L'Opinion - Gum Hair Conditioning Cream

Or, to give it its full name, Gum Hair Salon Expertise Double Cream Super Rich Californian Walnut Conditioning Cream. Mouthful!

As mentioned in a previous post, I have curly hair. I tried following what's known as the "CG" or "Curly Girl" method, which works on the principle that sulfates like sodium lauryl sulfate are very very bad for curls because they are a harsh detergent, but you need these to wash out the silicones in most conditioners otherwise you end up with stringy, build-uppy hair. Therefore, you can either wash your hair with silicone-free conditioner, requiring a good old scrub at the roots, or use a sulfate-free shampoo and a silicone-free conditioner.

Anyway, about a year ago I tried this for a month and it really worked so I'm sort of giving it another crack this year. I stumbled across this Gum Hair product in Home Bargains for £1.69 and I wanted to share it with you, basically because it's FREAKING AWESOME. 

The texture is quite thick, as it is a cream conditioner like it says on the bottle. The smell is a kind of creamy, nutty scent, which reminds me of luxurious body butter. I found the effects were very similar to a mild deep conditioner, and the smell lingered for a while. 

All in all, a bit of a bargain and completely silicone free!

Je fais du shopping - Matalan stripes

Just a quick flash of these amazing tops from Matalan - they're thick, have little buttons on the shoulders, the perfect length and they're only £6. Bargain.
I got these 2:

They can be found here:

http://www.matalan.co.uk/fcp/product/fashion-to-buy-online/Tops/Boatneck-In-Navy/60108&resultsPerPage=100&attrList=Dept,brand

L'Opinion - Colour B4 review

So 2 weeks ago, I had a haircut. My hair is shoulder length and curly so I had some layers chopped into the back and a trim. I loved it. I then decided to use Schwarzkopf Live Colour XXL in Bitter Sweet Chocolate. It came out black. BLACK. My natural colour is a medium brown and this is what it looked like. 

This stuff is evil, and apparently almost impossible to remove. I was facing having to resign myself to growing this out for about 5 years with a lovely black hair, brown roots effect. And then I discovered reviews online for Colour B4.

http://www.colourb4.com/home

Despite the fact that XXL dye has silicones in it that mean it's impossible to wash out and won't fade, I went and bought a box of this in the extra strength version for £10.

I won't lie - it's messy, stinky (it smells like hair remover or perm solution - very eggy) and a pain in the arse. You apply the stuff, wait an hour, rinse for ages and ages, but if you follow the directions exactly, and I do mean exactly, it shrinks the dye molecules and you can wash them out. This was the result.

Holy shit! It's my natural colour! Just so you can see, this is before I dyed it

Pretty close, right? So I can categorically state that this stuff works, even on XXL dyes. Ta da!
I wouldn't suggest doing it all the time as I've needed to use a really good deep conditioner a few times, just to get my hair back to normal, but it's great for those times you wish you could turn the clock back and put the dye box back on the shelf in Boots.

I have pledged to leave the damn hair dye alone from now on. Dark hair does not yellow-toned skin suit, my friend.

L'intro

Well, hello world.

I've been blogging since I was 16 but it's now 11 years later and I find myself married, living in Wiltshire of all places, and working in fashion. I don't really know yet exactly what I want to talk about but... I used to write a lot and I need to get the old creative juices flowing I think. So it'll probably be about shoes, makeup, TV, my time at university, coffee, my rats, food, weight stress, hair stress, travel and fashion. Yep. It will not be about my job although I might mention it from time to time. You never know. I do have to go there 5 days a week after all and I love it, too.