Curls & fl0ps

Hellu,

I mentioned in my previous post that not all expensive beauty products are worth it and that very much includes hair stuff. Sometimes free items can surprise you!

Garnier Fructis curl treats VoxBox

A little “before” picture to compare later^ I’ll start with the free goodies I received from Influenster for review. Finally, something I was genuinely excited about! They have surveys prior to sending out boxes and most of the time it’s something kind of obscure that I’m hit or miss just judging before I try them, but this time I was looking forward to testing the items right away. They’re leave-in stylers and I always air dry my hair with products to style like mousse. I never blow dry my hair and I’ve come to never heat style it anymore. So let me share my experiences with these two tubs with y’all…

Jelly “shaping” for all hair types

This was my second favorite in the box (meaning I preferred the other), but it still did a great job at styling and holding my curls. The jelly may have had a stronger effect simply because it’s meant for all hair types, but I found it difficult to use the correct amount for my mass of hair because the texture isn’t my favorite. On with the pros & cons!

Pros: it holds the curls well so once it’s spread on the specific strands- they stay styled, it’s great for scrunching the ends to create spirals, it smells very tropical, since I don’t want a ton of gel in my hair- this tub will last me quite a long time

Cons: the consistency is super goopy and hard to get out of the tub to spread between hands/fingers in order to apply, leaves hair feeling crunchy in places with a decent amount of product, hard to brush through once worn for the whole day

Final rating: 6/10

Smoothie “defining” for fine-normal hair

This was the big win from the box! Even though this product has some negatives, it’s definitely one I will continue to use now that I’ve tried it a few times differently. I tried to follow the instructions on the first try and didn’t see much result of a styler at all and I think that’s because it’s meant for fine to normal hair which is NOT what I have. I doubled (or tripled) up the amount the second & third time testing it out and the last time I separated sections of my hair to apply it fully. That final way seemed to work the best and I don’t think it’s the product’s fault at all, but simply the mass of hair I have to actually style…

Pros: pleasant consistency, creamy texture that’s easy to spread between hands/fingers to apply, leaves my hair feeling soft throughout the day

Cons: using more product than instructed means it won’t last as long as intended (but it’s free so w/e), separating my hair into 4-5 sections to apply is a bit time consuming

Final rating: 8/10

Compare- jelly (top); smoothie (bottom)

My overall opinion of this box has only changed from excited to content with. Neither product really worked as I expected simply from my first look at them when the package arrived. I think their “purposes” would be more accurate if they were swapped. In my experiences, the jelly was more defining and the smoothie was more shaping! I know I’ll be using both of these again in the future, but the smoothie much more often than the jelly.

Rating for the box itself would be a 9/10 because how can you go wrong with 2 giant tubs of useable hair products for FREE?!

Function of Beauty personalized shampoo & conditioner set

For starters, so this doesn’t sound completely negative- I’m actually glad this wasn’t some magical “solve all my hair issues” product duo, because it means I can keep my vow of only buying these once to test them out. I’ve used them both as directed (4-5 times per week) for a little over a month, I’d say 6 weeks. You can see from the photo above that the conditioner is basically empty while I’ve barely made a dent in the shampoo. This is one of my biggest upsets with the company/product line itself. They say it’s a personalized shampoo & conditioner, but really it’s only customizable to certain aspects of your hair. I wasn’t able to change the ratio of shampoo to conditioner I got, so I was only able to try them as a set for as long as the conditioner lasted me. I used 2 pumps of the shampoo each wash and 15 of the conditioner because of how my hair is. The front/top part needs shampoo to keep away oils and flakes while the entire rest of my 24″ of hair needs the conditioner to maintain moisture, silkiness, and avoid tangles. The overall conclusion I came to after using these products regularly was that they really are a great idea, but as much as it’s personalized- it’s just not something for me. I would still recommend this to anyone who’s been curious to try it, but obviously I’d advise to buy the one time set. You don’t want to subscribe to something before you know whether it’ll work for you or not! It’s an awesome gift idea too if you and the recipient don’t mind it not being a surprise…

In my opinion, this company and the items I received would get a rating of 6.5/10 for the main reason of price and also since I could only use the duo for a little over a month, I didn’t see any hair-changing results from the shampoo & conditioner.

More curl inspo ^

In case you missed it, I unbagged and tried on my first 2 months of Ipsy in this past Tuesday’s post: Ipsy: first impressi0ns

I also forgot to leave the referral code from them for you all. So if you’d like to subscribe, you can use this link HERE

As always, thanks so much for reading!