Winter swap on UTT

Sisi33 organised a winter swap on UTT and I was swapping with Onyx.
She turned out to be difficult to find the perfect things for, so I ended up getting a little of everything of what I could see her being interested in.

I have sent her

• A blue Bunjii (Has to be one of the very few ones left that has never been used!)
• Aloe vera sheet mask
• Calvin Klein nail polish
• Hair salon protein treatment
• Hair sticks in a light wood I think will compliment her hair colour well
• Iope lips and cheek stain
• Pretty AnntoiNet’s silk hair bonnet
• Single blue speckled corian Ketylo
• Soap
• Special order Ric the combmaker hair sticks
• Widetoothed bone comb

Nicely wrapped up in a Memebox (lol)

I guess my Memebox addiction means I will never be short of boxes for mailing stuff in… And they’re cute and sturdy too!

Memebox: Sally’s box

This was a special offer in the Memestore. 39 USD plus shipping for a box with lots of masks in it.

I was impressed at how big the box was. Here compared to a normal Memebox superbox.

Fully packed, plus a little pamphlet about the products. In Korean though, so I couldn’t read it. Good thing is that all the individual products have a few lines of English on them.

Initial unpacking with the different lines grouped together.

I guess the elastics and little cream samples are bonus products?

The elastics went into my shoulder bag for emergency hair maintenance.

14 sheet masks in different fruits and vegetable-themes. (One in aloe vera of course. Ugh)

5 sheet masks in a 2-step system where you first massage in a little ampoule sacket before placing the sheet mask on your skin.

3 sheet masks in panthenol, ceramide and collagen.

The more assorted stuff (I guess): Hand mask, 3-step blackhead masks, lip mask, foot mask, hair mask, nail mask, under eye-mask.

This was a lot of stuff!

I will definitely order this one again should it show up in Memeshop!

Throwback Thursday

One of my first little "buns".
Hah.
Such a sad little thing. Barely more than a pretend ponytail (Half up, lol) with the ends folded up a bit.

Do want!

It's like Memebox read my mind.

I just expressed how happy I was with the Rapunzel-box and they put out a new hair box. The first hair box was pretty awesome too, so I'm very happy to see they put out a new hair box!

Now the question is, do I want to order one or two? 

Edit: Two. I ordered two.

Memebox #68 Hair Salon

Check out my link for codes and discounts

Memeboxes: Snow White + Sleeping beauty + Rapunzel

Sleeping beauty

I figured this would have a bunch of sleep packs, but this was packed with aloe vera products. Ugh.

Top row, left to right

Vella Neck Tight Cream 50ml

I have never had an actual neck cream. I just spread my usual cream down my neck and even down my chest a bit. Alright, a specialised neck cream might be fun!

ECHOICE Aloe Vera All Care Cream

Aloe vera. Ugh. Directly to my sell/trade/gift-pile.

Bottom row, left to right

Dermahouse Aloe Vera Gel

More aloe vera. Ugh. Directly to my sell/trade/gift-pile.

D'Ran Aqua Wonder Recovery Eye Cream

This sounds pretty good with Hyaluronic acid, collagen and a sea complex containing 7 types of seaweed extracts, so I think I will use this. The text in the front of the pack made me laugh though: Glacier and hydrolyzed collagen put in fresh energy in skin.

ReinPlatz Intensive Moisture Pack

Randomly picked between hand and foot. I got the hand moisture pack. Awesome. What a convenient way to show your hands some love!

Dewytree Aqua Collagen Peptide Sleeping Mask

Dude. This box should have been called the Engrish-box. “A valuable and pure nature ingredients.  Multifunctional moisture skincare. Convenient solution system”. Wut?

It has an impressive ingredient line-up though: Collagen peptide, hyaluronic acid, green tea extracts, adenosine, sciadopitys verticillata root extracts, medical mushrooms and niacinamide. 

Verdict

Except for the damn aloe vera, this was a pretty good box.

Snow White

I really considered not getting this one since I figured it would be packed with whitening products. Don’t get me wrong, I like being pale, but I don’t feel I need any assistance in maintaining my natural paleness. I started using the whitening creams I’ve received on the scars on my shins instead of body lotion. Not sure if it really works anyways, at least they’re only supposed to be brightening and not actually whitening as the same usually says.

