Hair

I Pumice to Use Redken Nature’s Rescue Refining Sea Polish More Often

March 2nd, 2011 by Karen 28 Comments

redken natures rescue sea polish

No, that’s not hot mustard up there, but it’s something no less exhilarating. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it before (this was the last thing that prompted me to say that). It’s an exfoliator…FOR HAIR!

I really expected the new Redken Nature’s Rescue Refining Sea Polish ($19 for a 3.4-oz. tube) to be a gimmick, but it turned out to be kind of brilliant instead. I mean, we already exfoliate our face, bod and our gnarly @ss feet (gurl, don’t make me bust out my heel buffer/parmesan cheese grater on you, and don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about 🙂 ), so why stop with our hair?

To use, just apply the non-foaming Sea Polish paste after shampooing but before conditioning, massaging it gently into your hair section by section. The product contains exfoliating grains of pumice which, when massaged into the hair, scrub away any built-up hair products, grit and grime your shampoo may have missed, while also refining and polishing.

redken natures rescue sea polish

I the scent too. This is weird, but it reminds me of lemon rinds spritzed with Bobbi Brown’s Beach perfume.
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Fight for Your Right to Party with Big, Bouncy Party Curls

February 28th, 2011 by Karen 74 Comments

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Big, bouncy curls

True story: I used to run around the house singing (rapping?) the Beastie Boys’ Fight for Your Right to Party at the top of my lungs when it came out back in 1986, and it totally threw my parents for a loop. Bless their hearts, they were first generation Americans, and they didn’t always grasp the subtleties of pop culture or understand my appreciation for things like rap.

“You gotta fight for your right to party.”
— Beastie Boys

Never mind that I was only 11 at the time. My mum literally thought that I was ready to fight for my right to party, and she reacted like any responsible parent would. She banned me from dating until 25 and said “No parties until you finish medical school at the top of your class!”

That plan didn’t last long, of course. I went on my first date at 14 and never quite made it to med school (I can’t stand the sight of blood). As for the partying, well, I did my share in college, but not enough to turn me into a cautionary tale.
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Ion Color Defense Shampoo and Conditioner: Team Ion Could Use Some Help with Their Hair Color Defense

February 26th, 2011 by Karen 10 Comments

Written by Sam

Makeup artist and blogger Sam has been keeping an Ion his hair since trying this hair care duo. Find out if they’re the solution to your color-treated troubles in today’s guest post.

Why can’t beauty brands just be good or bad? Because being both just makes things more complicated. They do it all the time. A company will go and make something fantastic, and then turn around and make something god-awful (without telling me first). It must be how beauty company execs have their fun, by tricking unassuming beauty buyers into becoming faithful to their brand before throwing them for a loop and causing them to call into question their entire belief system… Not funny, guys. Rude.

Now, I’ve used Ion products before and have loved the ones I’ve tried. Their Clarifying Shampoo (Sally Beauty, $5.99 for a 12-oz. bottle) has its own spot on my shower shelf; I use it habitually every Friday, so it wasn’t so much a question of whether to buy their Color Defense shampoo and conditioner (Sally Beauty, $5.99 each for a 12-oz. bottle) as it was a question of which size bottles to buy (I settled on the 33.8-oz. ones for $7.99 each).

At the register, the salesgirl didn’t comment on the products as she manually entered them into the computer (for some reason, their product scanner always seems to be broken), and I found her silence unsettling. Not unsettling enough to change my mind, however, so I picked up the goodies and left the store with my heavy bag.

After having a quick snack at home (what…? Adults have snack time too), I hopped into the shower and popped open the giant shampoo bottle’s cap. First, I wish it had come with a pump, as holding a 33.8 oz. bottle of shampoo upside down in the shower with one hand is a rather risky endeavor (yes, I dropped it). What came out of the bottle was an extremely gelatinous, coral-colored goop. I’m not a naturally clumsy person, but this product just doesn’t seem to want to stay in my hands. First, dropping the bottle, and then the actual shampoo blob slipped out from between my palms twice as I worked to emulsify it. Even with rather wet hands, the stuff just didn’t seem to want to leave its singular form. After a third, careful attempt, I finally worked enough into a mild lather and massaged it through my hair.

It felt fine. Just… fine. I wasn’t expecting much texturally, as Ion tends to be a no-frills company, but I certainly would have enjoyed slightly more lather (even from a color-protecting shampoo), or a bit more slip, but I’m not one to complain if something does its job. After letting it sit for a minute or so, I rinsed it out, but my hair definitely didn’t feel quite clean.
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This Summer, Don’t Let the Heat Put a Stop to Your Hot Hair Color

February 24th, 2011 by Karen 30 Comments

This series is powered by Pantene.

