ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - Hair products for £1?

I'm sure you've all heard about the wondors of Argan oil. I was walking around my local asda and noticed they had a pound section, I saw this Argan oil shampoo there and at a pound I couldn't resist. I heard they sell the conditioner and treatment at the "99p store" and "poundland" aswell.
So, hair products for £1? Does it actually work? Well, it didn't do wondors but in conjuction with my Redken Anti-Snap, L'Oreal Intense repair it did a pretty damn good job and didn't feel much different to my Tigi shampoo.I found I had to use alot to get it to lather up and make my hair feel clean, the really damaged parts of my hair felt super dry afterwards until I moisturised it. I did like it and at £1 I would re-purchase. I'm thinking of popping along to my local poundland and picking up the conditioner.

(Sorry about the random water trickling down the bottle!)

ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - Amazing products that saved my hair.

It's currently 1am on a Thursday evening and I've decided to write a blog post..my hair is finally getting in much better condition! *PARTAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY* and it's all because I've finally found products that work!

The first product that has done wonders for my hair is Redken Extreme Anti-Snap. Oh my asghasljglaksjg this stuff is amazing! I seriously swear by it.You basically use it after you've washed and towel dried your hair. It's a leave in protein treatment and it makes my hair so soft and has defiantly saved my hair. I use two pumps in my hair. I've had it for around two months, and theres loads left! I would 100% repurchase

 Now, to moisturise my hair I use the L'Oreal Professionel Intense Repair treatment. A little bit goes a long way with this. Your hair feels super soft afterwards. I would defiantly repurchase, before this I had the one in the pink tub, that was equally as good, I suppose the "intense repair" just drew me in!This one is a rinse out treatment and is to be used as you would use a conditioner.I find it works better when I towel dry my hair a little before applying it. I whack it all on, leave it on for about 5-10 minutes and voila!

Okay, these two, I leave in all day and overnight if I can, castor oil and olive oil. The castor oil is meant to help your hair to grow and thicken. I massage the castor oil into my scalp and my eyebrows and the olive oil I put into a spray bottle and spray it all in the mid-lengths and the ends. My hair does feel "repaired" after this, not silky soft, but alot more healthier. The castor oil is pretty thick, make sure you get 100% castor oil, and make sure it's cold pressed. I've just ran out of Olive oil so I couldn't take a picture, it's just any old one from my chemist. I got this castor oil from Amazon.

So there you have it, these are the products that I feel have really saved my hair. Of course theres other products that I use that are very good also, but these are the ones that I feel have made a HUGE difference and really have saved my hair.

Lifestyle changes, trying to become healthier.

I know I usually talk about makeup, hair, beauty, all of that jazz but beauty comes from within and sometimes in life, we go through difficult phases in our lives and let ourselves go, we let negative things take control of our lives until we hit rock bottom, then we decide to do something about it when we can't take it any longer....For me, one of those things was my eating and fitness, I comfort ate until I could comfort eat no more, then one day, I looked in the mirror. What have I done to myself?
I decided to join a site called my fitness pal, it's an amazing site, a site where you can track and log your food, the calories, the carbs in the food, all that jazz and it's also site where you can make friends to support you and relate to and give you tips and tricks. Seeing your friends on my fitness pal suceed, it is so motivational. I joined slimming world about 4 months ago, I gained half a stone on it, even when sticking religiously so I unfortunately left. That was even more of a setback. I admittedly have been joined to myfitnesspal for quite a while, but to really take on a new lifestyle, no no... not a diet, a lifestyle change you have to mentally be in the right place. Today is that day for me, today is the day I finally feel ready. I've been trying hard but not putting my all into this, eating great but snacking on rubbish. I want to just eat healthy, and if I want that cake, guess what, I'm going to have that cake, just limit myself to not have 5 or 10, just one.I truly believe, once you start eating healthily, changing your diet, working out, you start to become happier and full of life.
I personally want to loose around 70lb,I just need to keep reminding myself that I didn't gain this weight overnight, nor will I loose it overnight. It should take me around 35 weeks, that's about 8 months. No more excuses.

