Ivory Clasp - Purse Subscription Service

Growing up pre-Netflix, my dad used to rib on my mom for her habit of buying movies and TV box sets. She would always say back to him, "Hey, we all have our vices." My vice has always been purses. Like, having over 30 at one point, not stopping, and just refusing to keep counting at that point. To be fair, these bags were typically bought from either Target, Marshalls, or Ross, where you can find nice, inexpensive bags. I'm all about finding deals, which brings me to Ivory Clasp.
I first heard about this subscription service through a Facebook ad, and immediately looked into it, including reviews about it.

Ivory Clasp is a monthly, or bi-monthly service where you can take a style quiz and be delivered a purse that is suited to your tastes. It is $45 dollars each purse, but they guarantee each purse will retail for over $100. I am typically hesitant to try a website that I first see advertised on Facebook, as they are known for promoting websites that operate out of China, and have terrible customer service and products (https://www.buzzfeed.com/sapna/chinese-company-behind-cheap-facebook-clothing-ads-responds?utm_term=.bfKK75zB#.epQvx06g) . I have seen legitimate ads for good companies, which makes it hard to differentiate. Ivory Clasp, however, has a 100% refund or exchange guarantee. If you are matched with a purse you don't like, you can send it back and get a different bag, or get a refund on your money. If you find that the purse you were sent retails for LESS THAN $100, you get to keep the bag, and they will send you another one that does retail for MORE THAN $100. Before placing my order, I checked online to see if there were any coupons available, and I found a 50% off coupon for the first month. This put me at just over $20 for my first bag.

I placed my order on January 11th, 2017 and waited! ..and waited... and waited.. and waited.. and ended up contacting customer service to ask why several weeks later I had no news about my bag, and didn't have any way to track it. They got back to me after the weekend and stated that there were unforeseen issues, but I would get an email being able to track my bag. They apologized and stated that this was unusual, and wouldn't happen again in the following months. I received my bag on February 3rd.

Box Opening:

When opening the box, on top of the paper is a note from the stylists who picked the bag for me, with surprisingly real signatures!

I'm not sure if this is a regular item that gets shipped with first purchases, or if it was a limited time bonus, but I got a pom key ring as well! It is more pink than appears in the photo.

Here is the bag! It is a medium sized hobo/shoulder bag in a dark blue color. I have never heard of this brand before "With212", but it is a beautiful sturdy bag, so I'm very happy with it! I wanted to also check online to find the website for the retail price, but had a surprisingly hard time finding it! The only way I was able to find the website was by typing "ivory clasp" into google with "with212." Odd. The purse does retail for $138, however!

Overall, I think I'll stick with this service for a while. You can't go wrong, because you can ultimately get a refund if you want. I would recommend this to all the purse lovers out there!

Monat Haircare

A few months ago I visited my hairstylist and she was telling me about a brand she found and was in love with: Monat. I had never heard of it, and still never hear about it on the scale of other brands like Olaplex. This brand advertises itself as having all natural products, and if you look at pictures of before and afters you'll be intrigued. They have a good variety of products, several of which promote hair regrowth. My hair isn't too unhealthy, I do have a good amount of split ends though, but as my hair gets longer, the ends tend to not be as thick as the middle length of my hair. After going back and forth on what product to buy, I settled on the 'Power Boost System' which consists of the S3 hair supplements (which I assume are a variety of biotin pills) and a volumizing and hair regrowth supporting spray:

Now, if you're asking yourself "why didn't you buy more of those products, they sound great?!" that would be because this cost $99. Because of course it does. You can't hear about miracle haircare products that only cost $20. I've been super hesitant to try Monat for this reason, but, again, my hairstylist has been talking about the miracles they do, and she has never promoted a product in all the time I've known her.

ANYWAY

I'm only on day 2 of the supplements, but I plan to take photos of my hair a week at a time to show a difference. However, I just tried the spray for the first time and wanted to share the results.

Before:

This was taken after my shower before last. The picture on the left is after blow drying my hair straight, and the picture on the right is after using a straightening iron (believe it or not). Pretty much no matter what my hair is fluffy. I blame it on using a brush since I have very curly hair, and curls and brushes do not mesh. 

After:

Same as before, picture on the left was after blow drying, and picture on the right was from straightening with an iron. I didn't expect to see a difference after one use, but I definitely did. The spray itself made my hair feel like it had more texture, sort of similar to those texturizing cremes. The biggest difference is very obvious: my hair is less frizzy and significantly smoother. I've been drying and straightening my hair the same way for years, and afterwards my hair has never been as smooth as it is after using the Monat spray. 

I look forward to seeing further results as I use the products. Also, I have a hair appointment on Wednesday where my stylist is going to use different Monat products on my hair to let me try them out, afterwards I might get more and post my results.

Kylie Lipkit- Metal Matte 'Heir'

After weeks of crying because I kept missing the restock, I finally got my hands on several lip kits (Candy K, Koko K, So Cute lip gloss), but this post I'll be sharing my review on Heir!

After years of not wearing anything on my lips, because I hate overly frosted or glossy lip products, I discovered my love of anything and everything matte colored. I couldn't really picture how a 'metal matte' would turn out, but It couldn't have turned out better!

Here are my lips before, no product.

AFTER

When I was doing a bit of research on this product before buying it, I saw a review that suggested wearing a lip liner all over the lips to fully get the color payoff, which makes sense, but I used it without any liner, and I thought the color came through. I used 2 coats of the product, 1 may actually be enough. 2 THUMBS UP!

If you are trying to get Kylie lip products, but are having trouble knowing when they are available, there are users on Instagram who post exact times the product will be released in your time zone. This is how I was able to get mine!

