Cosmetics Galore

I’ve been experimenting now for months with a natural shampoo formulation and finally found success with just the right blend of ingredients to both adequately clean my hair and leave it shiny and bouncy and also keep it moisturized.

SLS, or Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, is the active “lathering” ingredient in most shampoos you see on store shelves today. This is a very harsh, high-lather detergent that strips the hair of moisture, irritates the scalp, and roughs the cuticle of the hair up, which is the outer layer of each strand that makes the hair either look frizzy or lay flat and shiny and “calm”.

Here’s the rub with natural shampoos. Sometimes, since they don’t lather as high as SLS-containing shampoos, people tend to think they are not cleaning their hair. That is absolutely untrue, it is just that we are conditioned today to think that our soaps, toothpastes and shampoos have to have a mound of lather to actually cleanse surfaces.

In fact, once you start using natural shampoos with more gentle, lower lather cleansing agents, you realize that they not only clean your hair better and remove buildup, but they also can help maintain a healthier scalp, keep dandruff at bay and make for a much healthier, shinier and more vibrant head of hair.

Oh yeah, my natural shine enhancing shampoo also does not strip away my color quickly like traditional shampoos do. This has been one of my favorite aspects of the shampoo because I hate coloring my hair and watching it fade within a matter of days or weeks. I like when it stays saturated and full of life for a long time, and my shampoo allows for that, so I can go longer between coloring which I love.

I found that since I’ve been using my natural shampoo, my hair color (which I do once every couple of months) stays in much longer and looks much richer for much longer.

Since my scalp and hair is in much better condition, and I’m not adding parabens and all kinds of other chemicals to my scalp and hair, I’m sticking with my natural shampoo for a long, long time. My hair has never looked better, I can honestly say.

Julia Roberts is really my hero of sorts. She seems to be one of the rare Hollywood beauties who has not taken to surgery or Botox, making her suspiciously frozen or plastic looking. And for that, she has aged extremely gracefully and kept her natural beauty intact.

Diane Lane is another who has seemed to avoid these typical pitfalls of being a woman in Hollywood, and she is still one of the sexiest, earthiest, most “real” beauties of Hollywood because of it.

Julia Roberts started off hitting the fast track to stardom in her huge sleeper hit “Pretty Woman” which hit big when I was still in highschool (but almost out).  She really resonated with the ladies because of her rags to riches story and her portrayal of the hooker with the heart of gold and the mind of a woman trapped in a profession that really wasn’t “her” at all, just a set of circumstances had forced her into it.

Not to mention those killer legs, raucous laugh and uber super star smile. She was tabloid fodder though, and the paparazzi followed her and her various flames around like Velcro attached to them.  Her love life made headlines over and over, but she still managed to keep her all American sweetheart image going because she was so goshdarn charismatic.

And the flowing, long reddish brown hair certainly didn’t hurt. She’s also always had that touching “doe” look to her with her big brown eyes. She also seems so earnest and humble in interviews that it’s even more endearing and makes her even more physically attractive.

Julia Robert’s personality, along with her fabulous beach-waved hair, beautiful smile and laugh, and doe eyed beauty will make her a celebrity beauty icon for years to come.  She’s not quite your “conventional” beauty, which makes her all the much more appealing to both men and women.

Also just the fact that she has refused to resort to plastic surgery or Botox yet has made her a real role model for women who want to be beautiful naturally, and just take care of their skin well by using great anti aging products and natural methods to reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

We CAN age gracefully without looking like a cookie cutter plastic surgeon’s palette, and Mrs. Roberts has proven that.

I started noticing a trend in my hair that I really didn’t like when I turned 35 years old.  I noticed it not only starting to gray more, but also that it started to take on a more coarse texture at the base. It started to be more unruly, and it was nearly impossible for me to have any type of bangs going on because they would just end up being one big cowlick.

Not only that, but another disturbing trend was that even the hair that wasn’t graying was still looking more “washed out” than usual, like it was losing pigmentation and richness in color and looking more mousy (I’m a brunette).

Another disturbing trend in my hair as I aged was that it started to look a bit thinner in the front of my head. I remedied this pretty much by taking some really great hair growth vitamins, but I didn’t like that it naturally just started to thin out like that in the front of my head.

