Today’s hair

French braid to compare to the tiny little braid from Throwback Thursday.

Hah, getting kind of ridiculous when I take a full length picture, doesn’t it?

Throwback Thursday

Look at that tiny little braid! It is almost wider than it is tall!

Squee!

Of news, great and small

I managed to keep the Nodosaurus with the Esthetic House CP-1 Ceramide Treatment Protein Repair System in for a whopping 30 hours!

I do believe that is a new record for me?

I guess the thick, “buttery” texture helped me keep the Nodosaurus on.

Usually it fails either due to leaks which irritates me and makes me rinse it out, or because the bag and bandage starts slipping. I think the thicker texture, the less it would slip?

My hair has rewarded me for my effort and the pricy product for being amazing for days. It just feels… Dense. Like I couldn’t possibly force it to absorb any additional treatment to matter what. It’s been so wonderfully shiny and so amazingly smooth I could barely braid it for the first couple of days! People have even noticed that my hair has been shinier than usual. It also dries noticeably faster: The moisture just slides off.

Amazing.

Two thumbs up for Esthetic House CP-1 Ceramide Treatment Protein Repair System.

Should Memebox ever decide to stock that product or another hair box again, I will buy it in a heartbeat.

Damn that Memebox though!

I have to enforce a strict rule of when I can buy a box, or I will happily buy almost every single box they stock!

Theoretical boxes I will allow myself:

• “Best of the best” type Korean cosmetics
• Facial masks
• Hair stuff
• The OMG box should they ever restock it
• Zero cosmetics/hypoallergic type boxes of skincare

Generally no “normal” cosmetics, no scent based boxes and no non-hypoallergic skincare stuff.

And yet, I slipped when they suddenly had two IOPE-boxes up.

I’ve been reading a lot of Korean-based beauty blogs and that brand is one of the most hyped and beloved ones. Box #2 came with the IOPE Air Cushion which has to be one of the best products ever made? 

Hmm.

Seriously, expect to see knock offs of this coming to the western beauty world in a year or two, whenever they have figured out how to bypass all the patents!

The box ships July 21st and I can barely wait!

I used the Assoster Scalp Scaling Gel from the Hairbox tonight. I’ve had something irritating going on around my left temple-area the last few days.

A zit? And ingrown hair? Maybe a reaction to something?

No matter how creative I got with mirrors, I could only tell it was red and irritated in the area. Of course since I’m a skin picker, I only aggravated it further.

So I figured this deep cleanser/exfoliater would help.

The pamphlet and website said I could use it on either wet or dry hair, but what little it said in English on the actual product was to use it on wet hair.

It made me feel slightly worried that I couldn’t understand anything about the ingredients. Seriously. I couldn’t even tell if the writing was upside down or not!

So wet hair it was. I applied some Tressemme Colour Vibrance Protection from waist down, balled it up and put it in a bag with an elastic around to protect the ends from the scalp gel.

I made a lot of partings and applied a thin strip of the product in the parting. Just like back when I had platinum blonde hair and had to bleach the roots ever so often. Haha.

Then massaged it around using my fingertips, comb and Assoster Scalp Massaging Brush for a few minutes.

That one is also a wonderful product. I’ve used it a lot! Other massagers I’ve tried have been too hard, but this one is just right and it has never caught on my hair.

The scalp gel had a sort of cooling methol-ish effect. Felt nice and tingly. I expected it to sting around the red scalp spots, but that didn’t happen.

When I started rinsing it out, I was worried about shedding. But that seemed completely normal.

However, my shed hairs seemed to contain a lot of lint. Was it really lint? Or was it maybe gunk and dead skin cells from my scalp? Ew.

It seemed odd and very noticeable.

Afterwards my scalp felt clean and “airy”. It felt good!

Not like when I have shampooed and my poor scalp feels like it’s crying

If the scalp gel has helped to clear the trouble spots up, that is a definite two thumbs up for this too!

I bought the Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner to test if I should have any problems with the aloe vera extract in it. I’m intolerant to aloe vera if the pulp has been processed with the skin in it, and since they never list in the ingredients if it's skin free or not, I had to try it first.

And why is a cone-head like me trying a ‘cone free product?

Because I’m going to henna as soon as I have finished strand testing.

No, I’m not going henna red. I’m going to do the lightest of henna in a cassia mix. We’re talking a 5 gram sample of henna in a 100 gram cassia and 300 ml conditioner-mix or so.
They say you marry henna and divorce is a bitch, so I hope I can keep the trouble down by only doing the lightest of henna treatments. I know henna's cousin cassia isn't so much trouble though!

But first I need a ‘cone free conditioner I like, receive my henna/cassia order and do a bunch of test strands.

I just want to nudge my natural titian colour ever so slightly towards the red tones. This should also minimize the need for root-touch ups.

Once I have done that, I will add the tiniest hint of indigo to my ends. Indigo binds better if it has henna to attach to.

I have been irritated over the fade for so long and now it’s time to do something about it. There are only so many times you can invoke the two week-rule without having to do something!

Again, we are talking a 5 gram sample of indigo or so.

I figure a Nodosaurus from about waist-ish/classic-ish should do the trick.

I will take my time with the test strands and letting it oxidise properly before proceeding.

