Highlighting Your Hair

So, as many of you know bleaching your hair is especially bad for it and for those of you who are like me, you do it anyways. Well here's a bit of a better way to get your hair a bit lighter for the summer. Just know that any way you go about lightening your hair will probably cause damage, but this is a bit more natural and better for your hair than bleach in a box.

Alright so you're going to need some things to start off:
>1 cup lemon juice
>1/4 cup conditioner
>1/4 warm water
>hot sunny day
>spray bottle

Step One: 
Mix all of the ingredients together until they are well blended.

Step Two:
Take your spray bottle and pour in the mixture you just created.

Step Three:
Spray the mixture into your dry hair. It is important that you do this an evenly as possible. Continue spraying evenly throughout your hair, roots to ends until it's completely wet, or until mixture it gone.

Step Four:
Sit out in the hot sun for up to 2 hours to allow the Sun to do it's thing on your hair.

Step Five:
Wash out hair using a deep conditioner (or if you only have normal that will do). As I said bleaching hair any way is bad for it and this will dry out your hair so conditioner generously!

Step Six:
Repeat the process until you get your desired look. Only do this once a week, it may take up to 4 weeks to notice a very significant difference.

So there you have it! Just please note that with really dark brown to black hair it can be very difficult to get results, for some people they do it a long time and nothing happens others see slight results. This process works better on people with already blonde hair or people with light brown hair.
I hope this helped you out a bit! Good luck!
Questions? Email damagebegone@hotmail.com

-Ashley

Long Summer Hair!

This has been a long awaited post... lots of questions like this come up over and over again, and although this whole blog will really help you with growing longer hair but this post is just a lot of tips combined to help you with longer hair! Hope you enjoy!

1. Eat more protein!

Your hair is made of protein and so when you don't get enough of it your body stops giving your hair any, therefore slowing down growth. Protein is found in eggs, chicken, red meat, beans and a lot of other foods.

2. Drink lots of water!

This helps keep your hair healthy. If your hair is not healthy and hydrated then it gets dry causing split ends and breaking off of the ends of your hair. When the ends of your hair constantly break off it can't grow at it's full speed.

3. Get hair trimmed every 6-8 weeks.

Although you might feel like this slows the growth it doesn't! It is better to cut off all the dead ends sooner than later. Because eventually the split ends travel up your hair and the higher up they go the shorter you'll have to cut it. And again you don't want split ends because they break off and cause hair to grow slower.

4. Protect hair from heat.

This can be done various ways. For one eliminating all heat tools on your hair is probably the best, but if you must use a heat tool use heat protectant and LET IT DRY before applying heat to your hair. You can find all sorts of hair tutorials not involving heat on youtube or on my blog (see other posts). Also using protectant spray before going out into the hot sun is useful. It's also good to not have your shower too hot (difficult I know). The purpose for this again is to reduce split ends.

5. Keep your hair moisturized!

Again this can be done different ways, like using a deep conditioner about once a week. Using a hair mask once a month (approximately depending on amount of damage). Also being sure to always use normal conditioner is helpful. Moisture in hair is healthy hair, and healthy hair is faster growing hair.

6. Protect from chlorine!

Okay, okay, wearing a swim cap IS dorky. But there are ways you can reduce chlorine damage without the swim cap. Try rinsing out your hair with fresh water before entering a pool, and applying spray-in conditioner to help your hair not to absorb so much chlorine. Chlorine can be very damaging for hair!

7. Get more natural products!

The more natural the better. All these chemicals in the hair products we use can be very handy for our hair but also very harmful. If you can get natural shampoos and conditioners, oils are very good for this. I used Moroccan hair oil shampoo and conditioner for a long time, my hair was so much healthier!

8. Don't stress it!

Reducing stress and increasing sleep can help with hair growth. A lot of times if you are not sleeping well or are very stressed or not eating right, hair can start to fall out and break. So keep your entire body physically and mentally happy to increase the time in which your hair grows. If you struggle with stress/depression/eating disorders see if you can do something about it. Anything from listening to music on your bed, seeing a counselor or doing yoga can help your stress level decrease. Whatever works for you!

9. Do not wash your hair daily!

This will end up drying your hair out. As you have read in former tips, this is not good for your hair. So to keep your hair moist and healthy try avoiding washing hair daily. Dry shampoo or baby powder can really help with being able to go 2 days without washing your hair.

10. Avoid dying and bleaching your hair.

This involves a lot of chemicals and is not natural at all and can fry your hair completely if involving bleach. So do your best not to dye or bleach your hair. Because as I have mentioned lots, dry hair is unhealthy and will decrease the speed in which your hair grows.

Hope you found this helpful! Good luck with growing your long hair!

Feel free to e-mail me with questions or suggestions for future posts:

damagebegone@hotmail.com

-Ashley

Post Requests and March Favorites!

Hey everyone! March favorites is in next paragraph if you want to skip ahead! I'm sorry I haven't been blogging much lately, I know it sounds lame but I have been very busy. I am obviously off my once a week blogging schedule, that has just been too much for me so I'm going to try to post once a month and hopefully more if everything goes well! I REALLY WANT YOUR HELP. I'm looking for ideas for new posts, or requests of what you'd like to know about! So please if you have ideas, tips, requests or questions please e-mail me at damagebegone@hotmail.com I would appreciate it and would be more than happy to reply or make a post about it. So feel free to e-mail away! I will also start putting up polls again, it stopped working but I'm going to see if that will work again. Also feel free to let your friends know about my blog! Would you like more product reviews, videos,  pictures? Feedback is always appreciated!

