Hair

How To Get Big, Bouncy Curls

January 8th, 2014 by Karen 17 Comments

I’ve gotten a few requests for a video on the curly hairstyle I wear a lot in pics, so here goes.

Best (or at least my favorite) part about this style is that it’s easy. All you really need is a curling iron and some hairspray (and a sense of adventure!).

OOH! And get this: after you curl your hair, you can probably keep the same style for a couple (or few) days if you don’t wash your mop.

It’s the ultimate in lazy girl hairstyling. 🙂

Products mentioned in the video

Thank you for watching! Hope you’re having a great night.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. That’s NARS Satin Lip Pencil in Yu on my lips, in case you were wondering.

How To Make Your Hair Color Last Longer

December 19th, 2013 by Karen 7 Comments

Ah, fresh roots… Love that feeling. 🙂

I’m still basking in the afterglow of my trip to the salon on Monday and reveling in my new (darker) hair color.

Getting my hair colored is one of my favorite things to do. Almost everyone in my family goes gray early (and I’m not ready for that yet), and I’m also pretty adventurous with my hair. Color for me is a fun way to change things up without having to make a permanent commitment.

Plus, I get to hang out with Alis, a fabulous stylist at A Line Salon in Corte Madera, and a buddy of mine. Alis has been cutting and coloring my hair for several years now, she always gives me good advice. In this video she gives a few tips for things you can do to keep your hair color looking fresh well after you leave the salon.

If you live in the Bay Area, I can’t recommend Alis enough. She’s well worth a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge. Not only is she super nice, but homegirl can seriously cut and color some hair! Without her, I’d have Medusa snakes on top of my head, I kid you not.

Parking at A Line’s really easy, too, and once your hurr is did, you can strut up the street with your new do and celebrate with a slice of pizza at Stefano’s.

Alis books up pretty quickly, so you’ll want to make an appointment at least three weeks in advance — sometimes a month, depending on the season (like right now she’s extra busy). You can reach her through the links below…

Alis on Instagram
A Line Salon (go to the section marked “Stylists” and then to “Alis Dokakis” for more info)
A Line on Yelp
A Line on Facebook

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. I decided to take sort of an admin day today to catch up on a few things. You know how it is — Christmas stops for no woman, and I’m running pretty far behind on my shopping.

I’m proceeding to test the MAC Magnetic Nude collection products while I go about my day and run my errands, and I’ll be posting those reviews soon (but probably not today).

Hope you’re having a good one so far. Are you completely done with all your Christmas shopping?

Today I Got Naked at the Mall and Had My Favorite Salad in the World

December 12th, 2013 by Karen 16 Comments

The New Herbal Essences Naked Collection…

What’s shakin’, bacon? How’s it going this afternoon?

Yeah…I’ve been waiting all afternoon to use that phrase up there in the title of this post. 🙂 “Today I got naked at the mall and had my favorite salad in the world.” (Explanation to follow.)

Ah, the joy of being easily amused…

Over lunch today I stopped by the mall to do some Christmas shopping and saw the most awesomely rand-o cat lady gift at Urban Outfitters.

Note the use of the word “literally” in the name.

From the packaging: “will not fit chunky kitties.” Sorry, Tabs!

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Ouidad Wave Create Texture Taffy Tames Big Hair To Bring Out Beachy Waves

August 13th, 2013 by Karen 13 Comments

Wearing Ouidad’s Texture Taffy ($23) in mah hair!

Scanning the break for beachy waves? If your mane/mop naturally has a lot of volume to it (read: when left to its own devices, it’s big and voluminous enough to exert its own gravitational pull), then Ouidad’s Wave Create Texture Taffy ($23) can tame that untapped volume and turn it into well-behaved waves.

A new flexible styling cream, it coaxes beachy waves out of straight or wavy hair. I’ve been using it for the past few days to tame my tresses and create full-on beachy waves.

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Have You Ever Had a Perm?

August 9th, 2013 by Karen 33 Comments

Baby Karen had stick-straight hair back in the day…

I have naturally wavy hair now, but I didn’t always. Up until my tweens, my coif was a curtain of stick-straight Asian girl hair.

In all of my childhood pics, I’m rockin’ the same wanna-be Dorothy Hammel hair…except for the year when my grandma went to beauty school at the community college.

That fall she learned how to do perms.

I don’t recall exactly how it went down or whether I protested, but somehow Granny talked my mom into giving both of us perms.

Oh, boy…

I was really young at the time (I think I’d just turned four), so I don’t remember it well, but I do know that in all the Thanksgiving and Christmas pics I have from that year, my mom and I have the same short bowl-cut perm with curls that look a little too tight.

And my mom looks pretty cranky, LOL!

Years later in high school, when spiral perms were all the rage, my best friends Jen and Cindy had them, and I was the only one of us who didn’t.

It was a good time to have wavy hair. Those were the days… Haha! Of course, that all changed in the mid-’90s when straight hair came back with a vengeance, but that’s another story for another time. 🙂

How about you, love? Have you ever had a perm, and how did it turn out? Did you like it enough to do it again? Please share your perm adventures in the comments.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

5 Things I’ve Been Loving Lately, Beauty and Otherwise

August 6th, 2013 by Karen 19 Comments

I heart all five of these bad boys!

