How to: Updo Hairstyles

Here are some tips and ideas for a few of my favourite updo hairstyles!

Ponytail:

I left my hair natural after washing it but brushed some of the curls out, and parted it as normal which for me is fairly central but just slightly to one side. Then i took the front sections on either side, twirled them tightly backwards and clipped behind my ears. To finish, I tied my hair in a ponytail at the base of my head.

If your hair isn't curly then I would loosely roll it with a curling wand and brush it through, also if you need to, add some volume spray and backcomb the hair at the back before tying the ponytail up.

Side Plait:

Again, I left my hair natural but brushed a lot of the curls out of it so it was wavy. Pretty simply, I pulled all the hair to one side and plaited it normally. Then I pulled some hairs loose to sit around my face.

And...if you're hair isn't wavy/curly add some salt spray or texturising moose.

High Ponytail:

I straightened my hair and parted it more to the side than I usually would, pulled it all backwards and upwards to a ponytail and tied it up tightly; making sure that I left some volume in the front. To finish it, I pulled a strand of hair out above my ear et voila!

Grecian Style:

This worked well on my hair when it was natural but not newly washed. I parted it just slightly to one side and twirled each side loosely and pinned it backwards towards the back of my head. Then I used A LOT of bobby pins to get the rest of my hair in place, and rolled all my hair from the bottom up inwards and clipped it all to the base of my head, and twas done!

That's it then!

L'Oreal Paris Wild Ombre Preference Kit REVIEW

I'd been thinking about an ombre dip dye for a little while as I had always liked them and I heard about this product by L'Oreal called the Wild Ombre kit and decided to try it out.
The kit comes in three different shades and the intensity depends on the natural colour of your hair (No1 for light to dark brown, No2 for dark blonde to light brown, and No3 for blonde to dark blonde) it is important to choose the right one for your shade of hair so your dip dye looks fairly natural and well faded. I went for No1 as this is my current hair colour.....a natural dark brown that I dyed red a bit over a year ago and is now a medium-ish browny red.

At first I thought I would have to dye my hair a medium shade of brown before using the dip dye because I was worried it wouldn't work on red hair, or it would look weird or....i might go ginger (dun dun dun!)
But in the end I thought YOLO I would just got for it and recently the tips of my hair have kind of faded into a more brown colour and the red tends to be more prominent further towards my roots so the ombre colour should turn out okay.
So other than that my main worry was that my hair would be irreversibly damaged by this colour because it does contain some lightening agents like Hydrogen Peroxide as well as Ammonia and I was mainly worried that it would damage it so much that it would no longer be naturally curly, but I researched this and as this is only the second time I have permanently dyed my hair the damage shouldn't be too bad.

The dye kit comes with a rectangular brush to apply the colour and it is easy to use. The kit advises starting the colour between the ear and chin but as my hair is quite long, I opted for further down and mine starts just under my shoulder -I really think where you begin brushing it in should be determined on an individual basis by how long your hair actually is.
After brushing in the dye, I added more the tips using my hands to enhance the ombre effect and faded look.

This is the final result and it turned out quite well! It is a noticeable change yet still a natural look that is easy to achieve!

its still good for making moustaches!

As you can see the tips are noticeably lighter than my roots so overall I am pleased with the result from this snazzy dye kit and would definitely recommend it if you are looking into a home dip dye!

Review: Tangle Teezer

After struggling to brush my thick and rather frizzy hair without pulling knotted clumps of it out and due to being recommended it by about 10 different people, I decided to finally buy myslef a Tangle Teezer. I have to admit it has been one of my best hair care purchases ever, and I'm not to sure how I ever survived without it.

I purchased my Tangle Teezer from Boots for £10.99 although you can buy them online easily through Amazon, Ebay etc..

Being born with thick, frizzy and curly-ish hair brushing it has always been a nuisance, I only brush my hair when its wet after I wash it just to get the knots out, if I brush it while dry the curls disappear and it just turns into a puffy and even thicker mess. The change I had  in brushing my hair after purchasing a Tangle Teezer (which has 2 different size "teeth") was amazing.

The biggest difference I found it had with my hair was when brushing my hair wet, instead of clumps of knotty hair being pulled out I found only a few stray hairs were left in the brush.

The pain that I usually came across when trying to pull a brush through ridiculously knotty hair had gone and the Tangle Teezer would easily glide through my hair. It is great!

The only negative point is the design, although it comes in a variety of colours, the shape seems to always be a "half an egg". I find it really awkward to hold and continuously drop it due to the slippery plastic and no clear handle. Another thing is the bristles are fairly short and as my hair is thick doesn't brush through the whole width of my hair, this isn't a big issue though as all I have to do is flip my hair over and brush the bottom, not a big deal.

