Pixel Posybytes of life

I received a bottle of WEN Sweet Almond Mint Cleansing Conditioner for being a member of Influenster.com. I am into my second week of use and am a total convert already. I have seen enough positive results to feel this product is worthy of a first impression review.

Here’s a little background on my hair type. I have past the shoulders fine long straight hair. All of my hair can fit into a small ponytail holder. It’s been colored and highlighted many times over. Before using WEN I would consider it very dry, tangled easyily and often looked frizzy. Basically over-processed and damaged hair. I have been told by stylists before that my hair seems to suck up their products, so it must be very “thirsty”.

WEN was developed by stylist Chaz Dean as a new way to cleanse hair. In fact that’s how WEN got it’s name, it’s the word “new” spelled backwards. Chaz Dean wants everyone to stop using the detergent found in most shampoos that strip the natural oils right out of our hair only so you can put moisture back in with conditioner, an endless cycle. His product allows your natural oils to exist while infusing hair with moisture and keeping the greasiness at bay. I have been a proponent of skipping shampoos for awhile now to allow hair to recover and have been washing about every other day for almost a year in an effort to get my hair into better condition and keep my color from fading.

Since I was already washing my hair every other day  I decided to stick to that same schedule while testing out WEN. Note that I just read on the FAQ that Chaz recommends washing every day for damaged hair until your hair is in better condition, only then you will notice that you do not need to wash but every 2 or 3 days.

Sweet Almond Mint makes your scalp tingle, and that’s a really nice feeling to me while sleepy in the morning. I let the water run on my hair while using my fingers to lightly work just the water into my scalp for a couple minutes. I apply my WEN Cleansing Conditioner 3 pumps at a time (rubbing my hands together before applying) by starting at my hair line to the top of my head, moving to under the nape of my neck, then working more into the left and right sides of my head. I then add a splash of water (here come the tingles) and massage my scalp some more, adding another 3 pumps while I am massaging my scalp all over. If you’re keeping count, we’re at 15 pumps of product so far. Now I section my long hair into two, one half over each shoulder and put 6-8 pumps into each side, twisting it into the hair (I’m at 27-29 pumps!). Now I take my wide tooth shower comb and start de-tangling. I know I’ve used enough product when the comb pulls globs of WEN off my hair (which I rub back into it of course!).  That’s a lot of product, especially when my 27-29 pumps is on the light side of what Chaz Dean suggests you use.

It’s worth nothing that if you use too little WEN, you’re not getting the full benefits or fully cleaning your hair. After awhile your hair will start to look worse. Don’t be afraid to use too much, you can’t! Plus you really need that much to ensure your hair is clean. At $30 a bottle, using that much product hurts the wallet and feels wasteful. That’s my  biggest downside to WEN, the price… however I was purchasing a salon shampoo and conditioner at $30 each and a ridiculous deep conditioner for $50, plus a smattering of other products to treat this and that. So for me, this switch is actually cheaper. At this point depending on how much time I have, I take a claw clip and pull the length of my hair up and either get out of the shower with WEN still in my hair to take care of some other morning chores, or finish up the rest of my shower and save washing the WEN out for very last. To do this I use my wide tooth shower comb again and rinse and massage out every last bit, even massaging my scalp a bit more. While my hair is still sopping wet I take 2 more pumps of product (yep now we are over 30) and work it in to the length of my hair. Whatever product is leftover I rake through the top. At this point I towel off and usually let my just washed hair air dry naturally, saving the heat tools for day 2 hair.

Now to the exciting part! Two weeks into using WEN and I decided to try putting rollers in my second day hair. Now, I do this a lot with second day hair as a way to hide the slightly dirty roots, as curls raise the hair away from the scalp. Before using WEN, I’d mist my hair with a little water and comb out the night time tangles. I’d roll my hair and use lots of hairspray when taking the curlers out. Almost right away my curls would start to fall and there was no hope for any curl left by the end of the work day, if they even made it to lunch. Seriously, even if I made my hair stiff and hard with hairspray, the curl would fall. And I work indoors! Well, today I did this same routine, only my water bottle had 2 pumps of WEN shaken up into it and I skipped the hairspray because I thought my hair looked unusually curly and I wanted it to settle a bit.  I figured it’d fall limp soon enough and rushed out the door. Not so! People commented on my hair all day, and I’ve worn it curled 100′s of times. I had absolutely no product in my hair other than the leave in WEN conditioner from the day before and the little bit from misting in the morning. I came home from a long day at work with a head still full of bouncy curls filled with body. Wow! That has never in my life happened, especially without any product. I can rough up my roots without damaging the curls, they actually look even better. Here’s a picture of my almost ready for bedtime hair still full of body and bounce.