1. Ouidad Wave Create Sea Spray ($23)

Have you ever had coconut Lifesavers before? I don’t know if they still are, but they used to be in the Tropical fruit packs.

Dang, I sure loved those things…

I’d always eat the other flavors first and save the coconuts for last, and then devour them all one after another like Cookie Monster eats Chips Ahoys! until I reached a state of sugar-fueled ecstasy.

I haven’t had one in years, which makes me a little sad because I looked them up online today, and apparently the Tropical Lifesavers are going the way of the dinosaurs… (*tears*)

Oh, well. At least I’ll still have Ouidad’s new Wave Create Sea Spray. Stuff smells EXACTLY like coconut-flavored Tropical Lifesavers.

And it’s not just the scent I like. When I spray it on my wavy hair while it’s wet and let my hair air dry, I get perfectly tousled tresses, well-defined waves and lots of great volume — a little messy, but not too messy, which I like. None of that annoying crunchy business, either, you sometimes get with other beach wave sprays, blech! And my hair still looks pretty good on the second day.

Ouidad Wave Create Sea Spray — What it contains

The 6.4-ounce bottle sells for $23 at Ulta stores and ouidad.com.

2. Lollia At Last White Petals & Rice Flower Handcreme ($25 for a 4-ounce tube)

This has been my favorite hand cream for a while because of the majorly moisturizing shea butter formula and the powdery rice flower, mimosa and magnolia scent.

I love the refreshing fragrance, so I like that it lingers throughout the day, and because the cream absorbs quickly into my skin, my fingers don’t feel slimy or greasy…so I can keep typing away at Tabs’ memoirs without skipping a beat. 🙂

I keep the big, cheerful 4-ounce tube at my desk right where I’m bound to see it, and it can remind me to moisturize during the day.

It’s available now at Neiman Marcus and neimanmarcus.com.

There’s also a smaller 0.33-ounce tiny tube for $7.50.

3. Mr. Bob Harris

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Have You Ever Cut Your Own Hair?

June 18th, 2013 by Karen 23 Comments

Note to the young people of the world! You probably don’t want to cut your own hair and then take pics… (me, circa 1990)

Yes, I have cut my own hair, and yes, it was disastrous.

During the darkest period of my hair bear days, a friend told me that she cut her own bangs, and she made it sound really, really easy. “Just cut different pieces unevenly from your bangs. Do it! You’ll love it!”

Um…

The reason for the uneven pieces was that when you pumped up your hair with hairspray, a curling iron and a blow dryer to get it to stand up, the choppiness would better recreate the appearance of a wall of hair cresting like a huge wave.

The higher, the better, of course. 🙂

I grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and went to town, cutting random pieces of different lengths from my bangs. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, just chop, chop, chop.

By the time I finished, my head looked awful, because my hair was also very wavy at the time, and when you cut wavy hair without any regard for the curl pattern, you end up with a hot mess.

Things got a little better when I pumped it up, which disguised the choppiness somewhat, and I really did end up with something resembling the look I wanted of a wave cresting on my head.

I don’t know… It was still pretty terrible, especially when I’d let it air dry and do it’s own thing. I looked like a reject from The Muppet Show.

How about you? Have you ever cut your own hair?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Making Waves This Summer: AG Hair Cosmetics Texture Spray Tousles Tresses and Brings Out the Beach Babe Waves I Crave

June 7th, 2013 by Karen 15 Comments

Dear AG Hair Cosmetics Texture Spray,

Hi. You probably don’t know me, but I know you.

Wait — that made me sound like a stalker, didn’t it?

Sorry! 🙂 I assure you, I am not a stalker. I mean, I love you, and I’ve been thinking about you all week long, but I am not a stalker.

Really.

I just wanted to drop you a line to say, “thanks.”

Thanks to you, my hair’s been swell, and I really appreciate it.

We’re a regular power couple, you and I. With you by my side, my mane’s been caught up in a tide of tousled, beachy waves, curling, coiling and cresting ever-so awesomely.

Instead of feeling (and looking) like a land-locked lass who toils in front of a computer screen all day, I feel (and look) like a total surfer girl. Carefree with curls.

Like I said, thanks. You’re the best.

Sincerely,

Karen

Um…this stuff’s pretty great.

A lightweight, medium-hold aerosol styling spray designed for all hair types, it coaxes out waves, increases volume and shine, fights frizz and makes color last longer by protecting your hair from UVA and UVB rays.

Just spray on dry hair and scrunch. That’s it.

Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch…

I’ve tried a bunch of different styling sprays over the years to get that tousled, beachy hair I like, and this one’s cream of the crop.

A lot of these sprays leave me with Edward Scissorhands hair, but not this one. With this one I get stylish runway messy.

The lightweight spray doesn’t weigh down my hair, either. It leaves it soft with a beachy clean scent, which I like.

Other than the rather high $24 price, the biggest downside I see is how quickly I’ll go through the bottle. I’m noticing it already. I probably don’t need to use as much as I do, but I’m a product of the hair bear 1980s, when one would often go through an entire can of Aqua Net in a single day.

Not kidding.

I have to consciously control my trigger finger, using short, controlled bursts; otherwise, I’m apt to envelop myself in a cloud the size of Texas.

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