Hair is important.

When it comes to HAIR products, I admit that I go a little out of the way, spend a little bit more, to get the products I want.

I think hair is very important, even more important than make-up because hair is well, always on your head. Also, hair shapes your face and brings out different looks from you. Damaged hair is inevitable, especially if you're like me and chemically damage your hair from time to time. I've dyed my hair too many times to count on every one of my fingers, but I can tell you that hair DOES grow back and it will get healthier. You just have to take good care of it and sometimes that means investing a little.

I'll show you the products I use for my everyday/every time I wash my hair.

Oh yeah I dyed my hair PINK last week. It started off like this. SUPER VIBRANT.

And a week later, somehow it faded a shit ton. Oh well. It was cool while it lasted
but I admit that I like this toned down pink more. It's kinda multi-faceted!

Organix: cherry blossom ginger Shampoo
You can purchase this shampoo at most drug stores and super markets here in Cali and they retail for about $5-7 each.
So yes, it's pretty expensive for a small bottle of shampoo. It looks nice though. 

I don't know what it is about the word "RICE MILK" but for some reason, it makes me think it's great for my hair lol

SO...is it worth it?

Well, I'm not really sure if any of these "organic" ingredients are actually helping my hair at all. It's supposed to be
an organic shampoo without harsh chemicals but that usually means that if you're hair is chemically damaged,
it's not going to do much to help the texture of your hair. It might be healthy for your hair but it's not going
to really make it look nice.

This one was okay. I give it a grade of B simply because it smells awesome and it makes my hair pretty damn shiny.
The only downside to this shampoo is that it makes my hair kinda brittle and leaves it very thick. Not the best for my
damaged hair but I think it's a pretty good shampoo for ordinary hair.

Grade: B-

Since my hair was dyed PINK and is now fading to a slight blonde/brown color, I want it to not have that brassy orange
tone to my hair like what most Asians get when they dye their hair blonde of any kind. The orange is pretty inevitable
unless you are slowly bleaching your way to a champagne blonde, which is not very easy to be honest. Unless you have alot of money to spend at the salon or want to damage your hair relentlessly, getting that ashy blonde all the time is not the bees knees.

My recommendation? Using blue shampoo.

So the cool thing about John Frieda's SHEER BLONDE 'Color Renew' Shampoo is that the shampoo really is BLUE in color. In case you don't know the significance of that, blue is used in bleaches, some dyes, and hair products to correct the tone of BLONDES that are chemically altered. It's really just a simple color logic approach. Blue cancels out orange and yellow because it's a COOL tone. If you want ashy color or champagne blonde, you need to have a COOL tone to your hair. Orange, yellow, and red are WARM tones so using the blue shampoo helps cool down the brassiness of the orange or yellow in dyed blonde hair.

Does it work?

To be honest, I've used this shampoo before. Albeit, it's again, pretty pricey for a small tube of this stuff but I think it's worth it if it works. Retailing at about $7-10 a bottle, I say this can actually work for you after 3-5 washes. I wouldn't recommend washing with it every time though because it tends to dry out my hair a lot.

GRADE: B+

TSUBAKI is a shampoo line by the well known Japanese cosmetics company, SHISEIDO.
You can buy this shampoo online. Amazon even sells them from their Shiseido store and it's about the same price you would find in a Japanese market. I got these from my go-to J-Mart, which is Marukai in Little Tokyo. They sell it for about $15 a large bottle like these. The cool thing is that you can buy refill shampoo which comes in packets for a few bucks less instead of buying these huge bottles again.

Hands down, THIS IS MY FAVORITE SHAMPOO+CONDITIONER thus far. And trust me, I've used MANY shampoos on my hair, expensive or cheap, and this has by far done the best for my very damaged hair.

