About DIYing... your hair!
(This post was born from two sources--your emails and questions, as well as a product I had a chance to review. Just FYI!)
I get emails from some of you sometimes asking how I do my hair. I don't have much wisdom to pass on, sorry. I prefer to spend about three minutes per day on my hair. So, sometimes six minutes and then I do nothing to it the next day. You get the idea.
My hair is naturally slightly curly, and is also pretty thick/frizzy. So normally I just add a little curl to it and it looks like this.
Sometimes I try a little less and it goes even crazier, like this.
And sometimes, when I get really wild, I put actual effort into it and I can straighten it, so it looks like this.
And other times, I give up and put it up in a big top bun, which can be really fun and glam but doesn't go with every outfit. And I don't always want it up, so this isn't as common.
I should also say that I discovered hair tools pretty late in the game, and have blow-dried my hair exactly once in my lifetime. Well, I tried blow-drying it, but it didn't get dry fast enough so I gave up. This stuff is thick, I tell you! And I'm impatient.
I started playing around with curling my hair and straightening it in college (I went to a small high school. We were not glam. We were alternative art kids and didn't pick up on some of the trends as fast as the cool kids at a big school!). I began to collect hair tools like curling irons in different barrel sizes, a straightener, etc., but had very little budget and so not one single one of those pieces cost more than $9.99. So you can imagine what fantastic quality they were!
I never upgraded, really, until this year. I got a nice curling iron before my wedding (my talented friend did my hair), and then, lucky me, Hana Air offered me one of their flat irons to try out!! Now, until this point I had been using my $10 Ross straightener, which got caught on my hair here and there and pulled, and was really wide rather than the 1.5" or so wide kinds, so I couldn't really do much close to my head... but, it straightened, if slowly and sort of painfully. I think it had like, a few temperature settings.
So I felt quite pampered when Hana sent me their super nice ceramic flat iron to review!
Lots of great stuff that came with the straightener--serum, brush, several cases. My favorite accessory has got to be the hot mat. See it there, rolled up in the righthand corner, with the white ribbon around it? What a brilliant idea, right??! A hot mat to put on your counter so you don't burn anything or hurt the iron. Totally useful.
Anyway, I tried out the Hana straightener and, I must say, it is vastly better than my old one! (Duh!!) It didn't get caught on my hair anywhere, and it heated up super fast and there were plenty of temp settings to choose from. I followed the guide in the pamphlet for my type of hair and started at the lowest temp it thought would work--worked great, and straightened so fast! It seriously took me not even 10 minutes. And I have a lot of hair!
Wanna see??
The results...
(I should say that I got a haircut like, less than 24 hours after taking these pictures, so if you see scraggliness, it's just my hair being ready for a trim.)
I got compliments on my straight hair from my friend I used to work with (she's seen my hair all kinds of ways, including straightened with the old straightener) and my mom, who is always a big fan of my hair curly. So I guess the nicer tools gave me a nicer straightness!
Feeling very lucky to have such a nice flat iron at my disposal! =)
P.S. I'm always looking for easy-to-follow hair tutorials for everyday hairstyles, so if you have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!