I think this also contributed to the feeling that my hair at the front of my head was always one big cowlick. But it is growing nice and thick now thanks to my natural shampoo and my good hair vitamins.  I wonder what it would be doing in a few more years if I didn’t change my hair care routine and hair care products though!

So here are the three lovely effects that aging has had on my hair :

1.)  Loss of color and richness and depth of color.

2.) Increased coarseness and changing texture

3.) Thinning hair at the front of my head.

Here are the remedies I’ve taken part in to help reduce these three undesirable effects and “symptoms” aging has had on my hair.

1.)  I color my hair about once every two months to three months with a natural, chemical free or very low chemical hair color product.  This helps increase the rich look of my hair and appears to reduce the porosity making it look thicker and fuller.

2.) I use a natural shampoo and very intensive conditioners every time I have a wash night. This has helped keep the cuticle smooth and make my hair look less coarse and younger, more supple and shiny.

3.) I’ve been taking hair growth vitamins for some time now. They do help a lot with thinning, because I notice when I stop taking them for any amount of time my hair starts to get a little thinner at the front. I also notice my hair doesn’t have as much luster and sheen when I stop taking them.

I start off taking the maximum recommended dosage for about a month while my body builds the nutrients it offers, then I scale back to just one a day, which works great for me.

So I just streaked my hair with red highlights last week, and when I blew my hair dry I thought hey #$%# where are my highlights?  It basically looked like I hadn’t colored my hair at all, and I couldn’t tell hide nor hare whether I had highlights at all.

Then…lo and behold a whole week goes by and several washings and I suddenly could see my red highlights on my entire head.  I’m not sure why this would be. If anything you’d expect to be able to see your highlights vibrantly when you first do them, and you’d expect them to fade out with each shampoo, but in this case, I couldn’t even tell I had put highlights in my hair until I washed it several times.

I’m thinking perhaps there is some sort of coating on the red highlight that comes off as you wash it.  I remember a while ago I sat in a stylist’s chair and she was giving me caramel highlights in my brunette hair.

She actually told me that I wouldn’t see my highlights for a couple days because she was adding some sort of glaze to my hair that was designed to gradually wash off with each shampooing.  I wondered why the heck I would want to wait to see my highlights, but of course I’m ever the polite customer and didn’t make a fuss about it.

I did buy this highlighting system at a beauty supply store, so I’m wondering if this developer or color had some sort of built in glaze that reveals the highlights slowly. Has anyone ever heard of this, ’cause it makes no sense to me!

I’m a fan of going with reddish hair highlights occasionally. In fact, I just did mine about 6 weeks ago, and love them combined with my natural brunette hair color. I do a two step process. I first dye my hair with my natural darker brown hair color, wait a day or two, then do my red or caramel colored highlights after the base color has set in.

I’ve been doing it this way for a while, because I’m trying to avoid spending obscene amounts of money at the salon to get a process done that I can do myself in half the time and for a fraction of the price. Often times, when I got to a salon, I’m not happy with the way it turns out anyway, and I figure doing it myself gives me complete control over the outcome of the color and the highlights.

Although I really love the way a warm red looks in highlights, I could never go completely red because the color simply washes out too quickly.  I’ve heard this as a common complaint for women and men who dye their hair red.  It’s especially frustrating if you’re dying your hair red to cover up the greys, and you see them peeping through a little too early.

Plus, hair coloring can be rough on the hair, even if you’re using a natural product, it’s still a process.  So here are some tips for getting your red hair color to last longer :

1.)  This may be hard for some to swallow, but try your hardest to NOT wash your hair at least 48 hours after you color your hair.  This allows the color to set into the shaft of the hair better, and absorb into instead of simply coat the hair.

2.)  Use a natural shampoo that is 100% sulfate free. Sulfates are the enemy when it comes to “washing your color out”.  They are too harsh and strip even non-colored hair, so of course they will easily strip color out of your hair from a bottle as well.  They also may inhibit healthy hair growth.

3.)  Go more days in between washes.

4.)  Use a chemical free, alcohol free conditioner. This is a tall order since most conditioners on the market have alcohol in them. But you can find them that are alcohol free.

5.)  Protect your head from the sun. UV rays wash out color very quickly. Protect your hair with either a spray in UV protectant or a hat for a longer lasting, virbrant and shiny red hair color.