Top row, left to right

Nella Fantasia Oneday Whitener

This “magical” whitening lotion looks more like a bottle of metal polish or shoe polish or something. Seriously.

Chosungah original raw 1st Essence

Wow, this thing looks like a perfume or something. I got the “red essence”. It says it’s a combination of a skin toner, essence and lotion. Uh?

Daltokki Whitening Essence

What a weird and ugly bottle. Usually the Korean products are cute, but this one is just ugly. It says you should mix it with your facial cream or sun screen to perfect your complexion.

Bottom row, left to right

5 Seeds Apple Water Brightening Scrub

A scrub made from apple water, apricot, raspberry, walnut and rice seeds.

Faceflux Anti-Wrinkle Revitalize Cream

It looks like an eyecream but is really an anti wrinkle cream for your entire face.

Morningtree Revitalizing Whitening Deep Spot

Rollerball? Why does this essence come in a rollerball? That just doesn’t seem very convenient to me. I guess to highlight the spot treatment-function of this.

Verdict

Yea, I should probably have opted out of this box. The only thing I can see myself use is pretty much the scrub.

Rapunzel

Oh yay. I’ve been waiting for Memebox to make another hair box since I loved the first one so much.

Left to right

Elizavecca Ceramide Coating Protein Treatment

This left me confused because it looked so much like a mud mask. I have a cleansing foam in the same brand that I absolutely love, so I wouldn’t have complained if it had been a facial mask.

Good ingredients listed: Collagen, bean protein extracts, ceramide complex, allantoin, hydro-wheat protein and vegetable extracts. I’m going to mix this with some other conditioner and leave it on for a long time.

Sally's Box Friendly Argan Oil 2 Step Hair Mask

This is a hair treatment that consist of a small portion of conditioner and a hair cap with another small portion of conditioner in it.

Tosowoong 10 Hours Protein Hair Essence

This is a leave in conditioner containing camellia oil, black bean, black rice, sesame, blackberry and black tea extracts and lots of protein. The syringe-shape is pretty dumb and gimmicky though. I will mix it with my usual Sunsilk leave in conditioner. 

Left to right
Lioele L'Cret Hair Color Keeper Treatment Shampoo

Big shampoo bottle. Meh. It’s a shampoo, no matter how many awesome ingredients and benefits they list. I’ll probably give it to Hubby.

Boutique Bebe Vita-Clinic Hair Salon Mist

A spray leave in-conditioner containing argan oil, lavender extract, peppermint extract, chamomile extract, rosemary extracts and royal jelly extracts.  I will mix it with my usual Sunsilk leave in conditioner.

ProYou Scalp Nutrition Calming Moisture Fluid

It’s a scalp moisturiser…? Hmm. Not sure I will actually use this. Maybe on weekends where I can have “greasy” hair? Dunno. I know other longhairs will put things on their scalp, but I just never really have.

Verdict

Yep, I’m happy with this box. Good mix of products. Even has something I’ve never tried before: The scalp moisture fluid.

The henna project, day 4

The henna’ed test from yesterday, 48 hours after treatment.

Oxidation in process

I think the argan-test is still slightly glossier and slightly more red.

The henna project, day 3

The henna’ed test from yesterday, 24 hours after treatment.

Oxidation in process

I think the argan-test is slightly glossier and slightly more red.

The henna project, day 2

3 freshly washed clumps of shed hair shampooed and ready for experimentation!

(Argh, the kitchen counter is such a pain to photograph on. Hygienic sure, but so annoying for photos. Not going to play around with henna on the white kitchen table though!)

I wish I could have bothered to comb and organise my shed hairs when I collected them! But this will have to do.

I left the frozen henna out to defrost. It was such a small amount that I started messing with it after just half an hour or so.

The tiny amounts of henna and cassia I needed made me nervous that my scale wouldn’t be accurate enough, but there were 80 gram left in the cassia pack after I had poured cassia out. Phew!

The mix turned out to be way, way too hard though. So I added extra conditioner and water or argan oil.

