I use the hair dryer and the round barrel brush more than the flat iron. Either way, Got 2b Guardian Angel will be gracing my hair at my next derby bout! Who doesn’t love soft straight blonde hair with electric purple and acid green highlights!??!

 

 

 

Want Silky Hair? Use This.

I know I’ve mentioned before that having a baby really wreaked havoc on my hair. My previously stick straight hair got wavy and I also began to have a problem with frizz on humid days. I struggled to find a good product that I could use to tame the frizz and get my silky hair back.

My hairdresser recommended Moroccan Oil to me and I have never looked back. He uses it on my hair every time he fixes it, and even adds it to the color before he applies it to my hair.

You probably are not keen on the idea of putting something with “oil” right in the name into your hair, especially if like me you don’t wash your hair every day. You do need to be careful that you are putting the oil in your hair only and not on your scalp – I usually accomplish this by just bending over, flipping my hair over, and scrunching into my hair, avoiding my scalp.

Not only does Moroccan Oil smell AMAZING (to me it smells like a tropical vacation), it leaves your hair feeling silky and smooth, and makes it so much easier to blow dry, and then straighten. It also works well if you can’t or don’t want to blow dry your hair. Just work into wet or damp hair and let it air dry.

Moroccan Oil makes a whole line of products for every hair type and hair problem, including products for curls, scalp treatments and shampoos and conditioners, and a shine spray.

I bought my Moroccan Oil from my hairdresser – a 3.4 oz bottle for $40, but Amazon carries for a bit less, and they also carry several of the other products from the line. I haven’t used anything else from them, but I can say that even with my long thick hair, a 3.4 oz bottle lasts me about six months because you use it so sparingly.

How to Manage Curly Hair: Product. Product. Product.

I have naturally curly hair that I love.  Now.

It took me years of trial and error to get here.

I spent decades of my life walking around with a frizzy sort of kind of wave thing going on and I hated my hair.  I brushed and brushed and blow dryed and sprayed and it always just poofed.

My senior year in highschool, I discovered gel and scrunching.  Then, instead of a poofy triangular shaped fro, I had a crunchy spiral perm that always looked wet.

I’ve tried every cut, product, and gadget on the market.  From the very, very cheap to the very, very overpriced, I’ve experimented with everything in an effort to manage my curly hair.

About three years ago, I stumbled on the secret recipe.  I’ve tested it since then – trying to swap out one part of the formula or another – and time and time again I have proven to myself that this is what works on curly hair.

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