Tag Archives: leave-in

[SR] Essential CC Oil and Night Care Milk

This is quite an overdued post as I’ve been rather busy with the last few weeks of my pregnancy. It is probably also my last entry before I pop and I expect it to be some time before I will have time again to do reviews.

I’ve always been using Essential’s leave in serum/milk since it first appeared on the shelf. After the first update, the pink and orange bottles became a day and night use serum/milk. I continued using the orange bottle (night milk) because the formulation was closer to the previous version. Essential has improved the formulation again and I was invited to try the new products. Thanks Essential and The Sample Store!

Introducing Essential’s new CC Oil and Night Care Milk! I’m quite sure you’ve heard of how heat styling, perming and dyeing your hair too much can damage it, but I’m not sure if you’re aware that there are external environmental factors and some everyday habits that can affect your hair’s health as well. That’s where Essential’s CC Oil and Night Care Milk come in to help protect your hair from these nasty factors.

The Five Hair Stresses:

  1. Blow-drying — This process removes moisture from both inside and outside of the hair leaving it dry, brittle and susceptible to further damage.
  2. Combing — Combing through wet hair causes damage to hair follicles as they are in their most fragile state. Friction from combing through dry hair can form hair knots and make hair prone to breakage.
  3. Split Ends — Fraying of hair shaft particularly at the ends which are the oldest and driest parts.
  4. Hair Breakage — Daily actions such as tying your hair into a tight ponytail or twirling your hair round your finger can exert excessive stress on your hair, resulting in breakage.
  5. Dryness — Hair cuticles that are weakened from excessive exposure to sun, wind or even air conditioning can cause dryness.

Essential’s CC (Cuticle Care) Oil is meant to protect your hair from these five stresses. It shares the same ‘multi-functional’ concept of BB or CC cream in cosmetic products. What the CC Oil does is to form a protective layer around each hair strand, leaving you with less tangly and more manageable hair.

Use the CC Oil on towel-dried or damp hair. Spread it evenly in your hair, concentrating on the mid-length to the tips. There is no need to rinse the oil off.

There’s also another factor which can harm your hair that you might be unaware of. Every night while you sleep, your hair rubs against your pillow. The friction can cause damage to your hair. You know how sometimes you wake up with your hair all frizzy, looking like a lion’s mane? Pillow friction causes misaligned cuticles which creates that frizz. While washing your hair can get rid of that ‘big hair’, why go through the hassle every morning when you can have more beauty sleep?

That’s where Essential’s Night Care Milk comes in. It is formulated to protect your hair against pillow friction by forming a protective coat around each hair strand and preventing misaligned cuticles when your hair rubs against the pillow.

Use the Night Care Milk on towel-dried or damp hair, or before blow-drying. It can also be used on dry hair. Spread and apply the milk evenly onto your hair, concentrating on the mid-length to the tips. There is no need to rinse the product off. For better results, do make sure that your hair is completely dry before going to sleep.

Both products come with Cuticle Care Protection that leaves hair smooth and tangle free all day. They also contain hair supplement oil which is similar to your hair’s natural oil.

I’ve always had great faith in Essential’s leave-in products. Wasn’t disappointed this time as well. Because I couldn’t go rebond my hair while pregnant, I’ve been relying a lot on leave-in products to ‘cure’ my dry and frizzy ends. I found the CC Oil a little too light but definitely didn’t leave an oily, clumpy feel after usage. Much preferred the Night Care Milk which is rich yet non-greasy. Definitely saw a difference in the morning.

Both products are retailing at $11.90.

Remember I mentioned the five hair stresses earlier? Essential has created five characters to represent the hair stresses…

There’s Badass Breakage Stress, Brazen Blow-drying Stress, Despicable Dryness Stress, Spiteful Split Ends Stress and Cruel Combing Stress.

Essential even created a Facebook game featuring the five stress brothers, the Pesky Pillow King and Mane Hero. Play the game and stand to win attractive prizes!