The heat is on! Okay, not really. It’s been epically cold here in the Bay Area, but that’s not stopping me from looking forward to summer. A few days ago the weather dude said it might even get cold enough to snow here this week, and when you’re a California weather wimp like me, that’s all the motivation you need to indulge in a bout of summery escapist daydreaming. Never mind the fact that it’s barely 50 degrees outside. If I pretend hard enough, it’ll seem like summer. 🙂

What I wouldn’t give for shorts and flip-flop weather right now… Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could drop everything, change our plans and take an immediate tropical vacation today? I’d be happy to share my sunscreen with you (gotta protect that skin, yo!) and, I should warn you, I will nag you about wearing your sunglasses. I’ve already got a bag packed and ready to go with our sunny day hair essentials — a tube of leave-in conditioner and sun protectant spray. And don’t make me bug you about wearing that hat of yours, young lady, especially if you’ve got highlights/color.

My hair and I learned that lesson the hard way on one of our first trips to visit El Hub’s family in Hawaii. I spent most of the time in the water, either surfing in the ocean or swimming in the pool, and by the end of the trip, the golden highlights I’d gotten a few weeks earlier looked lackluster, brassy and basically bad. My mane looked like straight up haaay!

When I got back to the Bay Area, my stylist gave me a good dose of tough hair love as well as some tips for the future to protect my hair color in the heat.

First, she suggested spritzing hair with a sun protectant spray before heading outside, and wearing hats whenever possible. Next, before swimming in either a pool or the ocean, she recommended wetting hair thoroughly with fresh water to let the strands absorb as much clean H2O as possible, as saltwater and chlorinated water can mess with hair color, too.
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How Do You Feel about Changing Your Hair Color?

February 21st, 2011 by Karen 100 Comments

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Why I Color My Hair

I’ve changed my hair color so many times over the years that I’m not even sure what my natural hair color is anymore (I just know it contains some gray). Yes, despite all the many things I fear about our world — underground caverns, the coming zombie apocalypse, submarines, and earthworms come to mind — I’m downright courageous when it comes to the color of my coif.

Senior year in college, I wore it mahogany brown with a single blonde streak in the bangs, which I kept long, swept to the side and always, ALWAYS tucked behind my left ear. After graduation, hoping it would make me look older and more responsible, I trekked up and down San Francisco’s steep hills with long, jet black hair flowing behind me. A few years later, after a gut-wrenching breakup, I entered my red phase, hacking my hair into a short bob and adding angry vermillion streaks. And when I felt I’d finally moved on, so did my hair, which morphed into an optimistic fawn brown with sunny golden streaks.
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I’m Adding Lush R&B to My List of Greatest Hair Hits

February 15th, 2011 by Karen 43 Comments

LUSH R&B Revive & Balance Hair Moisturizer

Lush R&B Revive & Balance Hair Moisturizer ($18.95) is so damn good that whenever I use it, I burst into song.

Whoever invented Lush R&B, homeboy was such a whiz!
Now my waves, soft and shiny, hardly ever frizz.
It hydrates my hair while it soothes my scalp.
(It really has been a great deal of help.)
With a touch of hold, I’m totally sold
On Lush R&B!

Okay, so maybe this won’t be my year to win a Grammy, but really, this stuff rocks. I’ve been using it lately to get what I’ve referred to on the blog as “brunch hair” and “vacation hair” — touchable, cooperative hair with a bit of hold and definition.

Lush markets R&B as a hair moisturizer, a kind of rich, hydrating leave-in conditioner designed for dry scalps and hair. It’s a frizz-smoothing, shine-enhancing hair hero recommended for hair types that often benefit from extra hydration, and they mention African American, curly, wavy and generally dry hair.

With organic avocado and extra virgin coconut oil for moisture, soothing oat milk, and jojoba oil for shine, it addresses many of the issues I have with my hair.

It also addresses one of the biggest issues Tabs has with many hair products by not containing any animal products at all. 🙂

After shampooing, conditioning and towel drying my hair, I take an amount about the size of a penny into my hand. The product’s a thick, rich balm, and I’ve found that a little goes a really long way. Rubbing both hands together warms it up, thins it out and seems to make it more pliable and easier to work with.