Now for my favorites! These are more my favorites from the past 2 or 3 months but let's just go with March favorites. Recently I've been very happy with the way my hair has been going. I've tried 2 new shampoo/conditioners and I am really pleased with them!

The first I tried was Dove Therapy Volume Boost Shampoo and Conditioner (link below). I really liked the product, I thought it made my hair feel a lot more smooth, which I really like, I'm not sure if it helped for volume at all but most of the shampoos I try for volume don't really work. (If you know one please comment or e-mail!) But I was happy with the product and thought it worked fairly well. You can probably buy it at your local Wal-Mart!
http://www.dove.ca/en/Products/Hair/Dove-Volume-Boost-Shampoo.aspx

The next shampoo and conditioner I tried was from the new Clear brand. I had heard a lot of good things about it but still wasn't sure if I wanted to jump into it, but then my mom bought some and I figured, why not?
She purchased the Volumizing Root Boost Nourishing Shampoo (and conditioner). Okay I LOVE this product, like it's actually amazing. To start off it smells AMAZING, like actually I've gotten a bunch of compliments about the smell. Also it really helps my hair to not get greasy so fast, usually I have to wash my hair every day to make it not greasy, or at least use dry shampoo because you're not suppose to wash your hair everyday but with this stuff it's not even greasy on the second day! I'm super impressed with this product so far, have any of you tried Clear? I would recommend it because it worked great for me!
http://www.clearhaircare.com/women/212394/volumizing-root-boost-nourishing-shampoo-conditioner

The last product for today is my "It's a 10 Miracle leave-in Product" I got a bottle of it from my hairdresser because she didn't need it anymore, I was so excited because I've been wanting to try it but it's slightly pricey! However now I know that it's absolutely worth it! On the back of the bottle it lists 10 things it's supposed to do, I will list them and let you know how I think it actually did with my hair!
1. Repair dry, damaged hair ~ well I don't think my hair can be repaired within a couple of days but I think it's definitely feeling more healthy than before!
2. adds shine ~ I would agree with this one, if I spray it in after my shower while my hair is wet, it dries shinier.
3. Smooths and Controls Frizz ~ Definitely! My hair is a lot smoother.
4. seals and protects hair color ~ I could not say, my hair isn't dyed, sorry!
5. flat iron spray & thermal protector ~ I can't say for sure but I'm pretty sure it does this pretty well because my hair doesn't feel as "blow dried" when I'm finished blow drying it. (Shame on me, I know.)
6. Detanlges ~ this is actually one of my favorite parts, I feel like it detangles my hair so well! Which I need because my hairs curly and I must only brush it when it's wet so I need a good dentangler to really reduce the damage, this works amazing!
7. stops hair breakage ~ It's not stopping all the breakage but I think it's making my hair stronger!
8. Creates silkiness ~ I feel like this is a lot like smoother hair and yes it's silkier!
9. enhances natural body ~ I'm not sure I agree with this one because my hair is still pretty flat however I only really spray it on my ends.
10. prevents split ends ~ This I can't really say for sure off hand. Sorry.
So that's how it's been working for me. All in all I feel like it's a really good, healthy product for my hair and I  encourage you all to try it out! Oh and it also smells DELICIOUS. It smells like a hairdresser, kind of. Maybe all hairdressers smell different but I love the smell of stuff my hairdresser uses in my hair and this smells like a profession product to me!

I hope you enjoyed, comments and feedback are always appreciated and encouraged!
Any products you've been loving or wanting to be reviewed? Feel free to e-mail me. Have a great day!

damagebegone@hotmail.com
-Ashley

December Favorites!

So although the cold dries out your hair a lot, I've been having a pretty good hair month after the discovery of some awesome products! Mostly my new shampoos and conditioners. So let's begin.

This is my new shampoo and conditioner, well some of my new shampoos and conditioners, I have a few. They are moroccan argan oil products as you can see. These products have done amazing things in my hair! I have a slight obsession with soft hair and these products made my hair UNBELIEVABLY soft and luscious  I would highly recommend them. Not only do they make your hair look and feel awesome but they are also very healthy for your hair because they're based on natural oils. So feel free to check them out!

Another shampoo and conditioner I've been using on my hair at the beginning of this month was my TRESemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture Shampoo and Conditioner. They also made my hair softer but what they really did for my hair was helped regain strength and moisture in my hair. I feel like they really brought back some life to my dead hair and helped to reduce dryness during the cold winter season. So if you're having trouble with very damaged hair I'd highly suggest these products. Also the conditioner is silicone free and shampoo has lower sulfates. 

I'm continuing to enjoy my Chi Shine Infusion spray. Especially for when my hair dries out in the winter months it really brings life and moisture back into my hair! I would highly recommend this product as a shine spray, it works very well.

This is the last product I'll be listing today. It's one of the shampoos I'm really loving this last month. It did the same as my other Argan shampoo. It really made my hair a lot softer and nicer to work with, and again it's really good for your hair!

Hope you enjoyed!