Giveaway: Bargainsta banishes bad hair days

If you’ve been here for a while, you already know that the nice folks at Conair gave me an Infiniti Nano Silver Steam Straightener. Now they want to share the love with three of you. And, to sweeten the pot, John Frieda is including a prize pack of hair care products. (I’m getting one to check out too!) Update: John Frieda has decided to include a second package of products for the three lucky winners.

All you need to do is tell me why you need help banishing bad hair days by either:
• leaving a comment; or
• writing a blog post; or
• posting your bad hair picture to Flickr (you know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words); or
• posting a brief video (2 min. max) to YouTube explaining why you want to banish bad hair days.

If you go with a blog post, photo or video entry, be sure to tag it “#bargainista” and send me an email with a link - make sure to include “banish bad hair” in the subject line. Feel free to use other photo of video sharing sights. You must also allow blog posts, photos and videos to be posted on Bargainista.ca.

Peter Ciardulli from Calia Hair Design is judging – he’s my hairdresser and he knows a bad hair day when he sees one.

Entries are due by midnight EST on Tuesday, December 23. Open to Canadian residents only. Anonymous entries will be disqualified. The good folks at Thornley Fallis will make every effort to deliver prize packs to you before New Years’ Eve.

Conair’s Infiniti Nano Silver Steam Straightener helps me tame the beast

I was thrilled when the kind folks at Thornley Fallis asked me if I’d be interested in learning more about Conair’s new Infiniti Nano Silver Steam Straightener.



Anyone who knows me knows I have lots of hair that naturally is neither straight nor curly but somewhere oddly in between.

I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a flat iron for a couple of years. I’ve tried a few but always found them hard to handle and I never got great results.

The Infiniti Nano Silver Steam Straightener has two steam settings, three height settings for the detangling comb and several heat settings. My hair is thick and coarse which makes it challenging to say to the least, so I’ve been using it with steam and always on the highest setting.

When I learned they were actually giving me my very own hair straightener, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to try it out. For the past three weeks or so, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing:
• washing hair at night, straightening the next day
• washing hair in the morning, blow drying then straightening
• air drying my hair, straightening once it’s dry
• and so on…

It handles easily. I find it lighter than conventional flat irons but that’s probably because apart from the tourmaline ceramic-coated plates (apparently they help prevent you from damaging your hair), it’s made from lightweight plastic metal. I can straighten my hair in about 15 minutes – a bit quicker than my flat iron experiences.

Results:
It works! I find it works best if my hair is bone dry otherwise, it ends up a bit frizzy. My hair doesn’t look as good as when I’ve had it straightened at the salon but I’m pretty happy with the results regardless. I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to use a protective product at the same time. I’m not sure if it’s necessary because the steam is supposed to help condition my hair as it straightens. What do you think?

As for the price, compared to flat irons typically costing about $200 and up, Conair’s Infiniti Nano Silver Steam Straightener retails for $99. Not bad.

And now for an infomercial moment...
There’s a special offer on their website where you can get a 30-day trial and a bunch of accessories for $14.99 – the cost of shipping. If you decide to keep the goods, you can make three monthly payments of $39.99 each.

And there’s more…
Check out Tame the Beast for a chance to win one of four Grand Prizes of “Total Hair & Beauty Makeover” worth up to $1,000 PLUS a gift basket of Conair hair-related products and John Frieda styling products worth up to $500!

Update: I hope you enjoyed the video. I found it on YouTube.