Perfectly Polished Tips 201 - Sultra Cleanse & Condition Hair Moisturizer

As I have mentioned on here before my hair is thick, curly/wavy, and color treated. I am terrible at remembering to deep condition, I'm lucky if I remember once every six weeks. I don't flat iron my hair nearly as often as I used to but when I do it often looks fried. I do use a heat protecting spray but I really think I need to cut a lot off and start from scratch. I'm not willing to do that...yet.

Recently I tested out Sultra's Cleanse shampoo and Condition Hair Moisturizer. Both are formulated with Sultra's exclusive ThermaStress Complex which is meant to mend and defend your hair while you heat style.

I love the Cleanse shampoo, it is creamy but not overly so, my hair and scalp are left feeling clean. It lathers well and reminds me shampoo used at a salon. Which also reminds me that I love having my hair washed by other people. :)

The conditioner was nice the first time around, my hair usually takes a few minutes of combing through to get completely untangled. This got the tangles out quickly and easily. Upon reading the ingredients though I noticed that it is full of silicone's, which are probably doing most of the protecting. I needed to use a clarifying shampoo in between uses, which is really no big deal.

I love the smell of both, it's island-y, maybe some coconut. Not over powering though, it didn't really linger on my hair but did on my daughter. I was sniffing her all day. I am a big fan of the packing style as well. I love black and hot pink together, that caught my eye immediately and even if I had no use for heat protective products I would still be drawn to them. I also liked that they are both in tubes. I hate getting to the bottom of a bottle of product and having to balance it up side down, I inevitably knock them down every single time I'm in the shower.

Sultra is known for their styling tools, they offer a great variety and their hair care line is designed to work with the tools. I don't own a Sultra flat iron though so I used a 1 inch Remington iron. I noticed that my hair was a lot easier to work with, I didn't need to comb through many pieces when sectioning. My hair was super smooth and soft. It didn't look fried, even on the ends which are in desperate need of a trim. I had static overload that day though so I didn't wear my hair down for very often. I couldn't take it sticking to everything.

The only down side for me was that because the conditioner is so heavy my hair looked greasy pretty quick. Normally I can leave my hair for 3 or 4 days before it starts looking gross. I had to shampoo and start over the next day, which is not a huge deal.

I also used the products when leaving my hair curly. We haven't had many cold days here as of late but a few mornings were chilly and going outside with wet hair is no fun. My curls fell flat mid day but I had tons less frizz than I would if I had just blow dried using my regular conditioner. It's nice that I can use both weather I am wearing my hair curly or straight.

Cleanse Shampoo and Condition Hair Moisturizer are available from Sultra.com, Nordstrom.com, and Brookstone.com and retail for $18 each. As of this morning Cleanse is not on their website, I'm not sure why. I am almost positive it was on there a couple weeks ago. You can find Sultra hot tools at Sephora as well as Sultra.com

(these were sent to me for review)


Please don't forget to check out my 200th post giveaway! You could win a set of Zoya Fleck Effects! It is running until Feb 2nd and I forgot to mention it the first time around but it is open to everyone, not just US.

Perfectly Polished Tips 184 - Jessicurl

Happy December! I cannot believe that it is already the last month of 2011. I feel like this year flew by. I've felt like that about the past couple of years actually. I was thinking about doing some sort of challenge for this month. Like how some wear a different red for each day or week of the month, but maybe with glitter? I don't love glitter and yet I somehow have an entire Helmer drawer devoted to it. Most untouched of course, so maybe if I can get myself to wear them I can get rid of a few.

Today's post is not about polish though. It's about hair. I have thick but fine, dry, curly/wavy hair. It is currently just about bra strap length. For about 10 years I flat ironed my hair a few times a week. I just didn't know how to style it properly and wearing it straight solved that. After a bleaching mishap I was left with dried out straw and decided it was probably time to start taking better care of my hair. Googling lead me to the curly girl method which involves using only conditioner to cleanse your hair. You can read more about it here. NaturallyCurly.com is also a great resource. Google also lead me to Jessicurl products. They are gentle and all natural and they also smell amazing. There are several cleansers, conditioners, and styling products. I tried out the Light & Luminous collection and the Rich & Radiant collection. I absolutely love the Too Shea conditioner and Rocking Ringlets Styling Potion.

I tried the Light collection first and even with following the directions to a tee my hair fell flat by the time it was completely dry. The same thing happened with the Rich & Radiant collection. I have since watched a few of the videos on the Jessicurl website and I think maybe I was not using enough styling product. I'm out of Rocking Ringlets though so I've been using Confident Coils Styling Solution with a Garnier hair gel. I will have to get more RR and try again. I also adore the Deep Conditioning treatment. Nothing has ever made my hair as soft and shiny as this stuff.

I was very disappointed that I could not get the products to work for me. Over the past year I have been working towards a more natural life style. Which means looking for products with the least amount of harmful chemicals and ones that do not contain animal products or by products. No animal testing is also important to me. I was very excited to see a brand geared towards curly hair that fit my needs. My daughter also happens to have curly hair so I thought I would try it out on her. She uses the Hair Cleansing Cream, Aloeba Daily Conditioner, Confident Coils, and Awe Insprialing Spray (for 2nd day hair). Jessicurl products have made quite the difference in her hair. I'm glad they worked for one of us!

Here she is pre-Jessicurl:

Freshly washed with Hair Cleansing Cream & Aloeba. I use a pea sized amount of the Confident Coils:

Second day hair spray with Awe Inspiraling Spray & gently scrunched:

I would recommend Jessicurl products to everyone. The owner Jess is very nice and was very helpful over emails. You can purchase everything listed here at Jessicurl.com, or through NaturallyCurly.com. The Jessicurl website also has a salon locator.

(these were sent to me for review)