Watching a video of how former Victoria’s Secret Angel model Kylie Bisutti hung up her angel wings because of her Christian faith and belief that her body was solely for her husband’s eye, it got me thinking “how do the Victoria’s Secret model get their hair to looks so beautiful?”

They all have really great hair. One common theme is that it’s very long, but it’s also very glossy and seems to always lay right. So, do all the Vickie’s Secret gals just have great genes when it comes to their body and their hair, or do they use certain hair care products to make their hair look long, lustrous and full of body?

Or maybe they wear extensions?  That could be it, but I still think they also have naturally beautiful hair too.  I can tell you one thing, two of the Victoria’s Secret hair styling products are pretty good, and they do give you a bit of that “sexy hair” look that you see on the  models on the runway – the likes of Gisele Bundchen (and her Super Bowl gaffe in tow), Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima and more strutting around with their wild mane of hair.

One of the products is their “So Sexy Wave Enhancing Spray”.  It’s a pump spray that looks like it’s half oil, half water. Of course, it has a trademark heavy Victoria’s Secret scent, which I could definitely do without because that means it’s loaded with chemicals, but it does work to make your curls and waves bigger, bouncier and shinier.

I do like the product, but I’d like to use something that works the same way without having all the heavy scent in it and chemicals.  It manages to make you hair curl more easily when you put a large barreled curling iron to it, and it makes the curls and waves stay better while also making them bigger and more springy and bouncy.

You can truly have “big hair” if you use this product at night, dry your hair, then wrap it tightly in a high bun on your head overnight.  You have instantly huge body in your hair when you wake up.

Another good product they make is the So Sexy Smooth Straight and Silky Styling Mist. This one is great for those days where you don’t want waves and curls, but instead want a smoother, straighter look. It does lend itself to smoother hair. Again, there is the strong scent, but it does seem to help tame frizzies as well as smooth and straighten the hair better when combined with my FHI hair dryer and my Sedu flat iron.

I think that to get hair like Victoria’s Secret models, you do have to grow it very long so you can get that wild look. This may take the use of hair growth vitamins to help accelerate the process, and great hair care. When I’m trying to grow my hair out, I limit my trips to the hairstylist because they tend to whack off more hair than I want them to.

I usually will just have my husband give my ends a very light trim with our professional hair shears for several months to keep the ends healthy.

When I first started watching the guilty pleasure reality TV show “Jersey Shore” I wondered how all these girls could have such long hair. I mean it is loooong!  I wondered how they grew it out that long. I mean, were these girls all on some sort of super hair growth vitamin or what?  Or are Italian girls really that apt to have long locks so easily?

Jenny Farly, aka JWOWW, Nicole Polizzi AKA Snooki, Deena and Sammy Sweetheart (I believe Sammy Giancola?) all had really long hair. I mean, it’s pretty and all, but was it all real or were they all sporting expensive weaves or extensions to make it look longer?

Apparently they all have extensions. I finally got confirmation of that when season 4 in Italy aired. My husband and I are just now watching this season on DVD now because we never watch it live. We like to watch it uncensored because believe me, it’s a whole lot more juicy when it’s uncensored. You think these people act crazy on the tv show, wait til you hear how bad their mouths are when it’s all censorship free!

The gang was all put up in a really nice townhouse style apartment in Italy (probably much to the chagrin of the local businesses as I hear they caused quite a stir while there).

The outlets are all different over in Europe, so if you have, say a kick butt Sedu hair straightener or a really great ionic hair dryer, you can’t use it over there unless you have an adapter or unless you bought it over there with their special plugs.

So one of the girls confirmed that they all have extensions when she mentioned she didn’t know how a bunch of girls with extensions were going to style their hair without their styling tools.

They must’ve ended up getting some help from the producers though, because soon their hair all looked just like it did when they did their other seasons here in the states.  Now if only they’d use some better natural shampoo to make their hair look softer – but maybe extensions require special hair care products, that I’m not sure about.

God help me, that show sure is addicting!

I’m so happy. I’ve finally figured out a formula for natural shampoo that actually makes my hair look fantastic. It makes it bounce, shine and never look dried out like so many SLS-containing shampoos do. SLS, by the way, is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, and it is found in thousands of shampoos, soaps, cleansers, industrial cleaners (yeah, and you may use it on your precious skin or hair), and a variety of other heavy duty cleaning uses.