"Take care of your body, it is the only place you have to live"

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Elizabeth Arden -Visible Difference refining moisture cream

So I thought I'd start this off by stating what kind of skin I have, I have Acne and Combination skin, sometimes it will be dry sometimes it will be super oily. So I've got to be really careful of what creams I use on my face as it could break me out. I've been using this for around 3 months now, so I've really tested it out....

And i've got to tell you I am in LOVE this cream. It comes in a glass jar and It's worth every single penny. It glides onto your skin, it doesn't make you feel oily atall, and it just absorbs perfectly. Your skin feels SO soft after using it it's the best feeling ever. The texture of the cream is light and you really don't need much! Mine is still over 3/4 full and I've been using it every day for 3 months, morning and night. I know I am only young but the lines around my eyes? GONE. And dare I say it's helped with my acne too! This was perfect for me when I had oily skin, and when I had dry skin. I apply the cream  before bed, when I wake up and sometimes before I apply makeup. I cannot reccomend this product enough, A* from me.

The cream retails for around £60, but is £45 in Debenhams and I'm sure you can get it much cheaper if you look online.
Let me know if your opinons on it or your favourite creams!




M
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HAIR 101 - Bleaching hair, why does it go orange?

If you're about to or even thinking of bleaching your hair, you should probably read this.
Why does our hair go orange when we bleach it? Let me put this basically, bleach lifts our hair around 3-4 shades. Hair colours are "named" by numbers 1 would be a black , 2 would be a dark brown and so on and 10 is platinum blonde.

           (In another picture i've borrowed off google showing the natural hair colours)
Okay so bleach lifts 3-4 shades right? So say you were going from the third colour in from the right the bleach would lift your hair 3-4 shades which would be fine but because our hair is made up of different pigments of reds, oranges which gives us the gorgeous natural brunette colours we have. When we bleach our hair we are basically stripping everything from our hair, which just leaves us with the pigments our hair is made up of leaving it bright orange.

Another picture borrowed from Google, sorry Google! So the colours on the left is the natural colour, and the colours on the right is the underlying colour of these colours so when you bleach your hair these are the colours that come out, understand?

So your hairs orange, what do you do now? People think to use a toner. I can't stress enough that toner does NOT remove ORANGE shades it removes BRASSY shades. If you don't want to bleach your hair again but you don't want orange hair add a demi- permanent hair colour which basically just stains the hair, you mix the demi-permanent colour with a 10 volume peroxide.
Toners TONE your hair they don't make your hair colour any lighter or any darker.

I hope this helped and wasn't too complicated to understand
M
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HAIR 101 - DIY Blonde highlights and lowlights at home.

Okay, so let me introduce you all to Nicole. Nicole is my bestest chummy everrrrr! Whenever Nicole needs her hair or makeup doing or advice she comes to me, whenever I need advice on clothes I go to her, were just like goddesses really... Let me give you all a little background to Nicoles hair, we've been doing her blonde for a good 2 years now so as you can imagine this was beginning to take its toll on her hair so we had to be super duper careful not to overprocess her hair. Anyways so me and her decided rather than going for the normal bland one colour all over, we were going to attempt to do highlights and lowlights ourselves, at home with no professional qualifications just knowledge i've acquired over time.

What did we use? 2 Sachets of Jerome Russel High Lift Powder Bleach RRP £4 .Volume 30 Peroxide (We used volume 30 because Nicoles hair has already been lightened and was blonde and we just wanted a few highlights, basically lighter bits running through it and to lighten the roots, we would have used a Volume 40 if all of her hair was the same colour as her re-growth but if we used a Volume 40 on her already pre-lightened hair it would have damaged it beyond repair) Also knowing that if we just done highlights Nicoles hair would have been all platinum blonde which wasn't what we wanted so we put some low-lights in to break it up which is basically some darker tones throughout her hair. For the lowlights we used a Garnier Nutrisse Box Dye, I can't remember what colour it was exactly but it was something like a Caramel 6.3 which was around £6 and hair foils, pintail comb.

