sally hansen hard as nails xtreme wear nail color

Pampering @ home Sarah style!

Good evening all! 🙂

I meant to post about this on Tuesday, when I actually took some time out to do a little pampering session for myself at home, but time has flown like crazy this week! (Probably because I have been on holidays, ha! 😉 I return to work and the world of reality on Monday.)

I thought that people may be interested in some DIY pedicure and hair treatment tips, so I took photos to document parts of my pampering session (just the essentials – otherwise this post would really be overloaded with pics!) to help me explain it to you.

Before we get started, I would like to remind people that I am not a trained beauty therapist. Also, the way in which I have done these things is pretty much “my way”! This means that you may agree or disagree with the steps I did or didn’t include in the process. So if you read this and think to yourself “hmm I would’ve done that differently” – that’s fine! However I hope that you may learn some new things from this post. 🙂

Part One – Hair Treatment

I typically start with the hair treatment as I will leave it in for a few hours, and won’t wash it out till I’ve done my other pampering bits n pieces. I like to go natural with hair treatments and have read a lot of good stuff about the use of virgin coconut oil as a hair treatment. I started doing this weekly early last year, when I was desperately wanting my hair to grow, but now I tend to do it monthly as my hair is pretty close to my goal length. (Also because I am a bit lazy! ;)). There is a lot of information online about coconut oil and using it as a hair treatment – I found YouTube tutorials particularly helpful (there are TONS to choose from there). Coconut oil can also be used as a moisturiser on your skin (you’ll see it as an ingredient in many body lotions), in cooking, and also as a dietary supplement.

Here are some pics of the coconut oil that I use. It cost me <$20 AUD on eBay (including postage) and I have only used 1/4 of the jar in approximately a year – great value!!!

So how do you do the “coconut oil treatment” for your hair? Easy peasy! 🙂

1. Grab the jar of oil, some cotton wool balls, and a wrap for your hair (scarf, bandanna, old towel, old cloth headband, etc). Set it up in your bathroom in front of the mirror because you’ll need to see what you are doing!

2. If the weather is warm (say, around 30 degrees Celsius or higher!) you won’t need to do this step as the oil will already be in liquid form. If it is cooler, however, the oil will appear solid in the jar. Use a teaspoon to scoop a heaped teaspoonful of oil into a small glass or ceramic bowl. (My hair is approx. 20 centimetres long; if your hair is longer you may need more oil.) Run some hot water in your bathroom sink and sit the bowl in it, and stir the oil for a minute or two until it is completely melted. ***Safety alert*** make sure you test the temperature of the oil before applying to your hair – you do not want to burn yourself!

3. Grab a cotton ball and dab it into the oil.

4. Gently apply the oil around your hairline. You can also then section your hair and dab directly onto the scalp all over. This takes a long time so if you’re like me and would like a “cheat’s version” 😉 ~
I simply use a teaspoon to pour a small amount of oil into the palm of my hand, slap it onto my fingertips, tip my head upside down and massage the oil into my scalp for a few minutes.

5. Then apply a small amount of oil to the ends of your hair.

6. Using a wide tooth comb, comb your hair.This distributes the oil through the hair.

7. Wrap your hair up on top of your head using the scarf, bandana, etc. Here’s a shot of my hair!

8. After a couple of hours (some leave it on overnight but I would not recommend that as if you leave it on for that long there is a risk it’ll make your hair quite greasy. Also it is likely to make a big mess on your pillow unless you take precautions!), wash your hair thoroughly with shampoo, but remember to skip the conditioner. Dry/style as per usual.

Tada! You should now be left with shiny hair and a happy scalp! (My scalp can be quite dry and improved significantly when I did the treatment weekly.)

Part 2 – The Pedicure

I’d read about the use of green tea as a good DIY foot soak and thought I’d give it a try! As it was a very hot day over here, I knew that I wanted it to be cold, not hot, when my feet were in it. So I prepared this part first thing that morning. Grabbed a big bowl that was OK to put my feet into, added a few green tea bags (they also had mint in them – I thought this would be a bonus and help my feet smell nice! ;)) and some hot water. You could recycle the tea bags after that and use them (when cold) on your eyes to reduce puffiness, but I only thought about that later when they were in the garbage bin (too late! :-0).

mmm green tea + mint goodness! 🙂

I also gathered a few other things that I would need. As you can see in the picture I included a nail file, nail scissors, nail polish remover, moisturiser, and so on.

