Fagan's Finds: Hair Products

Showing posts with label Hair Products. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 July 2014

Battle Of High Street Products || Dry Shampoo (Garnier vs. Lee Stafford)

After hearing a lot of hoopla about Garnier's latest 7-in-1 dry shampoo I decided to put it up against the test with another new product, by a well loved hair brand Lee Stafford. To cut the battle between both of these high street products short I'm going to talk about them both individually, with their strengths and weaknesses.

Garnier Ultimate Blends 7-in-1 Dry Shampoo:
When Garnier launched this product I never heard the end of it all over Youtube and on various blogs. I happened to be in Tesco around the launch and it was on offer so I thought I'd give it a go. From the get go, I wasn't impressed with this product compared to a lot of people who were very pro Garnier. Personally I believe the sole purpose of a dry shampoo, is to substitute washing your hair for a day or two, covering up an extra grease and grime. In fact the whole idea behind this dry shampoo, is it performs 7 actions (cleansing,absorbing grease, lightweightness, suppleness, detangling, fragrance all with no residue). Out of all the actions, the fragrance is the most prominent, its a rather sickly vanilla scent which isn't pleasant but I can handle it for a few minutes. The only positives I found was that on freshly washed hair, it does add some body but on greasy hair it has no effect and just leaves your hair feeling even worse.

Lee Stafford Dark For Oily Roots Dry Shampoo:
Now onto a dry shampoo product that I highly recommend and it's the brilliant Lee Stafford. I only very recently picked up this product, compared to the Garnier thats been sitting in my room for a few months now, and I've instantly fell head over heels for it. In the past, whenever I've tried Lee Stafford products I've never been disappointed, and I'd honestly put this dry shampoo above the traditional Batiste range. For a dry shampoo, it's a little pricey at £5.99 but I think it's worth the extra bit of money. A huge difference I found was as the one I chose was specifically for dark hair, it doesn't leave dark pigments on your skin, which was a huge problem with the dark brown Batiste dry shampoo. It does however have the annoying white residue instead, but luckily it rubs/brushes in very evenly and doesn't leave little bits attached to your hair which is a plus! Whatever condition your hair is in, whether it be freshly washed or greasy it takes away all the unnecessary bits and adds in texture and volume, and just looks overall really impressive.

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Hair Transformation || Bleaching

Having had half dark brown and half blonde for a good 5/6 months or so, I decided it was time for a change and I thought why not take the Easter holidays for this opportunity. I originally planned on dying my hair a turquoise shade but after bleaching my hair, I chose against it as the outcome was better than I expected. Below is a before and after shot from two bleaches.

As you can see I've decided to stick with my half one colour and half another combination but, as you'll be able to tell from photo's later on both of my new shades are from the blonde colour family. This makes both colours blend together better, allowing me to have a center parting but are still different to determine two colours. For those of you who don't know me in person, I've previously bleached my hair a good 7 times or so to achieve (and maintain) my original hair style, so my hair is quite used to the damage. Still unsure whether the colour would come out, I purchased 'Schwarzkopf XXL Live Max Blonde 00B' for my first bleach and 'L'Oreal Preference Very Platinum' as the second. I'm unsure whether I bought a dodgy packet but I found there to be not enough hair dye in the Schwarzkopf packet to cover all of my hair, which resulted in having patches of dark brown/black hair in random areas and a big section in the middle of my head.

My hair is just past shoulder length which should not require two boxes to dye, as I've had this hair length and been able to use one box and still have plenty product left. Moving on, I was extremely unhappy with the result and in a moment of madness put the second bleach onto my hair moments after it just drying. I know this is extremely bad for you hair and I was quite wary for any extra hair breakage but luckily my hair kept together very well. I made sure the second bleach was heavily layered onto the darker side of my hair, covered the other half and had a lot more product left afterwards. After the incident with Schwarzkopf, I don't think I will be using their hair dye again for a while, as the L'Oreal dye worked excellently and left my hair soft due to the elixir inside the dye.

I knew I would not achieve an even colour all over within two hair dyes, so when I dried my hair the second time it had dyed all of my darker sections to a lovely copper tone as well as the blonde/platinum shade. I will display pictures below of the final outcome with my hair all down and up. I'm surprised how well the L'Oreal dye worked and defiantly recommend their hair dyes to anybody who is thinking of bleaching their hair from a light brown/dark brown shade. However you must bare in mind all hair reacts different to each hair dye/bleach depending on the hair's colouring history. I hope you found this post interesting, please comment below whether you've had the same experience with Schwarzkopf as I have.