It is not good to use on the skin or hair because it is very harsh.  The hair’s natural protective cuticle gets “roughed up” when cleansed with high-lather, high SLS content shampoos, and that shows.  If you notice your hair is lifeless, looks frizzy and dry and doesn’t have much bounce, you can definitely benefit from trying a natural shampoo out.  It may even aggravate thinning hair.

I’m actually going to release this shampoo soon on my newly launched natural body care website, which I will tell you all about when it’s ready for launch.  The natural shampoo formulation uses a very mild, naturally derived foaming agent so you still get that light lather, and some other naturally moisturizing, hair-friendly ingredients and essential oils that add shine and luster to the hair.

My hair has seriously never looked better and I can’t wait to get all the packaging and stuff figured out so I can launch this product. Very excited!  Look for an announcement over the next couple weeks, it’s very soon.

I’m also looking into a formulation for a natural conditioner that contains naturally moisturizing ingredients and no parabens or any other chemicals that you find in abundance in most of the brands on store shelves, so I’ll be announcing that when it is all final.

Can’t wait to share this with the world and I’m excited to see what people think since I am so thrilled with the results   COMING SOON!

I’ve been using natural hair color for a while now. I have read too many deeply disturbing things about all the harsh chemicals that are found in most commercial haircolors.  Ammonia, peroxide, parabens, resorcinol, and a variety of other cancer-causing toxic chemicals are just a few of the reasons to avoid many haircolors.

Not only that, I noticed that these typical hair dyes were really starting to burn my scalp, and started to affect the health of both my hair and my scalp. My head was often itchy and dry, and my hair seemed like a dry haystack after coloring my hair with these chemical-loaded colors that I was buying off the shelves.

My first foray into the natural hair color world was a disaster.  I tried a henna hair color and ended up with hair that looked almost grey.  I decided never again was I even going to attempt a henna hair color. It left my hair looking worse.  Not that henna is a bad thing – it is contained in some natural hair dyes today, but I tried using just straight powdered henna and it was awful.

I also tried a couple other brands of “natural hair color” only to find that they burned my scalp and dried my hair just as badly as the other stuff.  This was because they still had several harsh chemicals in them.

I finally found Tints of Nature hair colors online about a year and a half ago, and I’ve never looked back – it was one of my favorite hair care products of all time. I’ve actually tried several of their colors and landed on the medium brown as my favorite because it matches my natural color best and gives the best finish.

While the formula does have a pungent smell, it does not burn my head when I apply it. Nor does my hair look dry, dull and lifeless after I use it.  It actually looks healthy, bouncy and shiny, and it never did with the L’Oreals, the Revlons and the Garniers that dominate the store shelves.

I’ve never found Tints of Nature on store shelves, I’ve always purchased mine online at Amazon, where I’ve found the most competitive price for this product.

I think that just about every woman I know has a little mini crush/admiration for Jennifer Aniston. I think it’s because not only does she have great, easy taste when it comes to fashion and manages to make a plain black dress look downright adorable yet sexy at the same time, but she seems like she’s the woman who you could have a conversation with. She’s “obtainable” that way, even though she is a huge mega star and has had her life repeatedly invaded by the paparazzi and her love life scrutinized, written about and speculated on for over a decade.

Let’s talk first about her fabulous hair. She has always had really beautiful hair, one of the most admired heads of celebrity hair there is. It always seems to lay right, and she wears it in the most gorgeous yet simple updos and side swept looks.  She can wear it wavy or pin straight and look really pretty doing it.

Her makeup is simple.  That’s why she looks somewhat like the girl next door – even though she’d be the girl next door that every guy wants to date.  She uses simple nudes, what looks like a small amount of natural foundation and shades of brown a lot and pink, which fits her naturally tan, fit look best.  She wouldn’t look good with caked on makeup, and she seems to know that and chooses the most elegant and simple, casual looks for her makeup, yet manages to look young, fresh and vibrant every time.

She has a look of “fun” about her. Like she’s the girl that every man and woman wants to be friends with. And that my friend, is probably more attractive than anything else – hair, makeup, clothes or any other physical attribute.  And she looks to have no cellulite in those photos of her in bikinis, which makes her the envy of most women.

I’m kind of liking her hair when she doens’t flat iron it.  It looks so pretty with the multiple layers of highlights that seem darn natural if they aren’t.  The waviness and texture really looks fantastic with her chocie of clothes and makeup too.