Hair inspiration

I thought this was a pretty cool detail on a ponytail.
My plan was to use this at the beginning, and then braid it in a seven-stranded braid. According to my calculations, the small "neck" portion would be about 2/5th of my hair, so the ponytail part should be easily split into five.

Off to a good start with the detail! It did get a bit loose/messy in one side, but that can be fixed with some practice.

Of course my mirror was right in the middle of it. Argh.
I'm not entirely sure what to think.

The positive: It has a fairly nice "lift" effect to keep the braid off my neck, it was fairly easy to do and felt really "firm" and secure.
The negative: I got some messiness from using the hair-lassoo and I screwed the seven-stranded braid up. Somehow along the line I managed to turn it into a five-stranded.

Notes for next time: Get the beginning part smooth and nice. Definitely braid it into a seven-stranded braid, just because it feels cooler.

Product showdown: Inecto

I usually buy my conditioners following the rule "Whatever is on sale", and then just grab one of each line out of the brand. So now I have a lot of conditioners from the same brands, but different lines. So I was thinking that maybe I should do a comparison for all of those "doubles" so in the future, I will only get the best one at the next sale.

Inecto super moisturising coconut conditioner
Inecto marvelous moisture argan conditioner

I'm going to compare them on a few different factors:

• First impressions

• Effect: Shine and manageability

• Ingredient analysis and interesting ingredients such as "actives": Oils, fruits, keratin, sunscreen

First impressions

Inecto super moisturising coconut conditioner
Mild coconutty smell. Rather runny.

Inecto marvelous moisture argan conditioner
Mild, soapy, "clean" smell. Rather runny.

Here's a general observation on both products: I absolutely loathe companies that doesn't publish ingredient lists on their website. It immediately makes them think of them as fat liars. 

What are companies trying to hide when they do that? The fact that their "organic, fair trade coconut oil" is number 26 out of a 28-ingredient list?
It's so dishonest and untrustworthy.
Immediate minus points for that.

Effect

Inecto super moisturising coconut conditioner

Inecto marvelous moisture argan conditioner

Argh. Both of them had a really weird effect on my hair.
As soon as I started rinsing, it gave my hair a really weird effect from root to tips: Sort of like if my hair had a crazy attack of super static. It wasn't tangles, more like all the hairs clung together. When I started detangling from one side, it would stick together from the other side as soon as I had finished. It also left some sort of strange "dry" feeling to my hair, even when wet. This weird effect was only underlined by my hair suddenly being really noisy and making a screeeeeeetcccccch noise when I pulled (forced) my comb through. It was really weird and upsetting!
I hurried to put some coney serum in my hair before even attempting to towel dry it and detangle further.
Poor hair!

I do have to admit though: They made my hair pretty shiny.
Also I think they had a fairly good cleaning effect?

Ingredient analysis

Inecto marvelous moisture argan conditioner

Aqua (Water/Eau), Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetrimonium Chloride, Stearalkonium Chloride, Arganisa Spinosa (argan) kernel oil, Parfum (Fragrance), Stearyl alcohol, Isopropyl alcohol, Sodium benzoate, Citric Acid.

Why did my hair hate this so much??

Applying the Beauty Brains "First five ingredients rule"
Argan oil just exactly squeezes in as the last one.
Other than that, it's a straight forward cone-free conditioner with no surprises.

10 ingredients in total

2 marked as a "2" for acne-trigger. 20 %

2 marked as a "2" for irritation-trigger. 20 %

1 marked as a "4" for irritation-trigger. 10 %

This doesn't look so good in percentage, when you have so few ingredients.

5 marked as "green" for safety. 50 %

3 marked as "yellow" for safety. 30 %

And one marked as "green-yellow" for safety. 10 %
Argan oil doesn't have a safety-rating though?

Inecto super moisturising coconut conditioner
Aqua (Water/Eau), Cetearyl Alcohol, Stearalkonium Chloride, Cetrimonium Chloride, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) oil, Parfum (Fragrance), Stearyl alcohol, Isopropyl alcohol, Sodium benzoate, Citric Acid.

Applying the Beauty Brains "First five ingredients rule"

Coconut oil just exactly squeezes in as the last one.
Other than that, it's a straight forward cone-free conditioner with no surprises.

The Inecto conditioners seems to follow the rule of "Just replace featured ingredient X with featured ingredient Y" for this line. It's not necessarily a bad thing though; in my case where I have problems tolerating coconut oil, I could pick the argan conditioner if I liked the line.

10 ingredients in total

2 marked as a "2" for acne-trigger. 20 %
1 marked as a "4" for acne-trigger. 10 %
Of course the high-scoring ingredient is coconut oil, which is a very strong trigger for skin irritation for me.

1 marked as a "1" for irritation-trigger. 10 %

2 marked as a "2" for irritation-trigger. 20 %

1 marked as a "4" for irritation-trigger. 10 %

This doesn't look so good in percentage, when you have so few ingredients.

6 marked as "green" for safety. 60 %

3 marked as "yellow" for safety. 30 %

And one marked as "green-yellow" for safety. 10 %

Lady Igor says

This shouldn't be a surprise by now, but... Since I didn't like the effect of these, I would prefer to pick none of them. 

However, if I did have to pick, I would pick: Inecto marvelous moisture argan conditioner

Pointing out the obvious: The argan conditioner has argan, instead of coconut oil. So you're avoiding a potential skin irritant and acne-trigger well known for being comedogenic.

I guess if you love your conditioners cone- free, this is good?

Bonus product: Inecto Smooth me Coconut hair serum

First impressions

Slightly runny, brown product. Smells really good!

Effect

Really nice. Slightly hard to control when applying because of the runny texture. Very good shine, very good smoothing effect. Doesn't seem to offer any hold though.

Ingredients

Cyclopentasiloxane, Dimethiconol, Isopropyl Myristate, Cyclohexasiloxane, Amodimethicone, Parfum (Fragrance), Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil.

Applying the Beauty Brains "First five ingredients rule"

This serum is cones, cones and more cones.
Not that I mind of course. I do like cones. But if you bought this product for the coconut oil, you are looking at nothing more than

7 ingredients in total

1 marked as a "4" for acne-trigger. 14 %
1 marked as a "5" for acne-trigger. 14 %
Yikes. A little scary to see an ingredient that scores higher than coconut oil!

1 marked as a "1" for irritation-trigger. 14 %

1 marked as a "3" for irritation-trigger. 14 %

This doesn't look so good in percentage, when you have so few ingredients.

5 marked as "green" for safety. 71 %

1 marked as "yellow" for safety. 14 %

And one marked as "green-yellow" for safety. 14 %

Lady Igor says

This serum actually worked really well. I quite liked it for the shine and smoothing effect. But then again, it is mostly just cones. However I think the ingredient list is a bit scary... How do you make a mostly coney product ingredient list look like this?

Today's hair

...was a total fail. Argh.

I wanted to do a double version of this, but it turned out quite loose and weird in the beginning.

The five-stranded braid got good, but the beginning was bad.

I thought I could cover the mess by putting it up, but that didn't really help.

It got really lopsided and for some reason, the tassel worked itself out of the bun.

I really need to practice this one some more....