[SR] Tsubaki Hair Oil

Another review of a sponsored product! Thanks Tsubaki and The Sample Store!

This time it’s a hair care product — Tsubaki Hair Oil.

Tsubaki is a hair care product line by Shiseido Japan. If you’re not familiar with the language, “tsubaki” is “camellia” in Japanese which is also the main ingredient in the products. This new product is to be used as a leave-in hair treatment. It is richly formulated with selected camellia oil to give a long-lasting shine to hair by penetrating deeply. It improves lustre, moisturises, as well as prevents and repairs damage to your hair. It is made to penetrate your hair instantly to give a light, non-greasy, and silky smooth feel. It also protects your hair against UV damage and blow-dry heat, and prevents split ends and breakage.

Here are some charts to see the results of using camellia oil on your hair:

Looks like I definitely could use some camellia oil. For those who know me, my hair is unlike most people’s. I always describe it as having a life of its own. I would love to have straight long dolly hair, but unfortunately I don’t. Instead, my hair is frizzy, damaged, and unruly. I have tried countless products at all ends of the price scale. Some work a little, some work for awhile and then don’t (I suspect my hair gets used to it), and some don’t even seem to work at all. I was rather skeptical about this hair oil and the wonders it could do to my hair. I’ll be happy even if it seems to work a little.

The product comes in a cute red bottle. Reminds me of those vintage perfume bottles. The oil itself has a very pleasant flowery scent.

So how do you apply it evenly to your hair? Here are the steps:

First, pour out the oil amounting to the size of a 20 cent coin (about 5-6 drops of oil from the bottle). That is the recommended amount for people with mid-length hair. I used more than that amount as my hair is really unruly and damaged. I divided my hair to two parts and used about the recommended amount for each side.

After pouring out the oil on your palm, rub both your palms together so that the oil is spread evenly on both palms.

Then, start spreading the oil by using a combination of these movements:
1) Combing your fingers through your hair
2) Scrunching sections of your hair (like in the picture above)
3) Sandwiching your hair in between your palms and sliding your hands down (like in the picture)

You should focus on the areas that require more care. For me, my scalp usually gets oily towards the end of the day but the ends of my hair remain dry and damaged. So, I don’t apply the oil at the roots but focus on the middle and especially the ends. Be careful not to use too much of the oil at one spot. I’ve had this experience with other leave-in conditioning products. I put too much at one area and it kinda caked up like as if I used hair gel or hair spray. It’s really gross.

There are two scenarios that you should take note of:

How to prevent flat hair (especially for those with soft and fine hair)
Refrain from applying a large amount of the oil. Start applying from the damaged tips and gradually work upwards to the roots to avoid flat hair.

How to reduce volume or prevent dry hair (especially those with thick and voluminous hair)
Apply an appropriate amount of oil to wet hair and dry it with a hair dryer. Then, spread a small amount of oil onto your palms and apply it to the bottom half of your hair to reduce the volume.

So what’s the verdict? Here’s the result of using the product on my (unruly) hair:

Tadaa! Omg…can you see the difference? Yes, that was my shitty dry and damaged hair before. After applying the hair oil, you can see that my hair has become a lot tamer and smoother. There’s also a shine to it. The ends are more defined and not lost in a ball of…erm…hair. I know this is not some miracle potion, so of course I didn’t expect it to permanently and suddenly transform my hair to the dolly smooth locks I wish for. But, it definitely did smoothen my hair and made it look a lot more manageable. What I really loved about the product is that it’s light-weight as it claims to be. It’s not like super greasy and gross. I also super love the smell. It’s like putting perfume in your hair. I really couldn’t stop smelling my hair after application.

So where can you buy the Tsubaki Hair Oil? It will be exclusively available at Watsons from Thursday, 11 September 2014 onwards! (That’s just two days from now!)

But wait! There’s more! Tsubaki will be holding a contest on Friday, 12 September 2014, so do keep a look out for it on their Facebook page. To participate in the contest, all you need to do is…