Extensions: Before & After

In my last post I showed my updated hair color, this is how my blonde extensions match with them. They are still a bit lighter than my hair, but I also hope to lighten my hair in the next few months.

I just used a ton of dry shampoo and brushed it through, so my hair is mega fluffy!

Before:

 After:

I don't intensionally wear the same shirt in nearly every picture I post on here. Target's men's shirt are insanely soft and comfy!

Color Correction + Haircut

It was about a month after my last hair dying post that I went to a different hairstylist to change my hair. I didn't really have any complaints about my original girl, but when I went to a different salon for an Olaplex treatment, the stylist was pointing out all of this spotty dying and banding. This session had taken place less than a week after I had my hair dyed, and the blonde that my hair was dyed was already turning a strange yellow.

She did a new Olaplex treatment on my hair and spent a good amount of time recoloring my base color, highlighting the blonde higher into the hair, and toning down my insanely light ends. In addition to this she gave me the best haircut of my life. I went in not planning on getting a haircut (despite it being damaged) because I'm one of those people who would rather have long hair than healthy hair. BUT she convinced me that a blunt cut would look great on me, and I trust her.

This is the before & after. The before was the last picture she had of my hair after she Olaplex'd it the month before, and the after. She is a miracle worker.

Extensions:Before & After

Since I've last posted about my hair color, I've lightened it. I want to be more blonde and less brunette, but have my natural brown by the roots so I don't have to maintain the color like crazy. ANYWAY I got some nice extensions from abhair.com!

Here I am before:

^ my hair is shoulder length

With extensions:

Especially with the weird blondish color that my hair is on the bottom, it wasn't easy to pick the extension color. I know they have swatches you can buy to compare to your hair, but I didn't want to buy them, wait a week for them to ship, THEN buy the extensions. I'm really not a patient person. People post reviews and videos of themselves putting in the extensions, and a link is posted of the ones they are using. I decided on these ones based on a person's review, where they had the same hair color [from what i could tell] as me. It worked out!

Making Hair Extensions Less Shiny

I wish my hair was always silky and shiny, but it isn't. Whenever I have bought hair extensions, whether they be synthetic or real, they are very glossy and shiny making them look noticeably different than the texture and look of my hair.

For example, the new hair extensions I just bought:

I also suggest brushing them out before putting them in. These look very stringy, but after brushing them out they are perfect!

OK, so the easiest way to get the extensions to be less shiny is easy: baby powder!

All you need to do is take a brush, sprinkle a good amount of baby powder on it, and brush it through your extensions. It doesn't make them white, it doesn't make them powdery and cakey, just brush it a few times through.

After doing all the hair, it looks like:

Big difference! Brushing the hair out alone makes a world of difference, but using baby powder will take the fake shiny away, but still make the hair realistically shiny.

(These are real hair extensions btw)

Olaplex

If you don't know about Olaplaex, you need to research it. It is a strengthening hair treatment that does a lot to actually heal your hair. I think that pictures of what the treatment does is more effective then me describing it, SO here is the before and after of my hair. I got this done yesterday:

I didn't get my hair colored from the before to after, I did get a trim which made my hair look longer. I can't describe how amazing my hair smells and feels! And the treatment did change the color of my hair and lightened it a tad, or made it appear that way.

Before & After Makeup of the Day

(Still haven't found an effing concealer that'll fully hide the mother of all zits on my forehead)

Sports Research Biotin

I have heard good things about biotin in the past, my friends who are growing out their hair swear by it. I've had this weird phenomenon with my hair for the past year or two, where it grows, but the layers don't seem to. I mostly wear my hair curly, so it isn't really noticeable, but when I straighten my hair it is obvious and looks pretty terrible to have these layers at an awkward length.

I looked into different types of biotin and came across the brand 'Sports Research' on Amazon. It is extremely high rated in general, and especially for their high potency biotin product. Reading through the reviews, many people also posted pictures which is what sealed the deal for me.

So 3 days later I got them in the mail and immediately started taking them, 2 pills a day.

The pills are small and soft. No aftertaste, no real smell.

Before taking the pills: 

I'm making sure my hair will be the same for these pictures. I figured that since the issues can be seen better when it is straight, that I'll have it that way for these pictures. When my hair was straight, the ends were thinner than the top, my weird layers gave my hair an odd shape and I just plain hated it.

After 1 week:

After 1 week alone I knew I was in love with this product. LOOK HOW DIFFERENT MY HAIR IS!! The biggest change is the layers, which really miraculously grew. My hair overall has much more volume, especially the ends which were very thin before.

After 2 weeks:

I just finished week 2. At this point I have noticed growth in the overall length and my hair has become much thicker than it was.

I have been good about consistently taking these pills twice a day everyday for a little over 2 weeks now. I honestly believe that they are working as they claim to, and I think it shows in the pictures. Most noticeably when comparing them to the before picture.

I will continue to take pictures every week, and I'll post the results :]

Letting the Professionals Do Their Job!

I haven't posted in many months, and I have done a lot to my hair in that time. Mostly touching up my roots to keep them black, but more recently I used color oops in an attempt to either have my hair just back to brown, or go back to having ombre hair.

I'm a big fan of Color Oops. It works reaaaaallly well. But it has its limits. I've frequently used Color Oops, dyed my hair a different color, changed my mind, re-Color Oopsed, over and over again. The very first time I used the product [I posted the results on here], I'd been dying my hair black for YEARS and after using the product it 100% went back to my natural brown color. No brassiness or orange tones.

The reason I say Color Oops has its limits is because the last 2 times I've used the product it doesn't have the same even result it used to. My hair will become extremely brassy all over, the roots will be a different color than the rest of my hair. Now, it still lifts the black out, but it just works differently on my hair.

I used the product again early last week. My roots were fire red, the bottom half of my hair was dark dark reddish brown, I had work the next day so I dyed over all of it with a medium brown hair dye I had in my house. It covered the red, but the roots were then lighter than the rest of my hair [which I knew would happen]. It didn't look BAD, but it just looked like I had roots that I needed to dye since they were so light. I then went to Walgreens and bought Garnier Ultra For Dark Hair dye in Caramel Brown. It is supposed to lift your hair to this beautiful light shade of brown if you have dark [un-dyed] hair. I'm an optimistic idiot who thought 'Hey, maybe it'll still lift my ends'! Nope.

At this point I'm not even positive on what the ultimate goal for my hair was. All I know is that I wanted my ends to be lighter. For so long my ends have been darker than my roots. Weirdly, the last few times I had re-dyed my roots black to match my black hair, the dye had been washing out and going right back to brown.

The point of this post is that I was tired of trying to fix the mistakes I was constantly making with my hair, and I made the smart decision to go to a salon and have them dye my hair. When trying to decide what I wanted I was browsing my hair pins on Pinterest, and found this beautiful picture:

My favorite thing about this picture is how her roots are darker and fade to that beautiful red color. I wanted to pick something where I could do that. I want my hair to grow out and for it to still look beautiful and there not to be a need to touch it up every few weeks. 

This is the most recent before picture: 

And this is after the wonderful lady at Mario Tricoci worked her magic:

My roots area is a beautiful brown, and it fades into a light red. I'm in love!

So life lesson: Although I can be stingy on lots of things, don't destroy your hair by dying it yourself, messing it up, re-dying, re-fixing; just go to a salon and pay the money to have professionals do it!