The Scary Hair (color) Incident - Garnier Olia Review

I had a few people ask me to share my home hair color horror story, so here goes.  First of all, I just want to say that I really like Garnier products, never had an issue with any of them and I certainly don't want this to be a hate filled rant - but I do hate the Olia hair color product ;o)  Here's why:

Yeah, that's my hair the day after I colored it.  Like I said before, I've been coloring my hair at home for 20+ years and have never seen anything like this.  The aftermath was a weird patchwork of platinum, orange, fire engine red, burgundy and brown.

I always like trying new at home hair color products and when I saw the new Garnier Olia advertised with promises of oil powered color, little odor, etc, I knew that I was going to try it!  So off I went to the store to check out the red options.  There were only a couple in this line (first red flag - no pun intended).  Reds are tough, trust me I know.  I decided on this one:

I opened up the package and was met with this:

Second red flag - the developer wasn't already in the applicator bottle.  This gave me pause, because with most haircolor products the developer is already in the applicator bottle all perfectly pre-measured and ready for the color to be added.  I went ahead and squeezed the developer in the applicator but it was thick and super hard to get out of the tube.  I felt I couldn't get all of it in the applicator, which made me uneasy.  I then added the colorant and shook it up as directed.  It really didn't want to mix.  It was gloopy and splotchy but it finally appeared to be mixed.  I applied it as directed and as I normally do with any at home color.  But I noticed that as the color was running out, the more the mixture appeared to be more developer than color.  Weird.

Tick, tock, tick, tock - time to wash it out.  Took an amazingly long time to get the color out, I've never had so much red left on a towel after washing the color out in my life.  Like a crime scene.  It looked odd, but it was still wet and I decided to let it air dry and see what happened then.  Well, you've seen the results.  I was gobsmacked.  I had no idea WTF happened - or how to fix it.

Long story, short, I decided to go and get Clairol's temporary haircolor with no ammonia in a brown shade to try and tone down the crazy red and even out the blonde/yellow/oranges.  It worked good enough, not great, not perfect, but okay for now.  Luckily reds fade quickly and even after all this time/additional color the Olia is still washing out leaving my towels with a lovely reddish hue when I dry my hair.  Insane.

That all being said, I've seen several people use this brand and love the results, of course they weren't using the red.  Needless to say I won't be using this color ever again. 

As for what I will be using, these are the products that I've been super pleased with and would recommend:

L'Oreal Feria

Hands down the best color in my opinion.  They have a ton of shades to choose from.  I've been using it on and off since it came out years ago.  Delivers a gorgeous, vibrant, natural looking color.  Here's how my hair looked after a Feria coloring a few months ago using the color on the box above:

Gorgeous, right?  And delivered exactly the color promised.  This was an Instagram picture so excuse the quality.

Clairol Nice N' Easy foam

Super easy to apply and reliable results.  Not as intense of a red as I like, but delivers a lovely, natural hue.

So there you go.  Have any of you tried Olia yet?  What are your thoughts?  Any other at home haircolor products to you love (or hate)?  Anybody else had a color disaster?  Do tell!

Happy Weekend!

What a crazy past couple of weeks.  Here's a bit of what's been going on.

As everyone knows Google Reader is going bye-bye as of July 1st.  Thanks Google.  Really, I mean thanks for throwing a wrench in my blog reading/organization world.  Jerks.  Anyway, feel free to hop over and follow me on Bloglovin'.  They are making it super easy to import all your Reader info (it takes a minute, seriously).  I also signed up for Feedly to just have another RSS Reader option (they are making it easy to import your Reader info too).

I signed up for Bloggy Boot Camp in Charlotte!

I'm so excited!  I'm ready to reignite my blogging fire and learn a lot of useful information.  Because, duh, I've been a super slacker blogger lately.  Is anyone else going to be there?  Let me know!

This happened:

I tried a new at-home haircolor and it messed up my hair in the most epic way, I had no less than 4 different colors at random locations around my head.  In over 20 years of coloring my hair at home, nothing like this has ever happened.  And you can tell from the picture how silky smooth my hair was after coloring *ahem*.  I'm debating on doing a post about this, I don't want to be crazy mean to the company, but the issues with this product are multifold.  Would you be interested in reading about it?

And lastly, kudos for PopSugar for taking over Shopstyle and rendering the site virtually impossible to use.  That's why I  haven't been able to do any outfit stuff because I can't create a layout for love or money.  I have emailed, tweeted, DM'ed, screamed, used two computers, a tablet, 3 different browsers and still the site is basically useless to me.  To say I'm angry would be an understatement.  Is anyone else having issues with the site?  It can't just be me.

Boy, I'm all sour grapes today.  Well, it all can't be rainbows and unicorn farts.  On to a better week next week!  Have a great weekend!

My Fall 2013 Picks!

Fall 2013 RTW picks on Pinterest

The weeks and weeks of Fall 2013 ready-to-wear presentations are now over and I've combed through every. single. collection.  No lie (I mean I haven't been a good blogger because I've been looking at collections every night - I love it!).  I have finished pinning all of my favorite looks, details, and accessories.  We are talking 1,099 pins.  Wow!  So pop over and take a look at all of my favorites.  I just love seeing them all in one place and I hope you do too!

Have a great weekend!

NYFW Fall 2013 Trends - Color

As I finished looking at the images from NY Fashion week a couple of color trends popped out at me.  These aren't new or groundbreaking, but I made note of them because they have been around and will continue to be around.  First up, cobalt blue!

 

Love that this color is sticking around! It's just so happy and sophisticated.

 

Next up, vivid pinks!

 

Every pink from pastel to neon, they all are represented.

 

This by no means are all the color trends, just ones that jumped out at me (and certainly these are ones that you can find now and wear this Spring and Summer with no problem at all).  I'll be back with more as London, Milan and Paris wrap up.  I'm pinning away every day on my Fall 2013 Pinterest board - check it out for more great picks!

 

Images in collage via Style.com

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Source: Uploaded by user via Jenny on Pinterest

My Pre-Fall 2013 Picks

The Pre-Fall 2013 Pinterest board is complete and full of gorgeous picks!

My Spring 2013 Couture Picks

I'm going to mix things up a bit with my picks from each fashion season.  Instead of doing a post with my five (or more or less) picks per show, I decided to put all my picks from every show on a Pinterest board created specifically for that season.

Let's start with my Spring 2013 Couture board.

I think this makes more sense because you can see all my faves at one time whenever needed.  I'm a visual person and it's nice to be able to scroll through and see any trends (color, cut, pattern) that start to appear.  It also plays into my wanting to create a bit more original content for the blog (which is slow going).  I would also like to do more runway looks for less for each season too (anyone remember when I used to do the "my take" posts? Yeah, long time ago).  I want to get back to that sort of thing.  So I'll put together a little graphic like the one above to let you know when I'm finished with my picks and the season's board is "complete".  So head over and check it out!