So the mixes ended up being:

Actual Argan-test batch

1 ml henna

10 gram cassia

40 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner

10 ml argan oil

3 ml water

Actual regular test batch

1 ml henna

10 gram cassia

40 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner

5 ml water

The mixes ready to go

Applied to the test strands and left for 4 hours. “A” of course marks the argan-batch.

Rinsed the tests clean and left them to dry. I think the gentlest thing would be to CO wash the henna out once I get to do my hair?

Purple elastic marks the argan batch, white one marks the non-argan.

Can’t say I see a big difference. Maybe the argan one is ever so slightly more glossy and red?

The henna project, day 1

My supplies arrived!

• 2 x 5 gram Indian henna samples
• 2 x 5 gram Indigo samples
• 4 x 100 gram cassia

Now I can proceed with the first step in the plan

1. Strand test henna mix
2. Allow to oxidize for a week before deciding on mix
3. Strand test indigo mix over henna’ed strands
4. Allow to oxidize for at a week before deciding on mix
5. Full hair of chosen henna mix
6. Indigo mix for about wasit/classic-ish length and down

Judging from the amount of henna people use, I should be at something around 500 gram (!) henna for my length and thickness. I havent been able to find a first time-henna user anywhere near my length but classic length users seems to use around 300 gram, so doubling that more or less for my length would have given me full red dye.

Of course that means that my planned use of a 5 gram sample puts me at literally just 1 % of what the norm for a henna gloss should be. I really shouldn’t see a lot of dye from this.

For a regular CO wash (Smurf) I can do it with just 200 ml conditioner, although I prefer 250. But for a heavier, thicker treatment containing cassia I will need at least 300 ml product in total. A heavier treatment can be quite hard to distribute properly, so I need the extra volume.

The full sized henna mixes I plan to test are:

Argan-batch

• 5 g henna + water to hydrate
• 100 gram cassia
• 300 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner
• 50 ml argan oil

Regular batch

• 5 g henna + water to hydrate
• 100 gram cassia
• 300 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner

The cassia-content is lower than what I usually do, but this will fit with the 100 gram bags.

My theory is that cassia and henna botch carry beneficial oils, so the argan-batch should be the best. But it needs to be tested.

I hope the super light henna gloss will be sufficient to just nudge my natural titian hair colour a bit into red. Henna has a sort of “watercolour” effect so my natural red tones + the henna should be good.

Since the gloss is so light, I hope it will severely reduce the risk of unwanted staining.

But first I need to reduce them to useful test sizes.

The supplies…

My scale only goes to 5 gram intervals so I needed to see how much 5 gram henna is in ml.

The 5 gram henna sample added up to 11 scoops of the 1 ml spoon.

For simplicity sakes, I will pretend 5 gram = 10 ml and do a 1/10th portion size for strand testing, where the henna is slightly stronger.

Argan-test batch

• 1 ml henna + water to hydrate
• 10 gram cassia
• 30 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner
• 5 ml argan oil

Regular test batch

• 1 ml henna + water to hydrate
• 10 gram cassia
• 30 ml Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner

The procedure

1. Freezing henna + water overnight to destroy the plant cells for dye release
2. Defrosting the henna + water next day
3. Add cassia, conditioner and argan oil for the argan-batch
4. Allow 1 hour for dye release
5. Apply to hair and leave on as long as I can tolerate. I hope for at least 4 hours for the actual hair treatment
6. Rinse out using lots of conditioner
7. Check colour every day and take pictures of oxidation process
8. After 7 days, proceed to indigo for length: Indigo is simpler. Just mix indigo, conditioner and maybe argan oil

Hydrating the two 1 ml henna’s with 3 ml water each and freezing them. I had planned to transfer the henna and water to a bag each for freezing, but with this little material it turned out to be just about impossible.  

So I simply put some cling wrap over and will add the other ingredients into the glasses tomorrow.

I CO washed with Tressemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture conditioner to see how it worked for me and was pleasantly surprised. My hair felt smooth, strong and happy. Didn’t miss the ‘cones at all.

The conditioner is definitely perfect and good to go. Now to test the henna and indigo mixes.