I would recommend this to anyone who suffers with knotty hair as it literally is a life saver :)

Hair Chalk!

Okay so we used to be SO not into dip dyes or coloured hair but we started to see how cool and indie they are and wanted a non-permanent one-wash type way of doing it where it still looked snazzy!

Some of the chalks

So we looked into it and found these "Kevin Murphy Colour Bugs" which are basically like chalk in round cases and you use it with water to rub into your hair and temporarily colour it. This is the link to the website "http://www.kevinmurphy.com.au/products/newstuff_productdetail.php?id=143"

Louise and her pink dip dye

But because we couldn’t agree on colours and wanted more variety of colours, these would end up too expensive and at the moment Kevin Murphy only sells pink, purple and orange colour bugs. So we searched generally for hair chalk on the internet and found a box of 12 small rectangular ones for £10. Ours were from eBay which have a big selection.

Erin with a blue dip dye (and a snazzy hat)

You use them by spraying water onto your hair from a bottle and rubbing the chalk into your hair. We have tried it with a few coloured streaks on their own which looked good as well as full dip dyes with one colour.
They were fairly quick to do and they looked really snazzy but we did find them kind of awkward to apply and quite messy on your hands but it does wash straight off with water so it was fine.
So one morning we both used the chalk to "dip dye" our hair (Louise's pink and mine blue.) I found that some of the colour came off on my clothes, it did wash out but my clothes were dark; and I think white would probably stain! Although before we went out Louise sprayed her hair with "Label M Protein Spray" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Create-Label-Protein-Spray-250ml/dp/B001W9SIPW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352317703&sr=8-1) over the chalk. The spray is meant to even out porosity and protect hair/hair colour but it seemed to stop the chalk going onto her clothes.
I really liked the dip dye, once it was done it looked jazzy. It did come out within one shampoo, although Louise's hair which is blonde held the colour for a few washes.
Overall, I would say go for it! YOLO :)

Does lemon juice really lighten hair?

Changing hair colour without dye or bleach...? How about lemons?

So many people have a hair colour that often isn’t quite dark enough to be classed as brown however isn’t bright enough to be blonde either, a colour in-between which some people call “dirty blonde” or “mousey brown”. Personally (me being stuck with this boring and dull in between colour from the ages of 9-14) I thought this hair colour was way too plain and non eye catching compared to other peoples hairs I’d seen. I knew I could either go two ways: the first way being to dye my hair darker so it reached a rich chocolate brown shade which I thought looked good on other people , however I wasn’t too sure whether it would suit me and even after trying all these online “hair colour changer” apps and programmes I knew I wouldn't know for sure if it would be too dark until I dyed it, also I’d never dyed my hair and didn't quite trust these “wash out products”, if it looked bad I didn’t want to be stuck with it for weeks or even months on end so I decided darker obviously wasn’t  for me.

My other option would be to go blonder, the first thing that came to my mind was bleach, however so many people had told me it ruins your hair by making it extremely dry and as my hair is already slightly dry this definitely wasn’t going to work for me. Also the thing with bleach is as soon as you use it as well as being left with damaged hair which is almost white and could risk looking tacky, also if you don’t like it the only way of getting your natural hair colour back is to grow it out and this would take years and years something that I didn’t want to risk. So I gave up!

However a few months later I read a magazine article about using lemon juice on hair to make hair a lighter shade of blonde, all you needed was the juice of a lemon mixed with water and the sun, so I waited for a sunny day bought pre squeezed lemon juice and decided to go for it. I put the lemon juice in a bucket and mixed it with water (I diluted it out quite a lot as I only wanted to test and didn’t want to go too light) I dipped my head into the lemon and water making sure all of my hair was covered and let it dry in the sun, it took a while to dry but because it was sunny I got a tan too sooo s’all good. 

*TIP* Pick a hot sunny day like above so you get a tan too! (Me left, Erin right)

The lemon juice made my hair very dry for about a week and I will admit felt horrible on while it was drying, however as soon as I washed it and straightened it it went a lot better and I was very pleased with the results. My hair was only slightly lighter however it meant that when you looked at it, it looked blonde instead of that in-between colour I always hated and it also showed up my natural highlights more.

As you can see I was very happy with it!

 I would so recommend doing this if you had the same problem I had as I now love my hair colour and it hasn’t damaged my hair at all and my hair still even gets blonder in the summer from the sun. However just a quick warning I have no idea about the effect on a darker shade of hair, you could try it but the risk would be it turning ginger instead of the blonde you thought you were going to get, also if you expect to suddenly go from dark brown hair to light blonde it isn’t going to happen, this simply lightens your hair by a shade or two just to give your hair a bit of extra brightness all year round  

Louise x