Hello my lovelies!
I'm sure I've mentioned once, twice, thousands of times that my hair is unmanageable. It's curly, it's frizzy, gets greasy quickly and there is a LOT of it. It requires some serious hard work to keep it looking halfway decent and most days I just rough-dry it and tie it up because it simply will not do what it's told. It has been known to be perfectly GHD straight one minute and kinky and puffy the next.
Brazilian blow-dries are tempting, sure, but also on the pricier side of things. Knowing my hair, there's also always the danger that it will simply disobey any treatment so I don't ever want to spend a lot of money on it. I don't want it poker straight all the time but I would like it to be less...bushy and less frizzy!
Enter Charles Worthington Salon At Home Straight and Smooth treatment (phew). This retails for £19.99 and I believe you get 500 Advantage Card points at the moment if you buy it at Boots! It promises to work wonders in a relatively short space of time and seemed ideal to try out on a quiet evening in, so Monday night I set myself the task of applying it.
For review purposes, here is my hair BEFORE:
(Nice greasy-faced photo of me with Sorcha at the Motel event, taken by Stephie.)
First, you do a patch test. Not surprising really since it's basically the same as colouring your hair. The instructions are very specific on this and can't really be faulted for health and safety. Once you've survived the patch test, you basically wash your hair, NO conditioner (how my hair tangled!) and then apply the first step of the treatment using the gloves provided (note: they are rubbish, be warned).
So far, so simple. My only gripe is that the instruction manual doesn't really go into detail on how to apply it, just reminds you to keep combing it, so I basically squeezed some into my hands and rubbed it in like you would a hair colour. Oh yes, and the smell is horrific and you will make the house smell like rotten eggs.
Next, after waiting the appropriate length of time, you wash it out and apply the deep conditioner to "lock in" the treatment. This didn't have any offensive attributes and I left it on a bit longer because I was texting my sister and my head didn't catch fire so that was alright.
After rinsing, you're meant to blow-dry your hair with a round brush and then use straighteners to complete the look.It being a Monday night and me being exceptionally bad at blow-drying my hair, I dried it rather roughly to maintain some volume because - and here is the bit I dislike the most - you cannot wash your hair for 48 hours post treatment. As my hair goes flat and greasy super quickly, I was desperate for all the volume I could get. However, despite not blow-drying it, and despite not using the straighteners till the following morning...my hair was straight.
Never, ever, has my hair looked like this after rough-drying. It usually resembles Mufasa's mane, but not this time! Behold:
(please excuse the terrible photos, it was dark, I had no make-up on and wanted to show off the hair, not hiding my face or anything...)
It was incredible. However, as it was about half ten I had nowhere to go to show off my new sleek do, so instead used a headband made of old tights to keep my fringe off my oily face and went to bed, anxiously awaiting the next morning's results...
NEXT: PART 2, in which my hair battles the treatment with all it's might (aided by some gale-force winds and rain on the walk home)
xoxo
(No, I still haven't found my camera charger. Could you tell??)
