Live Clean Oil

Ok ok, I’m a blogger failure. Just know I acknowledge my recent absences from blogging and I feel a pang on guilt every time I think about it. Things have been crazy busy for me, and I think the next few weeks will be sort of the same, but coming up I’m moving into a full time position at a job, so some semblance of a schedule will start to form in my world, making blogging time an easier fit. Things get hard when you work multiple jobs and have recreational spots and significant others.

To get back into the groove of things, I wanted to talk about a product that I really have been enjoying using.

Live Clean Professional Miracle Nutrition Oil – $9.99 CAD

I super randomly picked up this oil while on a shopping trip to the Real Canadian Superstore. At the time I didn’t even know that Live Clean had come out with a ‘professional’ line, but I was excited to see a hair treatment at a very affordable price. The dual coloured oil really suckered me into the purchase. It’s just so pretty! The packaging is nice and functional for the product, the pump ensures that you don’t end up getting oil all over the place, or all over the bottle.

When you shake up the bottle, the oil turns into a gorgeous orange shade. About a pump and a half is enough to coat the mid to end lengths of my hair. I’ve even used this on my scalp when I was desperate for a little TLC. This is a pre-shower treatment, meaning you coat your hair with the oil, throw it up in a bun, and let it soak in for about 10 minutes before you shampoo it out. This oil is awesome, it’s not super slippery, and it washes out really nicely. And I’d just like to take a moment and talk about the scent. OH MY GOSH the scent is so amazing. It smells really light, kind of fruity, and kind of floral as well. It smells so good, and if you’re careful to not douse your hair in shampoo the scent sticks around.

I’ve found that with this treatment, I can eliminate any need for a hair conditioner. I like to put this in my hair, then shampoo it out and be on my way. The oil washes out really nicely and I haven’t found it to leave my hair feeling greasy or weighed down, which is a huge bonus. I’ve tried a few other products from the professional line from Live Clean and I’m really liking what I’m seeing.

Talk soon,

Xx Brianna

Elf Blush Palette

Today’s post is a fun one. Blush is by far the most fun cosmetic to buy (in my little world, at least). And what’s more fun than a blush palette with 4 gorgeous blushes?! I was doing the usual spending an hour in the Real Canadian Superstore beauty section looking at their newly re-vamped brand list. The world has answered my hopes and dreams and FINALLY started carrying Milani and Wet n Wild, and a bigger ELF section. I picked up the ELF blush palette after seeing some buzz on the internet.

ELF Studio Blush Palette in Light – $8.00 CAD

Your eyes are not betraying you, that’s a blush palette that contains 4 blushes for only 8 bucks. Here in Canada we get royally screwed with dollar conversions. When our dollar is awesome things are still more expensive, when our dollar is the pits (like right now) things are even more expensive. Americans have it good, that’s all I’ll say. Anyways, tangent aside, 4 blushes for 8 dollars is still a great deal.

The palette contains 4 blushes: a cool toned bright matte pink, a warm terracotta matte brown, a warm matte pink, and a shimmery coral. The blush palette is a pretty decent size with a very nice sized mirror in the lid. What’s really cool about this palette is that each pan pops out, so you can mix and match with the other ELF palettes (foundation palette, contouring palette, etc). Each pan is very decently sized, and pops in and out pretty easily from the back. You could even stick on a magnet and add these blushes to a z-palette.

Texture wise, these blushes are really nice. Surprisingly nice. They’re soft, but not too soft, and don’t kick up any fall out when you tap your brush into the product. They’re just that perfect consistency where they give you nice colour pay off, but you don’t have to be insanely careful about applying them. The lasting power is also really lovely. I’ve applied each of these blushes to bare cheeks (unpowdered) and they’ve lasted me all day without any touch ups.

Swatched above are the blushes in clockwise order. You can see the first 3 shades which are all matte have really awesome pigmentation. The last one that has some shimmer particles running through it is the least pigmented of the 4, but it’s still a really gorgeous colour. Not going to lie I kept staring at that brown shade and thinking there’s no way that’s going on my cheeks. It runs really warm, I compared it to all my bronzers and it was significantly more warm toned, but I gave it a shot and I was very pleasantly surprised. Sometimes you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone, you know?

Below are photos of me wearing each blush, I’ve photographed them in the same order as the swatches above. (If you’re wondering why my hair looks jacked up in these photos, read here).

I had to colour correct the last photo just a smidge as the sun was straight BEAMING into my room and it was crazy orange, but the colour of the blush shows true. Overall I’m really loving this palette, especially for summer. I find myself reaching for it all the time, and I’m very very curious about the contouring palette.

Talk soon,

Xx Brianna

Hair Help!

