Find out more DIY beauty tricks from Shannon Ray at Gloss and Dirt!
Ray was the winner of the 2012 Allure Beauty Blogger Awards. Find out the winner of the 2014 Beauty Blogger Awards here!
Remember elementary-school science fairs? The white backboards that were Elmer's-glued to the gills with construction paper, diapers bursting with food coloring, sprouted potatoes—that shit was so stressful. But one great thing about the forced attendance at these science fairs was gleaning all of that random-ass childhood knowledge without having to actually do the boring work.
So that's really what I'm doing here (well, the grown-lady/cheap-ass/low-rent version). I'll do all the work with the beauty experiments, and you can reap the benefit of the results, ranging from good to crap.
For today's experiment, I'm taking on a DIY avocado mask and tracking the results, in the style of the scientific method. Remember the scientific method? Sorry for bringing back your third-grade anxieties. Get out your four-color pen and take notes.
Purpose: To get hair that's as shiny as a mofo
Hypothesis: If you blend together some seemingly innocuous avocado and other foodstuffs, maybe your hair will get all healthy and glossy-glossy.
Procedure: I searched the ol' World Wide Web until I found this recipe for an avocado hair mask that contained only ingredients that I already possessed. Because you know that my too-lazy-to-refill-my-water-glass ass isn't going to actually leave the house to buy some nonsense. I mean, this whole thing really came about because I had an avocado that I bought a week ago with the idea that I was going to make guacamole, then I let it go half bad. So here's what you need:
Your own kind of shitty avocado (a normal one, not a dinosaur-size huge one)
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
I put everything in a bowl and mixed it up and started to notice how Josie Grossie this crap looked.
The texture of the mixture was straight-up guh-ross. I kept thinking stuff like, Is this what baby poop looks like? Is this what baby poop feels like? I must have a weird baby-poop thing. I wasn't aware. But it was grossing me out.
It says to use it on damp hair but that's just too much damn work, and homie don't play that, so I just kind of squished it all over my head. Then I waited an excruciating 20 minutes. (OK, it wasn't excruciating. It was moderately bleh.)
But seriously, how effing gross does this look? My expectations for the outcome of this hot mess were lowered to say the least.
After 20 minutes, I got into the shower and rinsed and shampooed my hair. I would file the way it felt under "meh." So I slapped on a light conditioner and immediately rinsed it out. I followed up with my regular ol' basic-bitch hair routine when I got out, which is a spray-on leave-in conditioner and an argan oil serum. My hair felt normal, with a dab of dryness.
Analysis: I usually have a semihard time brushing through my hair when I'm blow-drying it, and I can never just blow-dry and go. I have to curl or flatiron (or air-dry and leave it the hell alone) to keep it from looking slightly puffy and pre-styling-tools middle-school-y. A bitch who can do a blowout and call it a day, I am not.
But I found that I could easily run a round brush through my hair, which pretty much never happens. And as my hair dried, it was looking as smooth as that terrible Santana/Rob Thomas song. My ends weren't weird and my mop was shining bright like a diamond, circa 2012.
Conclusion: This shit is the bee's knees. The only con to this whole deal was that my oily roots were oily, so I would probably hit up the shampoo twice. Rinse and repeat, etc.
Overall, my hair feels amazing. It hasn't felt this soft and silky in recent times. It's like Jennifer Aniston when her hair was at its peak levels of dopeness. I know that this all seems hyperbolic, but I AM NOT OVERSELLING THE FEELINGS OF MY HAIR RIGHT NOW. You know that I don't care about things enough to oversell them. Especially not avocados.
Sorry, avocados.
RELATED LINKS:
• 10 Secrets to Gorgeous Long Hair
