Winterize Your Hair

The cold weather can really drag the life out of your hair. The lack of humidity that comes with winter, this causes breakages, fly-aways, and a dry scalp. With the proper hair care and products, you can defy the will of winter. 

Preventing dry and dull hair:

Twice a week apply a hair mask to strengthen and hydrate your hair. To minimize the typically heat-related damage, wait until your hair is at least seventy percent dry before you blow dry it. Blow drying your hair can cause it to be quite dull, and it takes the life out of it. After blow drying your hair, mist it from the root to the tip with a heat protectant spray. My personal favorite is TRESemme Thermal Creations Heat Tamer Protective Spray. 

Dry and Dull hair quick fixes: 

Just brush your hair. It is as simple as that. Brushing your hair redistributes the natural oils from your scalp throughout your hair, adding shine. It is a tip I learned from Jen Atkin. If you want more of a polished look, placed a dime-sized amount of hand cream or olive oil onto your ends. Do not apply to much or your hair will appear greasy. 

Preventing fly-aways:

Use a moisturising shampoo and conditioner, and apply a leave-in conditioner from midway down your hair to your tips. If you were to apply it at the roots, it would leave your hair feeling,and appearing greasy. The moisture will help neutralize the electrons that cause the static electricity that forms the fly-aways in your hair.

Fly-Aways quick fixes:

A lightweight hairspray will do the trick. The polymers located in hairspray will help keep the fly-aways in place. Nourishing your hair will keep them annoying fly-aways away!

Flat Hair? Mist strands from root to tip with a volumizing spray, then repeat only at the roots. Next, blow-dry your hair upside down. Afterwards, twist your hair into a loose topknot until your locks cool, allowing the roots to set. 

Itchy, Flaky Scalp? Treat your hair with some treatments such as a hair mask. The scalp is an area often overlooked.

The Three Upsides to Winter

Okay, as much as we hate winter for taking a toll on our hair, it has its benefits as well... Three to be exact:

1. Sleeker Strands: The lack of humidity ensures that we have no frizz
2. Vibrant Color: No soaking up of sun rays, no chlorine, or salt water, your hue, whether natural or fake, will be richer.
3. Fast Showers: No need to shampoo daily - unless you've worked up a sweat. 

5 Must Have Photography Apps

These are my five must have photography apps for my iPhone 5. I know that Andriod offers some of them, but not all, although I am unsure of which ones. Not all of the applications are free, but the ones that are not free are worth the cost.

The following apps are not in any particular order:

Afterlight ($0.99)

If I were only allowed to have one editing app for the rest of my iPhone days, this would by far be it. Honestly, this will be the best $0.99 you have ever spent in your life, well at least in mine. Afterlight is the perfect app when it comes to editing, especially for instagram photos.
In this app you can do things such as increase the brightness, straighten out the photo, add filters, and so much more. It comes equipped with over fifty-five filters. That is amazing. My personal favorites are Leila and Coral.

A sample of some pictures I have edited with Afterlight:

You can purchase this app from the iTunes store by clicking the following link: Afterlight

Diptic ($0.99)

Diptic is a fantastic photo collage app where you can choose from a variety of different collages. You can also remove borders, add filters, make funky shapes, and add texts. 

You can purchase this app from iTunes by clicking the following link: Diptic

Photo Wonder (Free)

PhotoWonder is an app that makes me wonder how I managed to edit selfies without it. This is one app that I know for sure is available on the PlayStore. The best part about this app, is that it is free! With this app you can fix your makeup, get rid of those blemishes and dark undereye circles that we all hate. It also has some amazing filters that I sometimes choose over the Afterlight filters which says a lot. 

Here is a sample of a selfie I took that I used this app to remove the undereye circles. I probably could have done more, but I did not want to make it look too to fake:

 To download this app from iTunes click the following link: Photo Wonder

iPhoto for iOS ($4.99)

Apple does it again. They took their amazing computer app and turned it into the one of the most downloaded apps on iTunes. This app has basically all the same features as the computer application, just in a more compact version. To learn more about this app, click here. 

To purchase it from iTunes please click the following link: iPhoto for iOS

PicLab (Free)

Last, but certainly not least is PicLab. Have you ever seen those pictures of scenery with writing in the middle (typography) all over Pinterest and Instagram... if you even know what I am talking about? It is done with PicLab. The good news is, there is a free version, but the features in it are very limited. The paid version is called PicLab HD ($1.99).

This is one I just drew up quick to give you an idea of what typography is. My friend an I were two-stepping to drink in my hand, and as you can see in the picture, we actually had a drink in our hand, so it only made sense for me to put the lyrics on this photo. 

To download PicLab (Free Version) from iTunes please click the following link: PicLab

To download PicLab HD (Paid Version) from iTunes please click the following link: PicLab HD

-Samantha

Copyright: All of my professional photos contain a watermark. There will be no claiming my work to be your own.