I decided to order some hot rollers for myself recently. I have a curling iron which is cheap, made of metal, slow to warm up and absolutely not good for my hair. I thought about getting some new curling tongs for my hair as I don't enjoy my dead straight hair all the time and prefer some volume and bounce to it. I actually eyed up some in the shops here in Norway and they were 999kr - thats over £100! So I found an older model on BeautyBay.com. It was around £20. I was very impressed by the site, large selection range of all sorts and the delivery price to Norway was quite cheap in comparison to what I've paid before using other UK online shops.
Unfortunately, the delivery took 2 weeks although the site stated it would take upto 7 days. It's not their fault, Norway stopped it to make sure they could tax it on its way here. Ouch, more money gone. However, it was still cheaper then what I would have paid for in the shops.
Anyway! On to the rollers!
There are 20 rollers as stated (you can order a 30 piece model I believe) of varying shapes and sizes.
What you do is turn this baby on and leave it. (It took around 20 minutes to heat up)
Wash your hair, towel dry and once to the rollers are ready, (indicated by a marker on one of the rollers) roll them into your hair. I found putting the larger rolls on the top layer of my head and the small, tighter rollers at the bottom worked for me. You then leave them in your semi-damp hair for 20-30 minutes depending on how thick your hair is.
To keep them in place, I had some wire clips with it. They were extremely fiddly to use and I will probably go buy some plastic clips instead to hold the rollers. One downside is that the rollers got quite hot and I found it very easy to accidently touch the middle of them when applying them into my hair.
So after rolling them into my hair, this is what I look like.
So whilst, I waited for them to do their work, I got a drink and did my makeup. I found you couldn't really move around too much out of fear they would fall out - another reason I want to by plastic clips.
Anyway, I took them out after 25 minutes and the result was... messy curly hair. I had kind of an 80's look, it was very retro. I suppose if I wanted that look I could have kept it but it reminded me of my mum's hair from photos when she was young - she had a perm.
Wanting that wavy, bouncy effect with a slight curl, I brushed the curls a little bit out but not too much and ended up with this:
It was more or less what I had aimed for and I finished it off with some hairspray. It lasted around 8-10 hours afterwards before it started losing its volume.
Overall, I am happy with my purchase!
Postives:
+ Plenty of rollers and enough wire clips to hold them in place in my hair
+ The different sizes are quite good for getting varying sizes of curls.
+ No playing with a curling iron for ages, just roll them in your hair and leave them whilst you do something else.
Negatives:
- Fiddly to use the wire clips.
- Easy to burn yourself.
- Bulky, not very viable to take abroad anywhere.
- Takes 20 minutes to warm up whereas a good curling iron will be much quicker.
