Ahhhh...the holy grail of today's beauty.

HAIR EXTENSIONS.

For some, these two simple words sends jolts of excitement all through their body. Visions of long flowing Rapunzel hair fills their dreams, and they begin to do their best version of "the hair flip" just thinking about them.
For others, images of 2007 Britney come into play...

I'm here to tell you ladies (and gentlemen) all about the wonderful world of weave, and how it could apply to YOU. Plus, what beauty blog is complete without an entire post about hair extensions?

Let's start where any great story starts: at the beginning.
Well, let's start at the beginning of my journey with hair extensions, and go from there. I don't really want to do a history on them, and I'm sure ya'll care about as much as I do when it comes to how long women have been swapping hair.
I started wearing extensions at a relatively young age, around 12, and that's where my love/hate relationship began. I saved up for my first set of hair extensions for months by helping with chores/mowing/cleaning and anything I could do for an extra buck, which I had to do a lot because little naive me thought that the most recognizable brand, HairDo (which omg, had jessica simpson on the package so obvi was the best hair, right?!)
WRONG! Oh so so so wrong. Stupid me decided to spend my hard earned money on the worst thing a girl with little to no hair expertise could do;

SYNTHETIC HAIR.

Let's just say, I made this mistake only once. Synthetic hair, although it usually claims to be "just like human hair", is not. It is some foreign, mystery, evil thing that would be a wonderful material for birds to nest in, but not much else. It comes out of the package feeling like a conditioned horse mane, and only gets worse. Oh, did I forget to mention that synthetic hair doesn't move? That's right. It lays there like a hair scarf. I can't even tell you how hard it was for me to take this sensuous selfie...

They looked a little like this....


(Look at me, being all scientific in my sophomore Chemistry class...this was the best view I had of this hair, to be honest.)
This hair was great. Looked real, felt real, held curl, and was all around awesome. The one complaint I have? The itching. This wasn't from the hair, but from the method of application. Having the hair sewn in meant that all the area under the cornrows wasn't able to be shampoo'd or scratched or brushed. This caused an obnoxious itching sensation all over my head, which I learned to do the weave pat..

which actually really kept the itching at bay. But alas, eventually, when it was time to take my hair extensions out, I decided to try something else, and continue my mission to find the absolute best way to attach hairs to my head.

I decided to go ahead and do some online research, becuase I didn't want to go back to the travesty that was HairDo, so I got my laptop out, some nutella, and sat down for an afternoon of online searching for the best brand of hair extensions.
BELLAMI.
Their name was everywhere I turned...youtube, beauty blogs, everywhere. The website was beautiful, adorned with some of my favorite youtube gurus bragging about their Bellami hair extensions, and how it was the key to their flawlessness. I was hooked.
I saved up for a couple weeks and put down the $250 required to get their thickest, longest set of extensions, because go big or go home, right?
I waited pretty impatiently for my Bellami's to arrive, and when they did, they were gorgeous. They slid out of their packaging like silk, and when I put them in my hair, they blended seemlessly.

That's where the pro's end.

Yupp.
Screwed over by the hair gods once again.
Let's talk about BELLAMI. The hair sheds. I'm not talking a strand of hair here and there, I'm talking full blown hair falling out to the point where you nearly have a coniption type of shedding. Hair on my clothes, in my car, in my bed, on my boyfriend, on my dog, in my food, IT WAS EVERYWHERE. Also, the small amount of hair that was left on the wefts of hair became a matted, tangled mess after one wash. There was a mat of hair at the nape of my neck, and trust me, I did everything in my power to fix those extensions.
Conditioning treatments, letting them air dry, never brushing them wet, nothing made a difference. And why do I only have a couple of pictures of me in these extensions, and how long did they last exactly before they were simply un-wearable?
These extensions lasted about 1 week with everyday wear.
After that, they became a matted pile in my trashcan.
I contacted Bellami's customer service, and they never replied. Lovely, right?
They looked like this when I decided to toss them...



So, after all the drama, horror, and scary experiences I've had, I've made the decision to stick to my 'ol faithful of hair, Euronext.
I wear the clips ins currently, every day, and let me tell you, they're the best.
They're light weight, they blend perfectly, and they don't damage my real hair. Best of all, they last forever. The set I've had currently, I've been wearing for more than a year, and they're still in pretty good shape! I need to go get another pack or two just due to normal wear, but they've held up amazingly well.
Nobody ever knows I'm wearing extensions!

I love them, and I suggest everyone to try them.

My one complaint about Euronext?
Each pack is only about 80 grams of hair, so you need to buy several packs if you have short hair, and probably one or two if you have long hair. I have about chin length hair currently, so I have to buy about 3-4 packs.
It's a lotta clips, but it's a lot of glam, too ;)

So the basic rundown is this:
You get what you pay for, unless it's Bellami. I also know that there are other companies out there that claim to be something they're not. Do your research. Find the pros and the cons, and if the hair sounds to good to be true?
It probably is.

If you still haven't died of boredom reading this, I applaud you. You're one of the few, the proud, the informed about hair extensions.

I pray that you always make wise weave decisions. May the hair gods be with you.