Beauty Blog

Is this you? "When my hair is blown dry in the salon, it always looks so healthy and shiny, but when I do it at home, I sometimes end up with a bunch of frizz and hair that looks dried out. Help!" Proper blow drying is gentle on your hair and leaves your hair with bounce and luster. Make sure your dryer has an adjustable temperature (at least, hot, medium & cool) and air stream (at least, high or low). Below are some other tips that will help you get the "salon quality" blow-dry you are look for. Pay special attention to #10...it's one of the best tips and the least used! If at all possible, don't use the high heat settings of your blow-dryer. The air stream should feel comfortable on the back of your hand. Keep your distance! Keep the hair dryer at least 8 inches away from your hair. If your hair is fine you should set the air stream to low. Otherwise, you may end up with tangles in your hair. Blow-dry every individual hair strand from the roots to the ends. This technique provides smooth cuticle layers, which are the basis for healthy, shiny, and well-protected hair. You should keep the blow-dryer moving constantly to avoid applying too much heat in a single spot. We recommend dividing the hair in several portions and securing the strands with large hair clips or grips. Work your way up blow-drying your hair from the neckline to the crown of your head so that you don't hit the same strand of hair multiple times. Most of us have to somehow live with the morning rush. Whenever you must speed up drying your hair use a higher setting for the air stream, not for the heat. Always use a heat protectant. These products help prevent blow-drying damage. Try not to blow-dry your hair immediately after shampooing. Ideally, you should allow your hair to first dry for 15 minutes under a towel turban. This saves effort and also cuts down on the hair exposure to the blow-dryer. The diffuser attachment of your blow-dryer spreads out a more even air stream. This also prevents exposing individual strands of hair to too much heat. Once you are done blow-drying your hair, briefly apply a stream of cool air. This cooling step gives your hair more elasticity.

Love your color? Keep it vibrant with Aloxxi Hair Care products. Aloxxi, founded by George Schaeffer responding to the needs of stylists who wanted expert hair care for their clients, Aloxxi used their collective expertise to develop products that are proven to give hair gorgeous healthy shine and maintain their color vibrancy. Aloxxi products have all of the things your hair needs and NONE of the ingredients you don't. The Care , the Style and the InstaBoost lines are free of Sulfates, Parabens, Gluten, Sodium Chloride, Ethanolamines, Phthalates, Talc, Microbeads, Aluminum Compounds, or Formaldehyde in their products that include Hydrating, Volumizing, Essential 7 Oil and Repair formulas. What Aloxxi products do contain is their proprietary ColourCare Complex infused with 10 nutrient rich antioxidants including Pomegranate, White Pine Bark, Grape Seed, Green Tea Leaf, Ginseng, Algae, Bearberry, Chamomile, Licorice Root and Coneflower Extracts, botanicals and oils to protect hair color between salon visits. The Care line provides Shampoo & Conditioner in formulas too meet every hair need, including Hydrating, Volumizing, Essential 7 Oil, Repair & the amazing Bombshell for body and incredible heat protection. All keep your color from fading as they create healthier, stronger hair. The Style products are designed to give you control and let you style without harming your hair. Whether you want just extraordinary shine or a volumizing grip, you've got it with Aloxxi! Aloxxi's Instaboost Conditioning Color Masque is to replace your conditioner after cleansing, depositing gorgeous color and providing intense nourishment and shine. These extra pigmented formulas add intense color to pre-lightened platinum to medium blonde hair, or give a hint of color to dark blonde to light brown hair. Each time you use it, your color choice deepens! Aloxxi Haircare was created by beauty icon and OPI founder George W. Schaeffer who has a passion for color, quality, and performance. His commitment to unique experiences, valuable customer service and personalized relationship, means Aloxxi delivers.

You have Beauty Care Choices! CEO Jennifer Coy is meeting with Evo Hair West Coast Sales Manager and beauty extraordinaire Rowan Ayres. Between them, Jennifer and Rowan have over 40 years of hair care expertise, practice, and knowledge! Talk about girl power! Join in as they go over the brand and all their fun products and their even funner names! If your looking for a good clean beauty brand that truly cares about the environment, then Evo Hair is for you!

Beauty Care Choices CEO Jennifer Coy is joined by Wayne Grund founder of Surface Hair! Today they talk about why Surface's products are clean and organic, and how they were long before it was cool! All of there products are gluten free, paraben free, sulfate free, and contain no artificial colors. Surface is also cruelty free, vegan, organic, and all of there packaging is biodegradable!

Creating an up-do? Need to keep hair in place all day or all night? Got that cowlick tamed, but need that stubborn hair to stay put? That's when you reach for the firm hold hairspray. It's the finishing touch to your style. After all, you worked hard to get it looking perfect, now you want to keep it that way. To help you along the way, we've put together a list of the best firm-hold hairsprays. The list includes aerosol and non-aerosol sprays, some that are vegan, some that add shine or are humidity resistant. Browse through"¦you're sure to find your "best" firm hold hairspray"¦one that meets your styling needs.