Now I know it sounds pricey, but if you think about it, salons try to sell you TOP NOTCH shampoos for about $20. And even they are not always that great, depending on the hair you have. If you go to the super market, they sell some high tier shampoos too like NEXXUS, which retails for about the same price and same amount.
I've actually tried NEXXUS before and to be honest, I think it's really hyped up. I've used better shampoo from SUAVE that have the same effect on my hair. Expensive doesn't always mean BEST QUALITY when it comes to shampoo, because most companies that make shampoo use the same kind of ingredients but with different scents and what not.
What's different about TSUBAKI's shampoo line is that they use tsubaki amino oil in their shampoo. Basically Tsubaki is a scent-less flower, but it's very soft and very velvet like. The same kind of ingredient is put into the shampoo and it works really well on Asian damaged hair like mine. There are different kinds of the Tsubaki line but they all use this Tsubaki amino ingredient which works WONDERS on my hair.

I seriously think that if you want to have nice hair after damaging it so much, you should make the investment and get this stuff. You won't regret it. This is my 2nd bottle of the shampoo and it is hands down my favorite. The shampoo is very silky, very light and not THICK and even without conditioner, the shampoo lathers really nicely into my hair. It feels really manageable and soft while I'm shampooing and that's before I condition!

GRADE: A++

I bought this after I recently dyed my hair because I wanted a shampoo that might
help the color be preserved. I like Infusium's leave in treatment products so I
thought I'd give the conditioner a try.

To be honest, the conditioner is very thick and does not leave the hair very
silky or soft like my Tsubaki does. But I do feel like the color is a little more
vibrant after I brush my hair and blow dry it. But it leaves my hair looking
damaged so I don't know if it's worth it for my hair but I can say that it does
make your colors look nicer.

GRADE: C

Once a week I do the Neuance airy treatment for my hair. It's supposed to be
for the last 15cm of your hair, helping the damaged ends fix themselves so
that your hair can grow faster and not be too damaged at the ends.

I've read some reviews on this product before on bloggers who use Japanese
products and I always see a bad review on them. I used it for myself and I
don't know if it's really repairing my split ends or anything but the last
few inches of my hair does look a little better after each apply. Then I realized
why people are giving it bad reviews.

You're not supposed to use it on your WHOLE head. You're supposed to use it
on the roots of your hair and on the very last few inches of your hair. It's not
a HAIR MASK and it is intended to be used for the most damaged areas.
I did try using it on my whole head and I can see where they are coming from.
No, this little bottle is intentioned to be used on specific areas of your hair
so be sure to read the instructions thoroughly or go online and translate it
whenever you buy foreign products. Just because it's from JAPAN or from KOREA
doesn't mean it's quality. I think people need to understand that before they go
out and expect a product to be wonderful lol

Grade: B

And lastly, after I'm done shampooing and conditioning my hair, I let my hair towel dry for about 5-10 minutes. Once it gets damp and is no longer dripping, I take my blow dryer, spray the 44 IRON GUARD onto my hair, and proceed to blow dry with warm setting.

The CHI products are supposed to be TOP NOTCH Salon quality hair products. They are pretty expensive. I think the Keratin mist is about $24 and the Iron Guard was about $17ish or so. I know, it sounds really pricey but again, if you want to keep nice hair, you have to invest in products for it. What a
pain in the ass right? But I just recently got these two products and I THINK they are doing alright. The CHI KERATIN MIST is an all over hair mist that you are supposed to leave in your hair after you dry it or after you wash your hair. It's a leave-in treatment.
The IRON GUARD is supposed to be used before you use heated appliances on your hair, like hair dryer, straighteners, or curlers. It's supposed to help protect your hair from the damage the heat does to your hair. I think it does work because my hair doesn't look as f*cked up as it used to when I usually straighten or blow dry my hair but also, the product makes your hair kinda funky, like you used gel on it or something. Not a lot, but some parts of my hair start feeling sticky and kinda hard, but it's not that bad.

For the price, it's a little so-so. But I think it does what it's supposed to do. If it were a bit cheaper, I'd give it an A but because it's so expensive for the normal consumer, I'm sure there are other products out there that are cheaper, that do the same trick.

GRADE: C+


That's all for now!

+Lo+