Dermatitis

How's your April been? Mine's been a blur of sickness. A little over 2 weeks ago my coworker got me sick, just a regular cold, but it lead me to develop a throat infection. I was prescribed amoxicillin for it, which my Mom was psyched about because she said its a strong antibiotic and I should get better in no time. WHICH WAS PRETTY TRUE! Fast forward a few days later and the horrible pain in my throat (which lead to pain in my ear) was gone! Hallelujah! There is a 10 day cycle for amoxicillin and yesterday was day 9, which is when I woke up covered in 'hives'.

I first noticed them on my hands and spreading up my arms, itching like you wouldn't believe. Throughout the day I would notice more of them, but notice that they were getting worse. When I first noticed them I remember thinking, "Thank god they aren't on my face!" but by the end of the day my face was covered in them! One trip to the ER later and I found out that I was having a reaction to the antibiotics, even though I had been on day 9 of 10. The practitioner was a little perplexed by the blotches, saying that he has never seen them exactly like mine before (which is comforting). He said they aren't hives, but it is dermatitis, which is swelling of the skin.

Look how happy I am to have this! So I was prescribed a daily steroid to take with Benadryl, and to take cold showers. Hooray. 

My Hair Progression: From BLACK to BRIGHT BLONDE

If I've learned anything over the past year, it is to stop thinking I can do everything myself, and to seek out a professional when I need to. My journey to have bright blonde beautiful hair started February 2015 and has just completed now April 2016, but it was a long and necessary journey.

I am very much an 'instant gratification' person, which is why growing up I would dye my own hair, even when half of the time it would leave my hair brittle and orange. I didn't want to spend the money and I didn't want a stylist to tell me that I couldn't be as blonde as I wanted to right away. I wanted it now!! It was probably November 2014 when I had two days off of work and I decided to bleach my hair to obtain the blonde I wanted. I ended up using boxed bleach 3 times in 2 days, and my scalp had never been so raw in my life, it was a miracle I still had hair left after I did this! My hair was incredibly orange and brittle doesn't even begin to describe how totaled my hair was. I knew I had to fix the color by dying it back to dark, but I waited about a week and suffered through work with the ugliest hair you could imagine (I think I actually have pictures from early on in this blog).

Between November and February I had dyed it black, then used Color Oops to remove the black, then  tried dying my hair red (which only made my roots red and my hair stayed black), it was a nightmare. by this time I was tired of wasting money on boxed dyes, and I was tired of having severe breakage. So this is when I wisely spent my money to go to a salon!

I wanted to go through this long story before showing my pictures because if there are any of you out there that refuse to go to salons because you want to do it yourself, but you are destroying your hair, you need to suck it up and go to a salon. It is basically impossible to get the results you want from a box and to have healthy hair at the same time.

I went to the salon today and my wonderful stylist Jenny made my the blonde I've been wanting to be! My hair hasn't been this healthy since before I started dying my hair at 13 (12 years ago, YIKES!).

So here is my progression: The photos on the top are from my former stylist, who didn't use Olaplex (or have it) like my current stylist does, and it has become a necessity for me to use it. Olaplex will protect your hair and make it amazingly soft. Jenny would also force me to get at least a trim every time I was there, which was the best thing she could've done for me, as she gave me the best blunt haircut of my life!

It is important to find a stylist you love, and not to settle, which isn't an easy task. The photo on the top right was the last time I had my hair done by my previous stylist. It was taken the day I got my hair done and looked to be a light blonde, but by 3 days later was completely yellow and terrible looking. The double photo on the bottom left is when I went to Jenny and you can see the difference in the color. My hair has never looked better!

Photo my stylist took: 

Pravana Hair Brightening Shampoo & Conditioner

Ever since I made my hair blonde, I'm always on the lookout for products to help keep my hair bright and not looking dull. I love purple shampoos because they brighten my hair and slightly get rid of yellow/orange tones.

I discovered the website sleekhair.com  recently and I bought these two products from them:

Pravana sulfate-free brightening shampoo and conditioner! The reviews for this stuff didn't leave a doubt in my mind that it would work. These are purple shampoo/conditioner and the directions state to leave the product on for 3-5 minutes before washing out.

Now, since I like to read both positive and negative reviews, there was a negative review that stated that this product actually caused their hair to be purple and after seeing the deep purple color of the shampoo, I was nervous. The shampoo is an inky dark color and after lathering it through my hair, did appear to color my hands purple. After scrubbing them with soap it did come off though.

I followed the directions on both products and here are the results:

Before:

After:

Do I even need to say anything? LOOK AT THAT DIFFERENCE!! This is after 1 use! The blonde is lighter and brighter, the brown is less dull, I have nothing but great things to say about this brand! I will update this post when I straighten my hair next so you can see the difference.

Eqoba Hair Straightening Brush

Ever since seeing ads on Facebook for those magical straighteners that are in the shape of a hairbrush, I knew I needed one! But which one? Look them up on Amazon and there are dozens with varying reviews. I settled on this Eqoba brand one:

It comes in white and pink, and is reasonably priced between $33-$38 (depending on the color). It comes with a little user booklet, 2 clips, and a tiny bristled brush to clean out hair in the device. The red tips on the brush protect you from burning yourself, and unlike competitor devices are securely in place and won't fall out.

I blew dry my hair 'straight', made sure it was brushed, and used it on half my head so you could see the difference it made:

LOOK AT THAT DIFFERENCE! My favorite thing about this brush is that is seems to control my frizz, straighten my hair, and still manage to give my hair body! I highly recommend this hot tool!