                

I started off by sectioning Nicoles hair in half, straight down the middle, then split these sections in half sideways, and clipped it up, so now Nicoles hair's in 4 sections (I hope you're following along fine lol!) Concentrating on one strand of hair I sort of weaved the end of my pin-tail comb through the bottom of her hair. Like so...

(Heres a picture I got off of google images, I did smaller thinner pieces of hair on Nicole, same method)

I had the hair foil peice under this peice of hair, then I put the hair i've just weaved with the pintail comb onto the foil and applied the bleach, used a hair dying brush and applied the bleach to this hair, then folded up the foil so that the hair is inside of it and went on to the next section, I would do this bit with the low light (darker colour) and so on and so forth in whatever order I wanted, I sometimes did 3 lowlights to 1 highlight sometimes 3 highlights to one lowlight.. We wanted the hair to be pretty blonde on the top and around the back and sides so that when she tied her hair up it would be blonde so I put more highlights in these areas, it's all about personal preference. I'd say we left the bleach on for an hour maximum, it says to leave on for 60-90 minutes but because of the prelightened hair we were being careful and kept checking on the hair every 20 minutes.

                  (This is Nicoles hair before! I do wish we had some during, she was a foil head!)

 (This was Nicoles hair after, again i'm sorry for the bad picture we were in a rush and wasn't              even thinking of taking photos to put up here at that time and the hair was still wet) 

(This is Nicoles hair around a month and a half after we dyed her hair, as you can see her                                                       regrowth is starting to come through) 

If any of you were wondering, Nicole keeps her blonde locks looking fresh by using the Pro:Voke Touch of silver daily nourishing conditioner, which is available from boots for around £3 and Argan oil, also available from boots around £13

**** DISCLAIMER - I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL I AM ONLY TELLING YOU WHAT I HAVE LEARNT OVER THE YEARS FROM EXPERIENCE AND RESEARCH 

I'm going to do blog posts all about bleaching hair, maintaining blonde, maintaining red, hair disasters like your hair going bright ginger after bleaching, ect!

M
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ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - ESSENSITY BY SCHWARZKOPF REPAIR CONDITIONER FOR DAMAGED HAIR

SCHWARZKOPF REPAIR CONDITIONER FOR DAMAGED HAIR 1000ml. Woaaaaaaaaah okay guys so this bottle of conditioner is seriously mahoooooooosive! Schwarzkopf claims that the Essensity range " offers tailor made products to cater to the needs of coloured hair which is damaged or dry. It repairs, moisturizes and seals the cuticle for superb color retention, reflection and pure softness". The Essensity range by Schwarzkopf is an organic range which are free from 

• Silicones 
• Mineral oil
• Parabens
• Synthetic fragrances
• Sulfate-free

Anyway, i use this as my "daily" conditioner, it's good but not AMAZING. I do really like this conditioner and my hair has improoved since using it. Downside being that the bottle doesn't come with a pump like other salon sized shampoos and conditioners do. I leave it on for at least 3 minutes, it does make my hair feel softer and conditioned and but not AMAZINGLY soft. It has a odd smell, a natural kind of smell which funnily I really like, I suppose that ties in with the "organic" side of the range. The consistency is runny which is one of the downsides to this product, I feel like I really have to lather it on my hair (About 3 handfuls, bare in mind my hair is just at my collar bones, not long at all) to get enough on my hair to make some difference. 

The 1000ml tub of Conditioner retails for around £40, I got mine from TK MAXX for around £20 (TK MAXX is seriously bargain central!)  If you'd like a smaller bottle their around £10 for 200ml. Overall I do like this product but I wouldn't buy again unless it was on some crazy kind of good deal and certainly wouldn't pay £40.

PROs-

• The fact that it is organic and free from a load of rubbish.

