Halo's Hair Extensions | Yes They're Fake! Patient Journals

Halo's Hair Extensions

I have tried a couple different types of hair extensions. I've been messing around with different types of hair extensions for a while now. I could write a book - hehe. It all started a while back when I got the bright idea to go platinum and to do it myself. I had mid-back length long blonde highlighted hair, and tried to bleach it myself with a bleach kit from Sally's. All I can say is NEVER do that. It fried and turned into a grayish purplish whitish frizz. AHHH! I had to cut it all off and grow it out again, not to mention pay a ton to have the little hair I could save colored back to normal by a stylist. It was awful. So after being as creative as I could with short hairstyles for a while - I got bored with it short and decided to try something new. I started reading about hair extensions. Then I went around to hair stylists and asked about a bazillion questions. I have tons of sites with info if you want all the links.

OK for starters you need to have at least three inches of hair for hair extensions to work. If you have 5 inches it works much better. And if you have hair to your chin or longer - YOU ARE LUCKY -you can have butt length hair without anyone being able to tell at all. They can layer cut it to work it into your own hair and bam long hair that no one can tell isn't yours. All you need is time and money - it takes hourssssssssss to get it done and it can get expensive.

There's so many ways to do it I don't know if I can give all the details without boring you girls to death - but I'll try to tell what I can before my fingers fall off from typing.

The first time I had it done I tried bonding - It's temporary, lasts from a few days (if you wash your hair too often) to about two weeks. It can be done to look really natural but the bonding glue is gross and messy when it starts to come off and it's NOT good for your hair. I don't care what people say - there is breakage - no matter how long you soak the hair in remover and no matter how gently it's removed. The only good part about getting it done this way is that it's a less expensive way to find out if you want to commit to hair extensions - it gives you a temporary feel of what it's like to have something heavy added to your head. There's two ways to do it - have whole wefts of hair bonded or have it bonded individual - have little portions of loose hair bonded to small clumps of your own hair - I had a little of both on my head to try them out and the little loose individual portions felt more natural and flowed more like regular hair, but were a real PAIN to get out when it came time. It cost about $150 plus tip plus $100 of cheap human hair (3 packs of not that great quality silky straight 14 inch human hair - 2 of color #22 light blonde and 1 of #613 lightest blonde for highlights). Oh and include the price of getting your hair dyed to match the extensions if you're not getting your natural color. Another $40 to $85 for me. They CAN match the extensions very close to most colors though, if you don't want to dye your hair, but my hair is NOT blonde naturally, so dye dye dye. I'm probably gonna go bald someday - hopefully not.

The next few times I got synthetic bonded individually. This lasts on me for about 4 weeks each time. This way may be called cold fusion - I'm not sure exactly- I'll have to ask her the tech name. She always just says "bonded" or "sewn in" or "braided" when we talk about the different kinds of ways. There's a couple different types of bonds that they've used on me - one that looks like it's a golden, clear, really thick, and sticky nail polish, one in a squeeze tube and one from what looks like a jazzed up little craft style hot glue gun. I'll have to get all the names of those too. You need special shampoo and can't wash it every day if you want it to stay in for a long time - I washed it about every other day or every three if I wasn't doing anything to get it dirty. The synthetic is very shiny looking, but you CAN NOT curl or blow dry it so you're kinda stuck with the wave or curl it has, unless you want to go through the pain of warm curlers - WARM - not hot or you'll melt your fake hair to your real hair - ewww. This way worked well for me, but again - big time ouch getting it out. Not good for your own hair. This way costs around $300 total - the hair is included because it's synthetic it's a whole lot cheaper - and I get #22 cuz it matches my dye job at 16 to 18 inches long. They didn't charge me to remove it since I was getting it put back on again each time, but you may have to put aside money to get it removed after a few weeks if your stylist does charge for that.

Now my most recent experience - sewn in wefts. So far my absolute favorite way. They french braid the hair horizontally along the back side of your head and sew the wefts of hair to the braids. They leave the top hair on your head down and the very bottom hair down too, so that it covers the sewn or bonded hair when you pull your hair back into a pony tail. The sewn in weft extensions seem very good for your hair - it doesn't seem to hurt it at all as far as I can tell. MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE than bond, no tacky residue stuff coming off. Less itchy than the bonding was. I did need a couple wefts bonded up high, but only a few little pieces luckily. I noticed that the wefts feel heavy on my head, but I got 26 inch hair so that's probably why. Same favorite color #22, but this time the hair was a little more expensive since I went with tangle free 100% human hair - and it's not even that great of quality - but it's much better than the hair I could grow myself personally so I can't complain. Some day I'll decide which type of extensions I like best and then invest in some quality hair - cuticle hair - but while I'm still learning there's no sense in wasting money on too good of hair. The cuticle hair that I want to get is around $170 per 1/4 pond!!!! That's a big NO right now. [] I needed 4 bags of silky straight tangle free human hair for my sewn in wefts - each bag is 1/4 lb and I used just under a whole pound total. (just a side note - the longer the hair - the shorter they make the wefts and the more packages you need of hair) Total in hair $200 (not bad considering) plus $300 to have it done. BUT keep in mind - the hair on the wefts that are sewn in is reusable - which means when I go back in to get them tightened in a few weeks I won't have to buy more hair for that. YAY!!! It took an entire day to get it put in, but WOWY do I like how it turned out.

With having extensions you need to take the extra time to condition, condition, condition, detangle, and slowly, brush your hair - BE GENTLE. And you shed hair more than usual too - can be a pain when the shed hair gets stuck in the vacuum. But it's so much FUN to have long hair without having to wait for it to grow in, and it's healthy thick looking hair. AND you can get it cut to cute styles without feeling bad because it's not your hair so you didn't have to grow it. I'm going to try pixie braids next - or pinch braiding - I haven't made my mind up yet, but for adding length - sewn in wefts seems the best way so far to me. I have pictures of my current hair and my old synthetic hair on this link:
(they are pictures of my rhino and lip injections so sorry if they're a little gross, but you can see the hair I'm talking about in them)

Link: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/aglowinghalo@sbcglobal.net/my_photos

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