THE ULTIMATE FRIZZ TEST!!!

Yesterday you saw me test a range of Frizz Ease products (if not, check it out HERE). This was done in my usual styling manner of wetting my hair thoroughly, towel drying & then putting the products on, but what happens if the water gets turned off? or rather, can these products cope with my hair without some H2O help?

Lets start at the beginning, my hair, dry, & combed through...

yup, I got BIG frizzy hair ... its fine but there's lots, & I mean LOTS of it

So I added the Nourishing Elixir..

It helped a bit, & gave a lovely shine but I'd have to use most of the bottle to get rid of all the frizz, & that would also have left my hair looking greasy.

Then on went the Go curlier 48 hour curls heat activated spray. I had to dampen my hair first as thats what the instructions said, & diffuse it afterwards.

Again, it helped a bit, but I certainly couldn't go out looking like this, it reminded me of the 1980's/90's crunchy perms.

So, these products are great with a little bit of work behind them, but if you think you can have hair like mine & get up, comb, add product & go, its still a dream.

I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to Frizz Ease though, to be one of the only companies who have adverts on tv that allow people to have CURLY HAIR! so many others go on about "oh no, curly haired person, you must have it straight & smooth", while I do straighten my hair on the odd occasion (its tiring on my arms & only lasts a day, IF the weathers right), I usually have it curly & do not want to be made a freak for that. Well done Frizz ease for realising that.

Please note, these opinions are all my own, as a bzz agent I was sent these products to test out & talk to people about, giving my honest opinion & reporting back, so, what do you think?

The Never Ending Dream to be Frizz Free.

I was sent a set of Frizz Ease products to try out & talk to you about, so heres how I got on...

Au Natural......

This is my hair without any product in it, though I really dont like these kind of shots it does give you an idea of how these products alter it.

These are the products I was working with....

T-Gel - because I have a problem scalp
Conditioner - any for curly hair or dry hair will do
Serum - Anything cheap or on offer will do :)
Tony & Guy curl defining oil - to keep the curls shape without frizz
& this is what they create.....

A much better photo to compare the frizz ease products to as I want something better than what I've already got.

Frizz Ease Products

Dream Curls Shampoo - "Cleanses & adds hydration for salon perfect curls" (this is what it says on the packet)
Dream Curls Conditioner - "Detangles for defined salon perfect curls"
Nourishing Oil Elixir - "Nourishes & smoothes 2x the frizz fighting power"
Go Curlier, 48 hour curls, heat activated spray - "creates salon smooth curls that last upto 48 hours"

& the result....

Curls are slightly tighter & more defined. They feel softer(no crunchy mousse/hairspray type feeling), my hair is in great condition.

So lets briefly look at the products individually

Dream curls shampoo...
Great amount of froth from a small amount of shampoo, goes through wet hair easily, cleans it really thoroughly without drying it out. Swills out easily leaving no residue.

Dream Curls conditioner
Not a creamy feeling conditioner at all but does exactly what it needs to. Quite a deceptive conditioner as it didnt feel like it was doing much by its texture, or the way it swills off leaving no residue what so ever, but my hair is most certainly healthy having used it for the past few weeks, & having all the residue swilled out means my hair doesnt go greasy or get weighed down.

Nourishing Oil Elxir
I love this stuff! Its like a serum that moisturises your hair while helping combat frizz. It goes on the hair easily, combs through wet hair easily & leaves a wonderful shine. At fighting frizz I find it as good as any decent serum, but with the added bonus that it moisturises the hair as well.

Go Curlier 48 Hour Curl Heat Activated Spray
This didnt actually make my hair anymore curlier than if I'd used other products & a diffused it (which is how you're meant to heat activate it). My curls did last 48 hours! but thats because my curls have generally lasted a lifetime so no surprise there. HOWEVER it did allow me to have my hair down & curly without it feeling crunchy at all, it left my hair soft while frizz free & nice to look at.

Will I be buying them & continuing to use them?
Though they dont make my hair curlier, they do work lovely with the curls I have so I most certainly will buy them again. They arent cheap, ranging from £6 to £10 each on average, so I shall be stocking up on them only when they are on offer (At the time this was posted Asda had 3 for £10 on frizz ease products so guess who bought some of the more expensive items)

Come back tomorrow to see how they got on with the ULTIMATE FRIZZ TEST!

Please note, these opinions are all my own, as a buzz agent I was sent these products to test out & talk to people about giving my honest opinion & reporting back, so, what do you think?

Fun-tache-tic

As soon as I saw the sketch at My scraps & more sketches I knew I wanted to use it with 3 or 4 square photos.

 As I searched through my pile I came across 3 photos that I thought would go perfectly with it. With the theme of moustaches in my head I raided my craft stash. Once I spotted the dotty moustache I paired it with dotty paper, and found moustache paper. These had a vintage feel about them so out came the vintage papers.

Y W8

This months challenge at SJ Crafts is a mood board, from which I took a lot of inspiration.

