Ouidad Mongongo Oil Giveaway!

This summer I had a giant love affair with Ouidad curly girl hair products. Let's face it - no one does curly hair products quite like Ouidad, a curly girl herself! See Ouidad herself, here.

(This is not a sponsored post. These are the hair products that I love and use. This post does contain affiliate links)

My Ouidad travel set

I normally waste tons of summer time (and summer vacation time) by having to blow out my hair. Left to it's own devices my hair looks like a really bad home perm. I don't have pretty curls, I have nasty curls. In some ways they are fantastic - they hold a blowout like no other, but they seriously can't be left unsupervised!

Until I got my hands on Ouidad products. I've written about Ouidad before, here   here, and here. This summer on the Glam Italia tours in Capri and in Puglia the Ouidad curly hair products were an absolute game changer. I was able to get away with not blow drying my hair, instead just going au naturel.

Curly girls will know what I mean when I say that salt spray type beach curl products just dry my hair out to breaking point, make it frizzy and strip away any color I've added, leaving me with hair that looks like straw. So the normal beachy wave options just weren't an option for me.
Then along came Ouidad with her fantastic products that super hydrate, defrizz and give you amazing curls.

Flirting with boys at sunset in Capri

Sometimes instead of blowing my hair out smooth, my hairdresser will create big, glossy, gorgeous, controlled curls with Ouidad products. She recently added Ouidad Mongongo oil to the products she uses on me, and I love it. (I wish I had had it this summer!)




Mongongo oil is a lightweight, multi use curl treatment product that leaves any type of curl, from loose waves to kinky hair softer, shinier, more manageable, and frankly - gorgeous!
I've been playing with it, using it on damp hair and on dry hair and the results are lovely. Most oils weigh my hair down and then make it look dull the second day.

Ouidad Mongongo Oil puts bounce back into my curls and makes my hair look luminous the next day.
Even though it is a curly hair product I also use it when I blow my hair smooth, because it is so lightweight and it gives such a lovely shine, almost from within the hairshaft.

7 Ways To Use Mongongo Oil

I am so in love with this product that I am doing a giveaway so that you can win a bottle and try it out yourself.  

To keep it legit the Corinna B's World Mongongo Oil Giveaway is being run by Rafflecopter. There are multiple ways that you can enter and get extra chances to win. 

Click on the Rafflecopter widget below to enter this giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Check out these Mongongo Oil before and afters

Check out the Ouidad You Tube videos to see how to use Mongongo Oil on each of the different curly hair types, from wavy hair to curly hair to kinky curls.

Summer Beauty Essentials - 8 Must Have Hair Products

If someone gave you a truly fantastic trip out of the blue, for say, next week, would you be ready to jump on a plane and go?
I have spent my entire adult life ready to take that flight.

And funnily enough when you are ready to board a flight at a moment's notice all kinds of fantastic opportunities find their way to you. 
Whether it's flying to the Caribbean to shoot workout videos, meeting a family member in Europe, accompanying a client to Cabo or Turks and Caicos or just heading out on vacation somewhere fabulous, I am convinced trips come my way because I am always ready to go.

Part of always being ready to go is having all my travel beauty essentials packed and waiting for that next trip. Thanks to the security folks at London's Heathrow airport confiscating the bulk of my travel beauty products, the same products packed in the same clear plastic travel bags that have made their way round and round the world more times than I care to count, I now have to make a list and re-buy it all.

Luckily most of my hair products were packed in my suitcase.

My list of travel beauty essentials doubles up as a list of summer beauty essentials, today we are looking at summer travel hair care:

Summer Beauty Essentials ~ 8 Must Have Hair Products

Rahua Voluminous Shampoo and Rahua Voluminous Conditioner
I love these two because they are 100% organic, make your hair bouncy and shiny, and lets face it who doesn't want added volume??

The Ouidid Curl Essentials Trial Set $36 Embrace your curls! This is the greatest thing ever for bringing out the best in your curly or wavy hair. This was my first trip letting my hair go curly, and I had been obsessively obsessing over these products, right up until they got confiscated. I tried t pick up another set at Naimies in L.A. on my way home, but they were out of stock, so I am re-ordering them online this week.

Oribe Travel Sized Gold Lust Oil $37
This lightweight yet luxurious hair oil smoothes,adds glorious shine and is the perfect antidote to a day at the beach. It has a gold fleck in it that keeps your hair looking luscious. I've traveled with it for years - partly because it is super concentrated and lasts for a really long time! You absolutely cannot beat the smell of Oribe products either.

Glossy hair in Siena, on the Glam Italia Tour

Bumble And Bumble Thickening Spray
My hairdresser just turned me on to this one a few months ago. Even though I have more hair than the next three people all put together, I use this to create volume at the root when I'm blow-drying my hair smooth. It also helps you to get more mileage out of your blowout.

Oribe Travel Sized Style Cream
For luxuriously smooth hair that bounces when you walk and smells like heaven.

Oribe Cote d'Azur Hair Refresher
Spritz a little of this magic spray through your mane any time you want your hair to be refreshed and smell like heaven. This one is a must after a long flight, when everyone's hair smells gross!

Bumble and Bumble Surf Infusion
If you are going for beachy waves and don't have to fight curly, frizzy hair, channel your inner Aniston with Bumble's Surf Infusion.

How To Get Your Hair Ready For Fall - The 3 C's

There is no time like the end of summer

to take drastic measures to rehab the hairdo.

image L'Oreal of Paris

After a long hot summer of taking a beating from sand and surf,

sea water and chlorine, hot air and air conditioning,

and the burning, damaging rays themselves,

your hair (and believe me, mine) needs some serious TLC

to take it into autumn.

Which, by the way, with the advent of the glorious 

September issues, is the equivalent of the New Year in fashion.

And hair TLC is all about the 3 C's.

1. Make The Cut

This is the time of the year to get drastic.

End the summer/start the fall not with the usual little trim, but with the big cut. Have your stylist take off all the damaged, trashed out hair - everything that he/she tells you needs to go.

Hanging on to the old, beat up tresses does you no favors, it just looks bad. Going a bit shorter than you planned can be nerve wracking, but it will grow back quickly, and will look far more luscious.

2. Changing The Color.

Everyone's color needs reworking at the end of summer. 

I'm a firm believer that every single head of hair benefits from color, with the exception perhaps of natural blue blacks and natural white blondes.

Linda Evangelista baby beige blonde

At the end of summer blondes that have become too brassy or too iridescent need toning down. Platinums and high blondes look better converted to more autumnal blondes.

Reds can add some deeper low lights, brownies also benefit from toning and adding chestnuts and lowlights. 

Everybody wins with color.

Your best bet is to go see your colorist and get some ideas. 

Freewheeling it with a box of color from the drugstore seldom works out that well.

3. Conditioning

There are a myriad of conditioning treatments available, from in salon processes to at home masks.

The trick is to get the right product or treatment for your specific hair type and needs. You don't want to weigh your hair down too much, or leave it feeling greasy. If you have thick hair or coarse hair you need products that pack an extra punch. 

Plenty of hair products don't penetrate the hair shaft and literally just run down the drain, while others can coat the hair and leave it looking and feeling dirty.

Ask your hairstylist to recommend the best product or service to refresh, rejuvenate and revitalize your hair.