This blog post is a touchy subject for me. I don’t really have a quirky intro for this blog post, so I’ll just get right into it. Since about the middle of May, my hair has basically been falling out in handfuls. I’m not trying to be dramatic when I say this, it’s just unfortunately the ugly truth. I first started noticing in the shower that when I washed my hair, there was a lot coming out (I like to stick any hair that comes out to the wall to keep it from clogging up the drain). This went on for a couple of weeks. One day I was running a straightening iron through my hair and I noticed that there was a TON of hair on the floor. And so began my realization that my hair was falling out. Majorly. When I ran my hands through my hair, nothing but handfuls of hair would come out. It’s been really disheartening.

Now I know it’s just hair and in the grand scheme of all of the terrible, horrible things that happen in this world, your hair falling out doesn’t even register on the richter scale. But when your body starts to betray you like that with no warning, it’s really scary. I immediately started thinking back to the beginning of the year, as I know that stress can cause your hair to fall out. I’ve had a rough go this year, between medical things like getting my wisdom teeth out, starting a new job, and some other un-fun adult stuff, I realized that it had been almost exactly 3 months since I had gotten my wisdom teeth out. Some may say this is an easy procedure, but I’ve been crazy lucky to be really healthy my whole life, and this was the most traumatic thing my body had been through.

I began obsessively researching stress related hair loss, and what I found seemed to relate to my situation. What I learned is that your hair goes through phases of growth, resting, and shedding. When you go through a stressful event, emotionally or physically, a bigger percentage of your hair gets shocked into going into a ‘resting phase’ that lasts for about 3 months. After that resting phase, all of that hair sheds off. Though it was relieving to research that what I was experiencing seemed to fit the stress hair loss situation, it was still really stressful, for the lack of a better term.

What was really unnerving about this situation is that I could never stop thinking about it. If I left my hair down, every time I would look down there would be a ton of hair on my shirt. If I put my hair up there was some temporary mind relief, but if I took my hair down to re-do a pony tail, I’d be pulling out clumps with the hair band. My hair loss is quite literally always on my mind. Don’t even get me started on washing it. When I wash my hair, that seems to be when the most comes out. I’ll sit in the bathroom for over half an hour just procrastinating because washing my hair is very, very stressful.

I went to my doctor to make sure there was nothing funny going on. He assured me I would not go bald and that ‘sometimes hair just falls out’… whatever that’s supposed to mean. My blood work all came back normal, so there’s nothing deficiencies going on. It is, however, still happening, and it’s almost been 3 months, so according to my research all of this should be ending some time soon. I can only hope. In the mean time I’ve been using a lot of products targeting a healthy scalp so I can put my mind at ease knowing I’m at least doing something.

It has been a very tough couple of months. I’m thinking if this incessant hair shedding ever stops, I’m going to treat myself to getting my hair done.

To wash my hair, I’ve been using the Jason Normalizing Tea Tree Shampoo. This is supposed to balance the scalp and keep any funny business like dandruff from wreaking havoc on your scalp. From what I’ve read, the fungus that causes dandruff doesn’t cause hair loss, but lots of aggressive scratching can make that happen, and I don’t want to loose any more hairs than I have to. This has been a really solid shampoo that makes my hair feel clean, and my scalp nice and fresh. I’ve also been using the Live Clean Professional Healthy Balance Conditioner. This conditioner I have noticed to make the biggest difference so far. I rub this into my scalp and let it sit for a good 5 minutes or so. This doesn’t make my hair greasy or stringy, and really soothes my scalp. This has a really non-offensive scent, and rinses out of the hair beautifully. I usually never put conditioner on my scalp, but with this mess going on, I’ve made an exception.

Treatment wise, I’ve been loving the Live Clean Professional Miracle Nutrition Oil as a pre-shower treatment. This is one of those oils that is two separate colours, and when you mix them together it turns into this orange oil. I put in a few pumps of this into the lengths of my hair, and even on my scalp, about 10 minutes before my shower and then shampoo it out. This is really lovely, and it smells so amazing! This is the best smelling product I have used in ages and I love it purely for the scent, not to mention the moisturizing properties. Lastly, after I get out of the shower I’ve been putting the Josie Maran Argan Oil Hair Serum in my towel dried hair. Since I find heat styling my hair to put me in the most depressed mood ever (because of all the hair loss that occurs), I’ve been just letting my hair air dry.

All I can say is if this ever stops, my hair is going to be crazy healthy because I haven’t put any heat on my hair for over two months. Have any of you ever experienced stress related hair loss?

I’m very fortunate to have had extremely thick hair before this started, because I’m starting to feel like I have 7 hairs left.

Talk soon,

Xx Brianna