I didn’t have any problem with the aloe vera and the conditioner in general seemed very good. I had expected some sort of reaction since it was cone free, but I didn’t miss it. My hair is shiny, feels healthy and was easy to detangle. Now I know how my hair feels after using it alone and I can compare it to when I add henna, cassia and indigo.

I poured the Saerom Cosmetics RNA-3 Hair Repair Keratin Water into two full 200 ml Sunsilk leave in-bottles. Even though it was so little (30 ml), it still made my hair so much smoother and shinier when I use the mix. That’s another two thumbs up for the fourth product I’ve tried from the Hairbox! Just three products left I haven’t tried…

I had a funny experience some days ago: I treated Hubby and I to a massage at Sabai Thai massage. We went for a two hour full body massage with a foot massage I assumed was some sort of reflexology too. The two hours just flew by, but damn, are my “too much time spent in front of computers”-shoulders sore from the massage! I guess I needed it.

Hubby and I had our massage side by side and the two women were very impressed over my hair and chatted about it a lot. After advice from Mountainwave on UTT, I had my hair in a braid and my massage therapist seemed to have a lot of fun rearranging it. It made me pretty embarrassed. Too much attention and compliments generally makes me all confused and embarrassed. 

I snapped a few pictures of the room we had our massage in…

It was pretty funny after the massage too: We brought home sushi, ate it and took a long bath to get rid of the massage oil. Then Hubby completely passed out and slept for something like 12 hours!

He slept from me cooking and generally messing around and everything!

I got such a craving for Thai food that I made some Paneng Curry. I guess it was the interior in the massage place with the elephant statues and the wood carvings and all that triggered it?

I could definitely see us going there again. It should be really good for your body and it costs about the same as going to the movies a couple of times and getting snacks while you’re there. 

Wig, part 2/2

I played around with the wig last night before washing it and found it had a horribly thick and stubborn seam that left a giant cow-lick in the hairs.

No matter what I did to it, the hairs refused to lay down smoothly because of the dumb thing.

So finally I gave up, and decided to allow the hairs to go back instead of forwards with the rest of the bangs.

Of course this meant I would be stuck wearing headbands with this, but I always assumed I would do that anyway.

I left the sopping wet wig draped over the edge of the bath tub overnight with the stupid seam up in an attempt to force it into shape.

 I needed an idea of how it fit on my head, so I tried the wig on unaltered, just with the “back” hairs scraped back and the front pinned to the sides. Definitely seeing some waviness to the hairs still!

 The hairs from the back pinned into the rest of my hair. I feel like you can see the texture difference between my own coarse hair and the fine wig-hair. Touching it feels seriously weird.

After cutting it.

I wanted something along the style of a Hime-cut. I think it would have been better if the side parts had been a bit longer, but this was the untouched length of the wig.

It’s not so bad actually. The red pieces in the back could pass for highlights, but it looks silly when the entire front is “highlighted” too. Unfortunately I don’t dare to throw some real hair bleach at it. I have no idea how much the hairs have already been through when the wig was made, so they could easily just disintegrate or turn green or something awful like that.

Maybe I could honey-light it a few shades?

The wig has maintained the annoying waviness even after washing and cutting it, so maybe it needs a bit of styling product?

Not that I would like the idea of having any sort of product like that near my sensitive skin. Hmm.

Even if you don’t care about the moral issues that this could be some poor misinformed, well meaning persons LoL-donation, the fact that you don’t know what “hides” under the artificial dyes and chemical treatments should be a good argument to avoid human hair for wig parts: You could be stuck with something with a undesired texture and not daring to further colour-treat or texture treat it.

With artificial fibres you know exactly what you get and what the fibres can tolerate when it comes to heat, bleach, dye and products.

Wig, part 1/2

I bought a wig some time back that I needed to return. Then I didn’t have the energy to deal with it, kinda forgot it and now it’s too late to return it.

Why did I want to return it?

"100% human hair."

[Bleep] [Bleeping] [Bleep-bleep]

Argh!

So in theory, this could be some poor, misguided woman’s LoL donation.

Great.

Everything I don’t want to support rolled up in a neat little green package. 

Also, the colour was nowhere near what I thought I had ordered. On the website it looked close to my own hair colour: That “Not really brown, not really blonde, but some red tones”-colour.

The wig looks much too dark and much too red. 

Also, I kind of assumed it wouldn’t be any good when they couldn’t even make the model on the back look good with it on.

Seriously, what were they thinking? It looks lopsided and awful!

Did no one style this poor girl? Who approved the photo shoot and decided that this was the best shot, the photo that should represent the product and make people buy it? 

Anyways. Here is the wig on with no styling or preparation.

You can clearly see the edge where the hairs have been folded up in the pack.

It looks lighter brown and redder than in the pack.

It seems to have some waviness to it too. I hope that will go away after I have washed and shaped it. This is the risk of using human hair: You really don’t know what structure “hides” underneath the colour and chemical treatments.

This red shade instantly washes out what little colour I have in my face. Hmm. So much for me thinking I would look good with redder hair! 

Also... I know I have some seriously thick and coarse hair, but working with it, I’ve been just plain shocked at the difference in texture between my own hair and the wig.