Tutorial | Bouncy "Cloud Nine" Curls

To know your hair, is to love your hair and to love my hair means that you don't mind getting a face full of hair everytime you hug me. If you remember my CloudNine event post in April, then you will already be familiar with Cloud Nine "Know Your Hair, Love Your Hair" Slogan and their campaign to educate women about their hair types and the best ways to protect it during heat styling.

I've been lucky enough to be given their Micro Wand (RRP. £89.95) to recreate their Kelly Rowland Curl Tutorial. Now while I love Kelly Rowland and her hair with a passion, I honestly didn't have the time to do the micro curls that she flawlessly sports but I still did my best to give my 'fro the best curls I could in a 2 hour time limit.

I'm going to do a full review on the wand later on in the week but I just couldn't resist giving you a gif-tutorial with my cute curls *whips hair back and forth* As always if my gif-torial isn't clear or I missed anything out let me know and I might just make a You-tube video tutorial to show you how I did this

Also, you may have already noticed, but it is that time of the year again.... It is the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards!  This is my first time of signing up for these awards so I would be REALLY, REALLY grateful if you could take five minutes to nominate Epiphannie A in the Established Beauty Blog category. I have been loving sharing my zany self all over the beauty blogosphere for the past two years and it would mean the world to me to be nominated for this at least once

Thank you in advance!

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Battling London's Hard Water with AreaH20

When I opened up the mountain of products; and yes it was a mountain, I received at the #Livebloggers event on the 11^th of Sept. I was super ecstatic to see that a AreaH20 Shampoo and Conditioner set had been included in the goodie bag especially after reading a review about the AreaH20 Set on Fleur the Force the day before and thinking I would how well that would work on my hair.

AreaH20 is a brand new haircare brand that tailors its product to the water type of the area you live in. London is a hard water area, but the further north you go the softer water gets. If you aren’t too sure about your water type for your area, there is a cute little map on the back of the packaging to help you out (so as long as you passed GCSE geography you are fine).

I am not going to lie. As Fleur’s review was not the most positive, I was shitting bricks (aka a bit apprehensive) because I have quite dry and fine hair and if all the moisture in my hair is stripped without being replaced my hair breaks like straw . . . .straw that has been left in the hot sun on a metal sheet in the middle of the desert (and yes I am slightly exaggerating with that metaphor but you get the idea) but I actually quite like this shampoo.

After shampooing my hair felt very light and squeaky clean and the conditioner works like a deep conditioning balm (and we all know how much I love my deep conditioning hair products). As I detangle my hair as I wash and condition it, I didn’t have a detangling problem and overall I think this did a good job.

The only thing I didn’t really like about this shampoo & conditioner set is its smell. I prefer my shampoos to smell sugary sweet and this has a very natural and cool scent; which would be great as a skincare fragrance, but I’m just not a huge fan.

Overall I actually think this did a better job on my natural chemically straighten afro hair than on my human hair extensions, but I’m going to wait a few more weeks before I subscribe to that train of thought. I think I would class the shampoo as being in between a good clarifying shampoo and a moisturising shampoo as it doesn't completely nourish hair or strip all the oils from it. I’m going to start using this on my natural hair as a replacement for my normal clarifying shampoo from Concoctions and see how that goes.

What do you think of this shampoo and its formulation to work with your area’s water? Is it another gimmick or something that would actually have a big improvement on your hair?

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Review:- Naked Rescue Repairing Hair Treatment

If you’ve ever met me or had the misfortune of following me on instagram then you’ll happen to know that my hair and I have a very fickle relationship.

In the last 3 or 5 years I have died my hair blonde, then red, then black, then blue , then black, then grey, then blonde which turned ginger and then back to black (and by next week it will be BLUE!!!!) and it the last 4 months I’ve gone from long hair to a short crop (very Miley Cyrus) to curly hair to my infamous kinky afro to the most recent shoulder length style (thank God for whoever discovered extensions). So as you can imagine my hair is not always in the best condition. I find that it can be very dry and if not taken care of and conditioned properly gets frizzy, coarse and breaks

 I was recently introduced to Naked which is a 97% natural skincare/haircare brand that are 100% transparent about what ingredients go into their products. If you check out their website they will tell you that while they use natural extracts like Sunflower, Cocoa Butter and Argan Oil, and have no toxic parabens and petrochemicals, they are not 100% natural because they want to ensure that the products you are buying are preserved properly so you can get your moneys worth without it going off and separating before you’ve finished using it up.

I was sent the Naked Skin’s Repairing Hair Treatment for Frizzy and Damaged Hair, which is an Argan oil, Sunflower Seed Extract and Meadowfoam conditioning treatment that you use after washing your hair and gently comb through before wrapping your hair up in a shower cap and leaving for 3-5 minutes.

Being lazy, stubborn and never reading the directions, I left this in my hair and extensions for a little longer than the 5 minutes that was recommended (*cough cough* 3 hours) and honestly I think that the added time and the 32 degree weather worked to my benefit as my hair is sooo soft.

I'm actually not joking you can stroke it if you want!!

Although I didn't really love the smell when I put it in my hair (smelt a bit like henna) the henna smell wears off once you wash it out and you're left with a lovely shea oil scent in your hair.

I'm going to buy a container on this tomorrow so I can try it out a bit more, if you want to try it out for yourself the satchet costs £1.29 or you can get a 400ml jar for £7.99. They are both available on the Keep Me Inspired Website or Boots.

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