I can’t wait to see how WEN transforms my hair with another couple of weeks. I already purchased more conditioner and the styling cream to ensure I won’t be without.

Disclaimer: I received an Influenster.com VoxBox filled with Natural Products for free. This post is a review of Wen Sweet Almond Mint Cleansing Conditioner. Although the product was received free, I am not being paid for this review and the opinions expressed on this page are my own.

Ever since moving into my new warehouse style office building, which came with a much smaller desk and almost non-existent cube walls, I haven’t really bothered to personalize the space. I guess the whole situation felt so temporary when moving in that I didn’t bother to really move in. Now that we know we’ll be here for awhile I started checking out the ways other people make their cubes a little more interesting. In my search I stumbled upon the book Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab! It’s a little extreme for my office space, but it sure does give me inspiration to turn the drab and dreary gray cube into something a little less depressing.

My favorite idea was to find a poster with some lovely scenery, like a beautiful beach, tack it up on a cube wall near your monitor and add some crossbar molding to make turn it into a window. You can even go one step further by adding a little curtain or valance. Voila a window escape for when the days get a little bit too long.

I received an email from influenster.com announcing that they’ve teamed up with Pureology to promote the Global Green USA’s Green School Makeover Competition. You can find more out about the contest at pureology.com/greenschools.

Pureology is asking you to enter your school, or your children’s school for the chance to win the grand prize of a Green Makeover. Four runner up prizes will also be awarded; $2,500 to go towards green school renovations.

To enter all you need to do is think about what type of green upgrades your school could use (lots of suggestions can be found at the contest webpage) and with permission of the school principal submit your application with an optional video.

I think this could be a great way for kids to connect with the going green movement and to think of changes they could do to help the environment and improve their school.

Bonus for Influenster.com members. Enter you or your children’s school by September 30th, 2011, and you will win Full Size products from Pureology as a thank you.

Photo used under creative commons. Credit:  Muffet.

The YouTube beauty bloggers have been showing off a bunch of free full size product samples they received from the June beauty themed VoxBox that was sent out from a company called Influenster.com.  From what I gathered about the company, they are essentially promoting viral marketing through their users by mailing out themed product sample boxes and encouraging users to do reviews of the products they like.  The site is free to join, but you must fill out a bunch of surveys for a chance to be sent one of their themed product sample boxes.

The VoxBoxes won’t always be beauty stuff, as they also have badges for pet lovers, mommies, foodies, organic or green products and many more. Not a bad deal if you enjoy reviewing products already. It will be interesting to see if companies are eager to get their products into a VoxBox and how many of those VoxBoxes turn into positive product reviews.

I will say for years now I use Amazon user reviews to do product research before deciding on a purchase. And more recently I have found myself watching personal video reviews from YouTubers at sites like Folica.com where users can embed their own personal videos about the products they sell. I have found it a great way to see a product in action before purchasing.

It’s an interesting concept to encourage people with free samples, but will that skew the review? It does make me question how many reviews are truly honest and not just touting something because they were paid to do so. Of course that is the heart of advertising, being paid to make something look good. Think of all the celeb endorsed stuff for sale. Influenster.com feels you have that same power.

My favorite iPhone photography app and my favorite YouTube born music artist are teaming up to create a music video!

Visit http://hpstm.tc/3dfs to vote!

If you have an iPhone I highly recommend downloading Hipstamatic for fun cell phone pictures. They make ordinary snaps look amazing. Within the app you can send them directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, email, enter them in contests hosted through Hipstamatic or even use their print services for copies from 4″x4″ up to a whopping 30″x30″.

You can also check out my Hipstamatic Squidoo page that shows off some gorgeous photos all taken through this app with an iPhone camera as well as a YouTube tutorial on how the app works.

On to the Hipstamatic contest… Terra Namoi, who launched her music career several years ago via a virtual tour through her YouTube channel, is asking fans to submit Hipstamtic pictures that represent lyrics from her latest single. She hopes to compile the images for her video.

Listen to Tera’s single “You For Me” here:
YOU FOR ME by terranaomi

Terra talks about the concept for the contest in this video.

I entered the picture of my two puppies cuddling in their sleep. If you like, you can vote for me by visiting this page and giving it a Facebook like or tweeting the link: “http://hpstm.tc/3dfs” with a #hipstamatic included in the tweet.

Check out all the latest contest entries below.