Hair

June 2018 Favorites

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June 2018 FavoritesJune 2018 Favorites
MUFE Rouge Artist Natural N9, $11 / China Glaze Gelaze Diva Bride, $11 /
Hot Tools 1.25 Curling Iron, $40 / Polar Toasted Coconut, $1 / Kenra Dry Thickening Spray, $17

Frankly, it’s amazing that I was able to scrounge up the time to document my June 2018 Favorites in light of:

  • Looking for and dealing with pre-house-purchase stuff
  • Running an annual, weekend-long event mid-month (that destroys me)
  • Crazy work
  • Buying a house (!!!)

…so, I’m giving myself a participation trophy. Details on my June 2018 Favorites after the jump!

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I am a Sucker and Refreshed My Highlights

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Beauty Skeptic's Balayage

Remember earlier this year when I decided to discontinue my highlights?

I thought I was pretty steadfast in that decision. They’re growing out alright, and as it turns out, a nice curling iron can cover a multitude of touchup-absent-related sins. But man, I really enjoyed having light hair.

I happened to see that my salon corrected its wildly crazy price structure. My birthday rolled around. We spent less money in general than I anticipated we would, recently, and I decided, “Treat yoself!”

So I made an appointment and refreshed my highlights! They plied me with margaritas made with lime sherbet (!) and balayaged my hair. They were running a promotion, too, where any service was accompanied with a complimentary brow sugaring. Yeah – sugaring! It is neat.

In case you missed it, this is how I care for my balayage highlights and keep them brass-free.

Sock Bun Maker / Sock Bun Ring

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This legacy post has been given a facelift! Content and opinions are the same; I still use this product!

Ah, the sock bun – the easy, lazy way of pretending you’re a put-together person on days where you roll out of bed twenty minutes late. (Read: Every day of my life.) Or, even when you get up on time and:

  • don’t want your hair in your face
  • don’t want to wear a ponytail
  • can’t do a french twist and…

For being a lazy fix and something that is trendy, I actually think sock buns are cute. Sky, falling, etc. This sock bun ring is similar to the As Seen on TV Product, “Hot Buns,” but I haven’t tried that specific one.

Sock Bun Maker / Sock Bun RingSock Bun Maker

My hair does not naturally come into a nice bun. Layers don’t tend to like that nonsense. Even when my hair is a uniform length, I just can’t create a neat bun on my own. I tried to do a sock bun with an actual sock and failed spectacularly. I sought help, but…not too hard. I can’t for the life of me recall what brand this one is, but I can tell you I picked it up at on a whim TJ Maxx for all of $2. Yeah, not a typo, two dollars. I figured it could either be an excellent $2 investment–or, if not, I paid what a vending machine at work charges for an energy drink!

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Coping with Hard Water

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HotelSpa Hard Water Filter

Have you ever moved to a new home and found that you skin or hair started behaving totally differently from how you understood them to before? I had that happen when I moved from my home state to my current one and for the longest time I couldn’t fathom why.

I ended up completely changing products for my skin and hair since what I was using before just wasn’t cutting it. Eventually, I figured it out what changed:

The Damn Water

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The Verdict on my Balayage Highlights

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I unexpectedly had to reinstall my image editing software, so the graphic for my April Favorites was not done in time for Favorites to go live today. SOON, and thank you for bearing with me. :)

Balayage Prep

It took me a while to work up the nerve to pursue balayage a couple years ago. I loved the first two appointments, but my third was lackluster. The salon, which I enjoy in a general sense, switched up my colorist without notice for my third appointment. She didn’t do a great job, and I’m not okay with just feeling, “okay,” with the results of that kind of beauty spending.

I rescheduled, wrung my hands, and ultimately canceled my most-recent appointment (around St. Patrick’s Day). At the time, I decided I was done spending several hours and over a hundred dollars, twice a year, on it. I know that, compared to most people who color their hair, my commitment was barely that. I resolved to give myself more time to formulate my final verdict on my balayage highlights.

DIY

“Maybe,” I wondered to myself, “I could do this myself.” I’ve done plenty of other things that are generally pro-only. I’m educated, risk-averse, and tend to adhere to process. Down the rabbit hole I went to learn about levels, lightener, developer volume, processing times, etc. I was surprised to learn that it sounds a lot easier than one might expect if one is working with hair that has not been previously colored or otherwise chemically tampered-with.

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How to: Care for Your Hairdryer

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How to Care for Your Hairdryer

Confessions from a Dusty Apartment: That is my hairdryer’s filter and yes, it is dusty and covered in lint. No wonder it was failing to perform!

We clean our homes. We clean our brushes (or at least pretend we do). Frequently, though, styling tools get neglected. Sure, you might be removing excess hair from your brushes as it accumulates, but are you cleaning your hot tools? What about your hairdryer? Yeah – didn’t think so! Fortunately, it is super easy (inexpensive, and quick!) to care for your hairdryer.

Like many people, I left my hairdryer to face neglect. My dryer isn’t a fancy, performance dryer like a Neuro or Speed Freak. Instead, it is a modest (yet delightfully effective) Conair that my husband gifted me a few years ago. I was sad, earlier this year, when its performance started to wane. One day, I noticed that the dryer itself started to seem a bit hotter than usual although the air it was outputting was not. To top that off, the airflow wasn’t as powerful, either. After first giving it a quick blast with a can of compressed air to dislodge some of the fluff, I noticed an immediate improvement in my dryer’s performance. Shockingly, the picture above is after the compressed air. Oops. Then, I set out to do it, “right.”

The Right Way

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