CONs-

• Consistency
• Price

ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - AUSSIE MIRACLE HAIR INSURANCE LIGHTWEIGHT CONDITIONING SPRAY

It goes without saying Aussie products are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, my favourite being the 3 minute miracle hair conditioner re constructors, I swear by them. They're affordable, work wonders and smell amazing.

The Aussie Miracle Hair Insurance lightweight conditioning spray for weak, distressed hair promises to protect and detangle "our special formula with a drop of Australian Jojoba seed oil detangles and helps you to protect your hair from everyday wear and tear" is basically a leave-in conditioner. This stuff smells gorgeous, it DOES help to detangle my hair and makes it easier to brush through and does give a little softness but whether it protects my hair, I'm not sure. I also have the Take the heat version of this which protects against heat damage which doesn't smell nowhere near as nice but I feel like it does the job in protecting against heat (Though in my eyes nothing can beat the Tresemme heat protectant spray). I was a little, (only a little!) disappointed in this just because I had such high expectations as all of the other Aussie products are brilliant!

                                   (Sorry for the really dodgy awful quality photos, lol!)

Both sprays by Aussie come in a standard plastic 250ml bottle with a spray pump. The product itself is long lasting, so far i've had mine 2 months or so I use them on a daily basis and it's more than 3/4 full! The sprays are around the £5 mark each, deals for 3 aussie products for £10 are on a lot in places like Asdas, Superdrug, Boots.

PROs-

• Price
• Smell
• Works to an extent

CONs-

• Doesn't live up to other Aussie product standards!

Have you used any Aussie products? What are your favs?
M
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DAVIDOFF COOL WATER WOMAN - EDT REVIEW

DAVIDOFF COOL WATER WOMAN EDT is the PERFECT summer scent. If I was to summarize it in two words it would be fresh and energising, it's just a really lovely fragrance and isn't too heavy. Described as "A fresh aquatic fragrance with energising notes of citrus, waterlily and jasmine". For 30ml the RRP is £28.00 for the 50ml its £36 and for the 100ml it's £48 which I think is pretty reasonable for a scent. Currently the 100ml is on sale in The Perfume shop for £24.99. It's a shame it only comes in EDT as far as i'm aware of anyway as I always get EDP. If you don't know the difference between EDT (Eau de toilette) and EDP (Eau de parfum) the EDP contains a higher concentration of the perfume/scent making it stronger and longer lasting then the EDT.

PROs-

• Perfect for summer!

CONs-

• Doesn't come in a EDP
• Could be longer lasting but that's down to the fact its a EDT I suppose.

ROAD TO HAIR RECOVERY - KERASTASE ELIXIR ULTIME REPLENISHING AND BEAUTIFYING SCENTED OIL FOR DAMAGED HAIR

As I explained in my previous blog all about my hair nightmare (http://rosaliebeautysecrets.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/my-hair-nightmare.html )  I'm going to be writing about products, tips and tricks that have worked for me, products that haven't , what I recommend, new products i'm trying out to get my hair back to healthy!

Anyways, i'm going to tell you all about my experience with KERASTASE ELIXIR ULTIME REPLENISHING AND BEAUTIFYING SCENTED OIL FOR DAMAGED HAIR (The green bottle) selling at a hefty RRP of £35.50 for 125ml I thought this was rather expensive for a hair oil but gave it a shot anyway. Described as a luxury product, "enriched with the Oleo-Complexe and Immortal Moringa extract". The bottle itself is a plastic bottle, with a standard pump, which was rather disappointing for me after paying just over £35 for the product.

                                                 (Sorry for the battered box!)


There are a few ways of using this product

• Mixing it with your conditioner
• Using before blow drying
• As a finish product
• As a touch up product
• Pre-Cleanse

I personally use it as a finish product and before blow drying. I can't lie, it does give a gorgeous shine to my hair and my hair feels and looks 100x healthier. I use 1-2 pumps of oil in my hair and concentrate on the ends and the front (If you've read my hair nightmare post you'll understand why) I wouldn't use this with my conditioner simply because I use a decent shampoo and conditioner and feel like this would just be wasting product? It doesn't make your hair look greasy and really absorbs into the hair giving the perfect shine... It is light enough to be used as a daily product, which I love about it.The smell of this product isn't gorgeous but isn't horrible... I can't describe what it smells like, sort of florally I suppose?  I do really like this product and it has helped my hair alot but I don't know whether i would re-purchase simply for the fact of the price of it and I feel like there are cheaper alternatives. 