I didn’t bother to get my orange stick as my cuticles were looking fine and didn’t need to be pushed back. I did however plan to use my imitation “Ped Egg” (anyone remember those? ;)), here it is if you haven’t heard of these before….

I also grabbed a towel and the big bowl of tea (with teabags removed… eww how weird would they feel to step on?! LOL!) and sat on the lounge chair in front of the TV. 🙂

Here’s what I did next:

1. Remove any old nail polish with nail polish remover and then soak feet in the tea solution for approximately 15 minutes. (I did not need to scrub my feet as I’d already given them a good wash in the shower earlier that day.)

2. Gently dry feet with a towel. Trim and file your nails.

3. Use pumice stone part of “Ped Egg” to buff away dead skin on rough patches of soles of feet. I did not need to use the cheese-grater-look-a-like part but if I did, I would use it very very VERY gently. Don’t want to do any damage!

4. Moisturise feet with a good quality moisturiser. I used my yummy smelling Nutrimetics one (previously reviewed here).

5. If cuticles are looking daggy/in need of a tidy up, I would gently push them back with an orange stick between steps 2 and 3, when the cuticles are still soft.

6. Apply some cuticle oil to cuticles and rub in well. Leave for a few minutes (I used Nutrimetics’ Ultra Care+ Vitamin Oil. A good multipurpose oil – you can use that on your hair too but given the cost/size ratio I prefer to use the coconut oil for that!).

7. Apply 2 coats of your preferred nail polish; let dry between coats. (If I’m wanting my pedicure to really last well I also apply a base and top coat. I was in a very casual mode on Tuesday so didn’t bother!) I used Sally Hansen’s Extreme Wear in “Crushed”.

8. Enjoy having pretty feet! Here’s how my tootsies looked (and still look – pedicure has lasted well so far):

it was hard for me to pick a photo of my feet that I at least sort of liked! feet are a bit weird if you ask me! 🙂

***

Let me know what you think of this post… I guess this could be considered my first tutorial post! Never thought I would do tutorials but there you go! 🙂 I think it could also be my longest post of all time – if you are still reading, well done!

Have any of you tried coconut oil on your hair before? My biggest tip with it is “less is more” – so the first time you try it, it is better to not use enough than to overdo it and be left with limp locks!

What are your tips for DIY hair treatments and/or pedicures? 🙂

Silly Season Mani – feat. Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear

I’ve seen some absolutely AMAZING! manicures on the web lately, most of which have been done for Xmas. 🙂 I was a bit lazy this year and what I did doesn’t look Christmassy, but I think it does look festive, I think. Here tis!

I used two coats of Sally Hansen’s Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear polishes to acheive this look – the purple is Purple Potion and the glitter is Disco Ball. (Sorry about the quality of the pic – I’m intending to get a better camera in the new year! The product pic below actually looks better – what the?! As they were taken with the same camera!)

Price range: These were $6.95 each.

Where can I get it? I picked mine up from my local supermarket but you can also get this range at chemists, Priceline, and similar places.

Both shades glided on smoothly and the purple was opaque after one coat, but I applied two (and then two of the glitter as I wanted my nails to look very sparkly!). The purple has a lovely pearlescent finish but the glitter is fairly average.

The polish chipped noticeably after 2 days, and these were 2 days that I was not working on renovations (as of course the manual labour would’ve damaged my mani quickly!). I was disappointed with this as the packaging for these polishes claims that the polish can last for up to 7 days (!!?). I wasn’t expecting it to last for 7 days, but 3 days without notable chipping would’ve been nice!

Some glitters can be hard to remove – this product wasn’t which was excellent! I was very happy about this aspect of the glitter polish.

Would I repurchase these? Hmm… not at full price.

Beautiful rating: quality 3/5, value 3/5 (I did not think it was any better lasting than cheap polishes that I own!)

If you’ve uploaded some Xmas/holiday mani pics lately comment below with a link to your blog or vlog post and I’ll check it out! 🙂

**** Psst…. DON’T FORGET TO ENTER MY XMAS GIVEAWAY COMP! 🙂 Entries open till midnight 4th Jan ’12 (Adelaide time… +09:30 GMT)… just visit http://t.co/FosqoXck ! Good luck! 🙂