Beauty Care Choices CEO Jennifer Coy collaborates with Mirabella Beauty President Miranda Coggins and National Brand Educator Sara Kelly in this fun full face tutorial. It isn't easy for the president of a makeup company to come on camera with no makeup on but Miranda does it with grace and style as she covers which products she uses day to day. Mirabella is makeup with personality. Their cruelty-free, talc-free, gluten-free formulas are lightweight but highly effective. They believe in making products that fit your lifestyle with sleek modern packaging and improved formulas. Learn all about why the Mirabella philosophy is about being true to you, imitation-free and dedicated to the lifestyle of the modern beauty lover.

Make-up and skin care that is 100% vegan & cruelty free, as well as being free of talc, triclosan, parabens, mineral oil, sulfates, lead and gluten. Their approach is to create products that "bridge the gap", they work for both trained professionals and consumers who just love the best in beauty products. Bodyography is also eco-friendly. They have reduced their plastic consumption by 35% in the past few years by eliminating caps and using airless pumping technology. They have also put their ingredients clearly on their labels, being completely transparent about what's in the products you are using. Cosmetics A complete line of safe, vegan products with bright and bold colors, soft pastels and everything in between. You can find your perfect beauty look with their pure pigment eye shadow palettes, silky foundations and exciting lipsticks & glosses. These mineral based products and lightweight and give your skin breathing room, so they're perfect everyday. Skin Care Nutritious and high quality ingredient products fight free radicals and help stop the signs of aging. You can find moisturizers, serum, cleansers and more, all created to help you rejuvenate and revitalize your skin.

Maximize your hair's potential with the "multiple benefit technology" of Ethica Beauty Hair Care products. Ethica Beauty uses clear descriptions of what's in their products and why and what the ingredient does. This means users of their products understand what they are putting on their hair & scalp and how to use it properly. Ethica Beauty has 22 scalp, anti-aging and revitalizing hair growth benefits, with formulas for every type of hair and hair need.

When looking at hair products have you ever noticed that it may say it's for fine, medium, or coarse hair? Have you ever then thought which one is my hair? Even though you can say your hair is big and crazy, or flat and lifeless, it's the diameter of your hair that really matters when choosing a product for you. Don't confuse hair density with diameter; people with fine hair can still have a ton of it but still be considered fine. Hair Thickness Hair thickness actually refers to the width of one single strand of hair. You can have either thick, medium, or fine "“ or a mixture of all three types! To find out your hair type, all you need to do is a strand test! First start by taking a single hair in between your fingers, if you can't feel the hair between your fingers then you have fine hair. If you can feel the hair a little then you have medium hair. If you can feel a thick strand then your hair is considered coarse. If you're still struggling to determine your hair type, you can also do a thread test. Pull a single hair from your head and lay it next to a piece of sewing thread (putting it on a surface that's the opposite color of your hair will help). If it's the same width as the thread, your hair is medium, but if it's thinner or thicker, so is your hair. Hair Density Just because the diameter of your hair is fine doesn't mean you can't have a thick head of hair and vice versa. There is a simple test for eyeballing your strand density : Standing in front of a mirror, grab a handful of hair at the side of your head and notice the space around that 'clump.' Can you easily see your scalp? Your hair is likely thin. No scalp visible? Probably thick. If you're in the middle, you likely have hair of medium density. Determining both your diameter AND density will help narrow down the types of product you should use. Someone with dense, coarse hair will need smoothing products. While someone with less dense but still coarse hair will need a volumizing product. Once you have determined your hair type and density you'll be able to choose your hair products and know that they will work great in your hair. Most brands label there products with which hair type they are designed for, so you will be much more confident mixing and matching across systems to create your perfect routine.

Elastin is the very stretchy protein found in connective tissue of the skin dermis layer. This protein is a combination of peptides and amino acids made by fibroblasts. It's what keeps your skin bouncing back when stretched. It's also the second most common protein in your body (collagen being #1). As we age, elastin production diminishes. This causes the skin to sag. Elastosis is the term used to describe skin's loss of elastin. Beyond aging, it can also be caused by sun exposure, pollution, inadequate nutrition and smoking. Rapid and significant weight loss can also cause elastosis. Tropelastin is the building block for elastin. While we have many genes for collagen, there is only one gene for tropleastin. Elastin production is at its peak at birth, and is nearly gone by puberty and is non-existent by the time we reach adulthood. So, what will help skin retain it's elasticity? First, limit skin's exposure to the sun. Sun damages the normal function of elastin. Second, retinoids, a form of vitamin A, are the best for this as they help re-stimulate elastin production. They also amp up the production of collagen. They can, however, be irritating to the skin, especially prescription ones. Combine the retinol with vitamin C and hyaluronic acid to help the skin rebuild the collagen and retain elasticity. The bad news: damaged elastin is hard to restore. The ingredient molecules need to be small enough to pass through the skin's outer layer to reach the elastin in the dermis There is a great deal of research being done on how to successfully restore skin elasticity. One promising study is using a zinc complex to help restore functional elastin in sum damaged skin.