PROS-

• quickly absorbed non greasy feel
• gives a gorgeous shine to the hair
• is perfect for daily use

CONS-

• the price
• not too keen on the smell

M

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MY HAIR NIGHTMARE!!!!

A month or two ago I was on a mission, to have red hair again but I wasn't ready to wait around and go about it the slow way, i wanted it NOW... baring in mind I had quite a lot of color build up and had previously bleached the front of my hair to have pink in it in August 2013.

I had brown hair now and I decided to set about going red by bleaching my hair and then putting the red on, BIG BIG BIG MISTAKE. I bleached my hair twice, my hair went bright ginger with the front where it was previously bleached going platinum blonde, it was patchy and I knew I couldn't put the red on this.  So i left it for a day and went out and brought a hair lightener, did an amazing job, I should have used this in the first place it would have done the job (Clairol Born Blonde hair lightener)  by now my hair had lost ALL of it's strength, moisture, everything, it was like elastic when it was wet. 

Now I put the red on, I used LIVE XXL REAL RED it was HORRIBLE it had an orange undertone, feeling how straw like my hair was I kept this for a good two weeks (it felt like a year!) I then dyed my hair with Garnier Nutrisse Ultra Color in Vibrant Red 5.62 , it was a gorgeous color and this dye didn't feel harsh on my hair atall. I decided, I needed to have a trim, my hair was growing out from a style where it was shorter on one side longer on the other.. I made a hair appointment for that weekend, my hairdresser trimmed up my hair and took loads of the damage off, it felt so much healthier. She recommended me products to buy, treatments to use and now i'm on the road to recovery, (I'm going to write a blog posts on what is working for me, what hasn't worked, reviews on loads of different hair products ect) 

As you all know red is a very hard color to keep up with so i'm using CRAZY COLOR to try and keep it decent looking, my regrowth is around 1.5 inches at the moment but i'm leaving it as long as I can to dye it probably when it's around 3 inches of regrowth, i'm thinking to dye it with MAJIROUGE in 6.66. 

My hair now at the front is so damaged it cannot take any dye and fades to a baby pink, my hairdresser has cut some of this hair into a fringe in attempt to get as much of the damage off as possible. I go back every few weeks to get this trimmed just to keep cutting away this damage so eventually it will all be gone. My hair is slowly on the road to recovery, if I could tell you all one thing from my experience it would be to GO EASY ON THE BLEACH, and try and avoid it at ALL costs!

**** I will try get some decent photos of my hair now and during the process and upload them to this!

Have any of you had any nightmare experiences with your hair?

M

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GARNIER body tonic firming lotion - REVIEW

Summertime is quickly coming around, with this product  promising "smoother looking skin from 7 days" and an extra promise of firming skin who wouldn't give this a shot?! I know for one i want my skin to be looking smooth and feeling soft. Garnier claims that the product has "phyto-caffeine" which is known for its stimulating properties, in turn, firming your skin.

The consistency of the product is a gel formula, which is very nice to work with and doesn't leave skin feeling greasy, blends easily and skin feels instantly hydrated.

PROs-

• Gel formula
• The product is quickly absorbed into the skin, you're not left feeling yucky and sticky! (Perfect for when your in a rush and can't wait for your moisturiser to be absorbed and dry!) 
• As soon as I put this on my skin as the back of the bottle claimed my skin felt instantly firmed and hydrated

CONs-

• I can't think of any other than the citrus smell, if you don't like citrus smells this one isn't for you!

**** Garnier body tonic firming lotion sells for £6.99 in Superdrug for 400ml, currently on offer for £4.66!

Thanks for reading, let me know if you try this product out or any similar and how you get on!
M
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