From it I took the colours & the flowers which I used to choose the papers. The statement "Look how they grow" helped me choose what I wanted to scrap about, a course looking at the food and activities children need to grow healthily. My layout was developed around the 2 by 3 grid on the mood board and the final the photo chosen by the influence of the child sitting on grass.

Graduating

Once again Sue has come up with another great challenge sketch for April over at Me & Mine.

I picked out the two strongest colours from the photo, the red & the blue, and used those was the most predominant colours on the page. It then came to me that the strips of paper could combine these colours, going from red through the colours to blue.

I've used PINK!!!

As many of you know I'm not a pink girl, I know, I know I used to have pink hair, but generally I do not like using or wearing that colour in any shade, HOWEVER, there are exceptions to the rules (which explains the hair .... oh & the matching sneakers). One of these exceptions is grey with a small amount of pink on layouts.

So when I saw this months mood board over at Jot magazine I had to use it

I used the chevrons and dark colours, along with the bold patterned paper to make it a masculine layout but added the pink and foam letters to make it softer.

The family photo was taken with a first generation camera phone & is awful  but taking a photo of the layout has reduced the pixelated look & noise a lot.

Scrapbooking: Ben 10

In issue 5 of Jot magazine Mel Nunn set the challenge to make a page inspired by either wrapping paper or a card. As I needed to do a Be 10 layout AND had some ben 10 wrapping paper this was perfect for me

As you can see I framed the page in orange, just like the pictures on the wrapping paper, I added circles cut from the wrapping paper as well as cutting a circle from the photo of Kai's cake.
I looked for a sheet of lime green paper which I masked with punchinella and put streaks of green paint over, once I removed the punchinella it left lovely green circles similar to those on the wrapping paper, even down to how some of them merged together..

With the wrapping paper came a gift card which made a perfect, simple title.

Scrapbooking: If the Shoe Fits

Theres a lovely sketch over at Page Maps this month which I used for this layout. I started off with the frame as I thought it would look great behind the two photos, then I had a look to see what I'd got to match it. Finding these items slowly built up the page for me, shoes with a yellow bow that matched the frame that had a chevron pattern on them, chevron pattern led to chevron paper, then I found other shoes to match & took the colours from their backgrounds to choose other paper, alphas etc.

Scrapbooking: With an online newspaper article

In the "olden days" I'd have bought a paper, clipped out the article and worked a layout around its shape, nowadays I tend to read newspapers online so the layout is a lot more straight forward...... I say that but when I came to print it out it wasnt quite so simple as there was all sorts of line breaks  and weird goings on that made it 3 A4 pages long! I opted for a mixture of screen prints and copying the text to try & recreate the article in Microsoft Publisher, very easy to do.

So now what to do with this article on a scrapbook page? Well, I saw Niki's blogpost called "start with a sketch: into orbit" and knew what I wanted to do...

I know, I know, I've had to blank loads off but if I hadnt I might as well just have written my sons school address on here. There was no need for journalling or a title as it was all there in the article. A few little pretty bits following Niki's sketch & an arrow to show where Zack is in the photo

When Crafting Makes Way For DIY

March came & went without much crafting being done, there was rather a lot of DIY though. My kitchen was getting me down, the lovely silver vinyl floor over time had moved, was stained, damaged and seriously needed replacing. It felt cramped & worn out, I didnt want to spend time in there at all. So I set myself the mission to do it up.

Before...

So with funny masks & a couple of cool tools I got working on tiling, reflooring, painting and more to create something I am very happy and comfortable in...

After...

A few of my favourite features of the kitchen....

 A giant, magnetic blackboard. I have printed onto magnetic sheets that I cut up the days of the week, the name of each room in the house & the kids names. This way I can put any important activities next to the day of the week, any jobs needing to be done under the name of the room, & the kids jobs under their name.

A toothbrush holder is fab to hold magnetic labels that arent in use along with the chalks/chalk pens.

Laundry baskets with sticky-back magnetic sheets make perfect, cheap storage tubs.

My spice rack, it fills the entire cupboard door, so much better than me storing them in groups, I can easily see which jar I want.

4 new cupboards (2 at the top, & another double & a single cupboard at the bottom)& 3 shelving units give lots of lovely new storage. 2 laundry baskets used for washing, & my ironing pile. The 2 smaller ones I use for odd socks & sorting socks. You can just about see 2 truggs on the left of the cupboards, attached to hooks that hold our hot water bottles (thats what tiggers head is part of) & plastic bags.

From this photo you'd never guess I hate clutter on kitchen work surfaces. So happy now this has all gone into cupboard, & the microwave onto a shelf.

There are so many other details I could list here that I love, the matching washing up bowl & soap dispenser, the whole wall behind the oven tiled, the blackboard signs for me to put positive messages on.

& my amaryllis is also happy in its home :) You probably wouldnt have noticed it in my original photos as its a little brown, hibernating stump, what a difference a month makes.