Beauty Blog kick-off!

In my never-ending hunt to find fabulous beauty buys, I find myself spending hours upon hours looking at reviews for different foundations and skincare products to help improve my natural self. What do these other bloggers have in common with moi? We are all product fiends.

As I scroll through endless pages of beauty reviews I think to myself "I have products...I also have opinions...I should start a blog!" And so, here I am. I aim to go through all the products in my arsenault and review each one on a detailed basis in hopes that my reviews will help you determine if a product is right for you. As I find more products to spend my money on, I will review those too!

To kick-off my first review, this is something tried and true and most blogs don't cover...HAIR EXTENSIONS! While I'm no expert by any means, I have done my lot of research on various methods and ended up trying two different methods for hair extensions. Read on if you dare, it's a fairly lengthy review from start to finish about my experiences.

So here's a little bit about my hair to begin with just so you have a good idea. I'm Asian (as if you couldn't tell by my profile picture), fine hair but lots of it, can't keep a good style in place without a can of hairspray (sorry environment, I need big hair!), and have never been had my hair grow out past my shoulders. I figured I needed to venture into the realm of having long, luscious hair for once and thus began my quest for hair extensions.

I'm cheap when it comes to some things and also a DIY (do-it-yourself) gal. My first experience with hair extensions was purchasing a set off 200 micro-link loop hair extensions off of ebay (yes ebay, I purchased my wedding dress off ebay and have never had a bad experience), easy to use, easy to install all with only having to pay $200 instead of $1200. The microlinks are basically metal tubes with or without a silicone lining, a small section of your hair gets pulled through and you clamp the metal tube down securing your hair and the extension hair. Install time: longer than it should have taken haha, approximately 5 hours. Sleeping on these extensions the first night HURT, being that they're metal...and also being that I installed them a little too close to my scalp. Wearing the hair the next day was awful, it felt so heavy and uncomfortable so I decided to uninstall that morning. Yup, I had hair extensions for less than a day and couldn't cut it then. I don't need metal digging into my head every night thank you very much!

On to my second experience with extensions, I did a lot of research (and my a lot, I mean at least a year) and was looking for a method that would damage my natural hair very little. I've heard horror stories about fusion, and while this seems like the best method out there, the thought of putting acetone in my hair to remove the extensions made me cringe just a bit, I can't change my precious hair falling out so I couldn't bring myself to do this method. I came across a method called Manemaxx (http://www.manemaxx.com/) and this was about the least damaging method to hair I've seen. No chemicals to install, no chemicals to remove. It turns out the bond is somewhat like a wax that just holds the hair in place without using heat to fuse it to your hair. The kit itself was cheap in comparison to going to a salon...the catch...it's a DIY process. Anyways, after all is said and done, I bought my kit and proceeded with my first install...which I might add took my 8 gruelling hours of sitting in a chair, I had the bruises to prove it!

I was a little impatient and didn't perfect the method like I should have, but had great results anyways. The color match for my hair was dead on, and after my install and after getting a quick cut to blend my hair, it looked completely natural...or so everyone had told me ;) Finally, the first time in my entire life I had long, luscious hair! I got compliments left, right and centre (and up and down too) and I knew this was the perfect method for me.

So the hair length I started with is the photo at the top of the page, this is me AFTER the Manemaxx install (rockin' some $8 ebay shades baby).

Long story short (kinda), I did an un-install of the hair after 3 months of wear and proud to report that there was absolutely no damage to my natural hair (woo hoo!). This is my natural hair after 3 months of wearing extensions. So all-in-all, I'm loving my Manemaxx hair! I did another install right after I uninstalled because I love them so much and need at least a year more to grow my hair out. And the picture to the right now is my second install using pre-curled hair instead of straight.