Sunday 30 October 2011

Hair Saving Superheroes

First of all, sorry about the long absence and lack of posting. I've got loads and loads of ideas for posts, from reviews to NOTDs and possibly a few tutorials thrown in as well, but unfortunately time is incredibly short at the moment. I'm quite literally working day and night, so I haven't got a lot of energy in the time I do have for posting. Hopefully that will change soon enough.

This post is about a few things that have absolutely transformed my hair from a frizzy, limp mess into something a lot more acceptable. A few years back I used to dye my hair black, but then got bored of it and wanted to go back to my natural hair colour (a darkish brown), so had it bleached out. This was pretty much death for my hair - I had it cut quite short afterwards, but it was only about five months ago that the last bit of bleached hair was chopped off. It didn't get much better afterwards either, though. My hair is naturally quite dry, but over the summer it somehow managed to be frizzy, damaged and greasy at the same time.
Even my boyfriend and parents started commenting on the terrible condition of my hair (if anyone else dared to I probably would have killed them, haha). I just didn't know what to do with it.

The first thing that really made a difference in the condition of my hair was a keratin supplement. My mum got me some as she was taking it for her weak nails and thought it would be good for mine as well. I didn't notice any difference in my nails, but boy did it transform my hair! It completely got rid of the limpness and balanced it out, so it wasn't greasy at the roots and frayed at the tips. I tried a couple and they all worked fine, but I would like to issue a word of warning: It worked like a dream for me, but some people produce enough keratin as it is and too much of it can cause horrible course hair and thick skin. I have now stopped taking it and will continue using a box every other month or so.


My second little saviour is this Iron Style & Hold Spray by TRESemme, for £4.80. I know a lot of people hate this product, but there's a reason for that. It says on the bottle that you can use it on wet/damp hair as well as on dry hair.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT EVER use this on dry hair before using heated styling devices. It will leave your hair sticky and crunchy and makes styling extremely difficult.
However, if you use it on wet hair before blow drying it's a completely different story. I use a few spritzes all around and then massage it into towel dried hair before getting my hair dryer out and the end result is lovely and smooth. As it's also a styling spray I don't need any hair spray afterwards unless I'm doing an updo or curling my hair (which I don't do often). A really great product if used on wet hair.

Sorry about the grainy-ness in these pictures - I had to take them late at night and ramp the ISO on my camera way up
This is just love in a bottle. I cannot even begin to describe how much I love these two bottles of heaven. The Ojon Damage Reverse shampoo costs £20 and the conditioner retails at £21.50. I got these for free at a special John Lewis event and as they're quite on the pricey side I would have never usually bought them, but OH MY GOD.
After the first wash I was unsure, the second wash was a bit better and then from the third wash onwards I was completely hooked. It's like this product has taken my hair off and replaced it with something much nicer. It's so soft I just want to stroke it all the time. It's smooth but not so slick that it won't react to styling. It's never been so shiny no matter how much oil, serum or shine spray I put over it.  And the day after washing it only gets better! I'm so in love with this, so even though the price tag does hurt a little bit I will be repurchasing this whenever my hair needs a little pick-me-up.
Of course it's meant for very, very dry hair, so if yours tends to be a bit oily this is probably way too heavy for you, but anyone else who just gets course and frizzy and dry hair this really is a miracle worker. It does exactly what it says on the tin: it really does reverse the damage my hair has suffered in all this time.

Naturally, I'm still not completely satisfied with my hair, as I feel that it could do with a little bit more volume now that it's all silky and smooth. But I'm pretty sure that's nothing that can't be fixed with some heated rollers, the right products and even the odd bit of backcombing. If you have any recommendations for products that would push up the volume on my hair without making it all dry and frizzy again, please leave them in the comment box below, as I'd love to hear about them!

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