Hair Products (Bought), Hair Products (DIY), Skin and Beauty, Skin and Beauty Products (DIY)

Product Mash Ups

What is a product mashup? I hear you ask. Well, it’s what happens when I get bored.

Basically when I don’t like a product, I won’t throw it away because I am my father’s daughter. I don’t know if it’s a Nigerian thing, a Dad thing or just how he is but he keeps everything. Broken things, things we don’t need, things we don’t want. He keeps it all on the promise that it will come in handy one day. But I’ve broken some of that generational tradition. Unlike my Dad I do actually find a time for it to come in handy. In fact it’s my mission.

It applies to drinks too, if there is a few gulps of coke left in a bottle and I want a full drink, I’ll mix with the next thing – cherryade, lemonade, orangeade. I don’t know, I think my taste buds may be blown but in terms of hair and skincare it can work sometimes.

As much as I’ve had my moments of just buying random products on a whim, generally, there is some dim and distant thought about the ingredients, the price, actually using it. Even though I sometimes get it wrong, I still want to get some benefit from the products.

I want some bang for my buck.

I’ll mix a product I don’t like with a product I do like. Or alternatively, I’ll just mix it with whatever else is open which is potentially something else I don’t like. This method has lead to some successes, some failures and quite a few raised eyebrows. My own eyebrows.

But as my mother always said,”Waste not, want not”. Which I actually say a lot and never fully understood but I think it applies here. The dictionary definition works for me.

And looking through my old posts – it seems like I’ve been doing this for a long time. I mixed the African Pride Shea Butter Miracle Creme and Strengthener Miracle Creme at the very start of this journey, literally just because I didn’t want 2 open products!

Cantu Shea Butter Super Shine Hair Silk + Creme Of Nature Coconut Milk Curl Repair Leave-In

This one is a case of a product I liked – the Creme of Nature Leave In – and a product I didn’t quite understand – Cantu Shine Silk coming together. I’m not sure what made me mix these two together. Normally, when I mix it’s usually like for like i.e. a leave in with a leave in, a deep conditioner with a deep conditioner etc. I wouldn’t even know how to categorise the Hair Silk but I didn’t like using it. It made my hair dry, didn’t make it silky or shiny, it didn’t work with the majority of the textures in our house.

But mixing the two was a revelation. And I’m not kidding. It’s like it shouldn’t work but it did. And even though I liked the Leave In, I liked this concoction better than either product separately. I felt it kept my hair better moisturised. On the negative side, it is constantly separating in the bottle which is a bit unsightly and it does have a bit of a greasy feel. But on damp hair, it sort of works as the L, the C and the O all in one.

This works best on my hair rather than the kids and especially when it’s been in a protective style. I love the way my hair feels, how soft and shiny it is when it’s released from a braid or twist.

However, as positive as my response is, I definitely won’t be buying the Hair Silk again but I might buy the leave in again. Might not.

EDEN Bodyworks Jojoba Monoi Natural Moisturizing Shampoo + Mielle Tinys & Tots Sacha Inchi Cleansing Shampoo

I’m generally not a fan of shampoos in any of their forms anymore. I’m a staunch CoWasher but I do regularly cleanse my scalp. So in all honesty, I could be using almost any shampoo and would give the same responses. Either it cleaned my scalp or it didn’t. The kids were using the Mielle Sacha Inchi Shampoo and I wanted to make a start on the Maui Moisture Agave Shampoo. So I mixed my shampoo in with theirs to get them gone quicker. Voila! It sill lathers, it still leaves the kids hair clean, still smells good, is still a shampoo. And thankfully, it’s almost gone because I have a few more shampoos I just want to get out of my cupboards!

Random Face Lotions

I noticed that I had clearly opened a few different face lotions in recent months and wasn’t really liking any of them all that much. So I used an empty Lush pot and combined them all to make a night lotion potion-

  • Boots Essentials Cucumber Moisturising Cream – I originally gave this quite a favourable review but I think my skin doesn’t react to it as well as it used to. I also decided that I won’t be using day lotions that don’t contain SPF. I’m too lazy to use SPF separately.
  • My Skin Matters Multi Protection Night Cream – I genuinely don’t remember using this but my notes say I thought it was okay and literally just that. Hardly a ringing endorsement.
  • My Skin Matters Anti Ageing Cream – It’s better than the above, thicker, more solid – according to my notes! I’m actually not sure why I put this in as it’s quite good, maybe I just got carried away!
  • Asda Little Angels Baby Lotion – It’s one of those watery pink lotions made for kids. It wasn’t thick enough for my kids and when I mixed it in with the other lotions it was like adding water to the mixture. Everything got very thin.

Anyway, I’m stuck with this monstrosity for a while as it actually filled the Lush pot and I only dab on a little bit at night after my shower. It’s not the best for moisturising, even after sleeping the night on my satin pillowcase, I need to re-moisturise in the morning. But I’m sure I can go back to my Soap and Glory or YourGoodSkin lotions in about 4 years time…😭

So sometimes you end up on top and sometimes you flip flap floppety flop but it’s all in the experimenting. Hopefully as I attempt to curb my product junkie ways, I won’t continue to end up with products that I have to put extra work into liking.

By the way, I’ve got a few more of these Frankenstein creations to talk about next week in Part 2, so see you there!

Everyone does this, right? What products do you mash up?

Let’s keep experimenting together!

xx Lee xx

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