Working in sections, I coat my hair with it, sliding each section between my palms from root to end. I also gently scrunch the ends to enhance my waves, and let my hair air dry when I’m done.

Once it dries, my hair has a look like my favorite pair of broken-in jeans. It’s shiny, with lightly defined waves that feel soft to the touch. It’s a casual look, unconstructed and completely unfussy. Seriously, if a cute boy (let’s call him El Hub) were to ask me out on a picnic date in the park, this is the hair look I’d want.

LUSH R&B Revive & Balance Hair Moisturizer packaging
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A Curly Girl’s Tale: How I Grew to Love My Hair

February 14th, 2011 by Karen 82 Comments

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A Curly Girl’s Tale: How I Grew to Love My Hair

Things were all kittens and ice cream until I turned 12. To quote my sixth grade diary, 12 was “a year of devastating change.”

The first event occurred that fall, when my best friend, who happened to be my next door neighbor and partner in crime since I was four, moved away to a mysterious place called “The Valley.”

The second event struck that winter, when the unthinkable happened: puberty. I’ll never forget the traumatic trip with Mom to J.C. Penney to buy my first bra.

Then, that summer, puberty took away my sleek, straight hair and replaced it with a big, frizzy mess.

And so began my rocky relationship with curly hair…

I guess technically my hair is more wavy than curly, but back then all I saw was a head of hair that on its best days resembled a lion’s mane.

As luck would have it, that look was in at the time. It was the ’80s, when curls and the spiral perm reigned supreme. Curly girls roamed the hallways at school. They moved in dense packs of frizzy hair, acid-washed denim jackets and Liz Claiborne purses.

It was just sheer dumb luck that my naturally curly hair happened to be “in” because I was shy and self-conscious at the time. Fitting in mattered above all else.

Truth be told, I had no idea how to handle my unruly waves. This was well before I discovered wide-tooth combs and conditioner washing, yet my hair and I eventually reached a sort of detente that would last for several years. I hadn’t grown to love it yet, but I didn’t hate it anymore either. Nope, I saved that for the ’90s.

By the time I’d gone to college, straight hair was all the rage again. I was back to hating my waves and envying the girls with their lovely linear locks.

The several bad haircuts that followed didn’t help. There was the poufy triangle cut that left me looking like a Bichon Frise, or the cut in which the left side of my hair was a full inch shorter than the right, or the razor-cut from hell (a frizzy nightmare!).

During those dark years, I spent hours in bathrooms with blow dryers and brushes, hopping from one straightening serum to the next to fry my hair into stick-straight submission.
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Have You Haired About Coconut Oil?

February 5th, 2011 by Karen 50 Comments

Written by Robin

Sometimes you feel like a nut (and sometimes you don’t). Today rockin’ Robin of Beautyburg feels like a coconut, and we’re about to find out why in today’s guest post.

Have You Haired About Coconut Oil?

There’s nothing my dry, over-stylized, heat tool-abused hair loves more than super rich, emollient hair products. The only thing it might love more are products that are also natural and good for me (oh, and maybe getting all of the above at low cost).

The product behind my hair mask secret embodies all of the above, and I’m about to let you in on it! Cold compressed coconut oil is the way I keep my hair shiny, soft and hydrated, and not only is it natural and effective, but it’s also cheap.

If you haven’t heard of coconut oil, or maybe heard of it referred to in a different way (the first thing that comes to mind when I think “coconut oil” is frying in the sun with Hawaiian Tropic and pretending the SPF 2 is doing something), THIS coconut oil is totally different.

Organic Coconut Oil

First, it’s a white solid. Second, it’s food! It’s the same kind of coconut oil people cook with (vegans will be familiar with it), and you can find jars of cold compressed coconut oil at your local supermarket or natural food store (where prices range from $6-9).

Coconut oil is very high in cholesterol and saturated fats, but you don’t have to eat it to reap its benefits. You can apply it to your hair instead.

You don’t have to buy a “virgin” variety either. The FDA doesn’t set standards for “virgin” coconut oil as it does for olive. Also, the food grade product isn’t heavily scented, so you don’t have to worry about the scent if you aren’t a fan of heady perfumes.

Organic Coconut Oil

To use it, pre-wash, and then scoop anywhere from 1-3 tablespoons from the jar, depending on the length of your hair. Next, rub the dollop between the palms of your hands (NOTE: The solid will quickly become a clear liquid from the friction).

My hair BEFORE coconut oil…

Organic Coconut Oil

Organic Coconut Oil
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