Hair products

First of all, today's mani is Julie G Butterflies and Rosebuds. Blackened, shimmery dark pink. I've talked about that one before so nothing more to say about it, really.

I was talking about hair-care the other day, and it occurred to me to pull a bunch of hair products out of my bathroom and take pictures. The funny thing is that I think of myself as a person who doesn't use a lot of hair products. But I certainly have a good bit, as you'll see below.

I think the reason I think of myself that way is because I don't use too much in the way of stuff like mousse and hairspray and such. As I mentioned before, my hair just does not take a curl well, although this has changed somewhat in recent years - I'll get to that below.


This first picture is the stuff that was in the area of the bathtub - shampoo and conditioner:

"T+Plus" is HEB's version of T-Gel (which is Neutrogena, and which I used for years before the generic ones became widely available). I mentioned having scalp problems - mine is more serious than just dandruff, and at its worst my scalp will get irritated and if I let it go will get really scaly. I've never quite gotten to the point of having to go to the dermatologist about it, but years ago I did mention it to my uncle, who was a GP, and he told me to use the tar shampoo. That was probably 30 years ago (because I was in my early 20s at the time), but I've used it fairly regularly ever since and it does keep things in line.

Then we have two that I mentioned in the other entry, the Frieda Colour Refreshing Gloss (is John Frieda really a British company or are they just being pretentious? I'm not sure) and the Aussie 3-Minute Miracle. These are both things I bought recently and have only used once each, but so far so good.

The next two are shampoos, and they're not even all the shampoo I have. I do something sort of different with my shampoo - as I mentioned, I have always had super-oily hair, and I have typically always washed my hair twice (do most people do this, these days? "lather, rinse, repeat" is what the instructions used to famously say - I doubt that it's necessary for all hair types but it certainly helps with mine) and somewhere along the line I decided that it worked better to use two different brands of shampoo, one for each "lather" step. And I don't even consistently use the same two, it just varies with what I have on hand. Except for the tar shampoo, they're all shampoos made for color-treated hair; these two are Suave Keratin and then EverPure, one of L'Oreal's sulfate-free lines. I do really like EverPure - it's kind of expensive but you don't have to use very much, so one tube lasts quite a while. But I still alternate it with other things. I didn't drag my big bottles of shampoo out to take photographs - I usually try to buy the 1-liter bottles of fancier brands when they're on sale. I have a big bottle of Biolage and one of Fantastic Sam's shampoo brand (I think it's called Fantastic Cleanse). (I had not used that brand before but I got it when it was on sale, again, and I have to say it's worked really well.) Biolage is my favorite, though, I've been using it for years. Ulta usually has a big sale a couple of times a year and that's when I typically buy it. Despite the presence of the Suave brands, I'm a bit snobby about shampoos, or rather I am convinced that the more expensive ones do generally work better, partly because they usually contain fewer harsh chemicals and various gunk, like beeswax - I don't know whether any companies actually use beeswax in shampoos nowadays, but they used to. But anyway, the Suave Professional lines I will use, because I've always had good results with those.

Then this is what I had in the sink area in my bathroom:

I've had this Redken bottle for years, and it's almost empty, but I don't even remember that I have this stuff very often any more - I don't seem to have too much trouble with split ends these days. The other things are Bed Head Control Freak - basically a mousse - Infusium23 leave-in conditioner, and Suave Keratin dry shampoo. The Bed Head is the one that I wanted to talk about here - it's not something I ever would have thought to buy on my own, but I'm really crazy about it. My hair still doesn't take a curl in the traditional sense, but it has gotten much more of a wave than it used to have, and if I wash my hair and put this stuff in it and scrunch it up a bit, it dries very wavy and looks really great. A stylist told me to try it, and it's been great advice.

Added: I forgot to say that I do own a can of hairspray - it's good old Aqua Net, just like my mama used to use. I've never been able to tell that the expensive ones worked any better.