Beauty: Holo Taco Review Update

Okay. Right. Guys…

Remember in my previous post about Holo Taco I mentioned how I took Cristine’s advice on nail care with the nail oil and such? It actually made such a massive difference that I am now in love with the shape of my nails. Well, I mean, I like them a lot more than before. And my nails are actually able to grow out. For the first time ever, I have long nails and I like them.

I sent this before and after to my sister, and honestly I was shocked.

The ‘before’ image was cropped out of a photo where I’m cuddling my cat back in March. I literally don’t have many photos where my hands are really visible since I disliked the look of my nails. They were thin and grew out sideways or all sorts of weird directions. This was about as long as they could get before I had to cut them out of discomfort.

The ‘after’ photo was taken on 16th August, not too long after I received my first order of Holo Taco. Doesn’t it look… insanely different? My nail shape has changed, my cuticles are so much healthier and my nails are growing out in the right direction. Literally you wouldn’t believe it’s the same hand. I’m wearing a thin coat of Holo Taco’s Smoothing Base in that photo.

I’m not sure if using nail oil itself actually helped to change my entire nail shape – I first noticed it’d stopped growing sideways after I got my first ever gel manicure in early June. (That was a whole other story altogether – I have minor regrets about being upsold into it, but that’s beside the point.)

I wonder if sealing it with gel polish under the UV lights after the nail technician had aggressively filed them down was what caused it to remain in that shape? You can actually still see some of the remnants of the gel polish on my nails in the after pic.

Whatever it was, I know that using the nail oil plus changing to a glass nail file has helped a lot with my nail health after the gel started peeling off (ugh), and my nails have developed a stronger C-curve, which I feel is a highly desired outcome.

Anyways! All that is to say… I now adore my nails, and after using Holo Taco for a few weeks, I absolutely love it.

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Beauty: Holo Taco Review

Why holo everyone, it’s me, Crystina with no ‘h’ :p

You may have noticed in my Get Abs Challenge Day 12 photo that I had some nice fancy nails. The eagle-eyed among you may even have been able to identify that, yes, it is indeed Holo Taco nail polish. Allow me to tell you all about it!

Holo Taco is the brand created by YouTuber Cristine aka Simply Nailogical. I’m super late to the party, but I only found her videos in the past few weeks or so and only heard of her recently after Emily D. Baker mentioned her in a live stream at some point. In fact, I only found her channel after her most recent “I’m Not A YouTuber Anymore” video showed up on my recommended feed.

I was instantly taken with her professionalism and personality. A bunch of videos and nail oil later, I put in a Holo Taco order and waited in eager anticipation of the arrival of my new nail polishes. On Friday, they finally arrived.

I’m not the type to want holographic or bright coloured nail polishes. In fact, I barely get my nails done ever. I had a mani-pedi a few months ago but before that I don’t remember the last time I had one. I didn’t even get my nails done for my own wedding (I wore stick-ons) and, while there was a time where I went to a brilliant nail tech in LA, she retired so no more nice nails for me lol.

After purchasing some of the nail care products Cristine suggested and using nail oil, I could literally see a difference in the health of my nails. That was enough to convince me that Cristine was legit and knew what she was doing. Even if she only scored 60-something-% on the nail technician test ;)

Originally I was just going to buy her base coat and holo taco/matte taco top coats to wear as a nude polish, but out of a desire for free shipping, I took a look at the polishes available in the build-your-own bundle and fell in love with the One Coat Black with Gold Flakie Taco.

The OCB is pretty famous in its own right because Cristine wears it so much haha. But I was unfamiliar with everything else to be honest. It was a little overwhelming to browse the website as an absolute nail newbie and I hadn’t watched enough of her polish-intro videos to understand what all the cremes and toppers and holo and multichrome etc. were, but I think that was probably my error for not Simply Watching The Right Videos lol.

I’m still very happy with what I ended up with, and I’m already considering buying more! Full review below.

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I Tried Going No-Poo for 18 Days

As the title suggests: I tried to do no-poo for 18 days. That’s no shampooing my hair at all, and if possible not washing for as long as my hair will permit, starting 1st June.

Yep, perhaps I have gone crazy, or perhaps I’ve been newly inspired? Or perhaps I’m just next level lazy. But now that lockdown is easing and I have had my COVID vaccine, what better way to celebrate re-engaging in social life but to… not wash my hair for almost 3 weeks. Lol. (To clarify, I am still showering during this period, just not shampooing my hair. Hygiene is important.)

To be fair, it’s something I have attempted and failed a couple of times in the past, so I don’t have high hopes that it’ll somehow come to fruition this time. In fact, this attempt comes hot off the tail of another failed attempt. I lasted about 4 days before my scalp got so itchy and gross that I had to wash it with water, and a week before I gave up and had to shampoo my hair. Same thing happened at the start of quarantine when I first saw videos about it cropping up on YouTube.

But COVID restrictions are being lifted, I have a much-needed haircut scheduled for 18th June, so figured I may as well try once more as a last hurrah, and will make sure to tip my hairdresser well when the time comes haha.

When I was younger, I only washed my hair every 3-5 days and it was always fine, but at some point in my life it was stigmatised and I was told that I should be washing my hair daily. That never came naturally to me because my hair just… never got that greasy or gross in a day? I did start washing my hair more frequently, and now that I think about it, all it did was make my hair greasier if I didn’t shampoo & condition it every day or two.

Fast forward to these days, there’s a huge No-Poo movement where many, many people claim to have not shampooed their hair for months or years and their hair looks great. All of a sudden I don’t feel bad for not washing my hair as frequently, and if there’s a chance I could wash it even less frequently and have it still be fine, perfect haha.

Naturally, if you’re reading this post, it means that… well, something has happened. Either I gave up, or I succeeded. Either way, there will be photos of potentially very gross-looking hair and scalp so if you’re morbidly curious and not easily disgusted, read on. If you don’t want to read about my full experience and would just like to skip to my key takeaways from this, click here.

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Style: My New Favourite Yoga Pants

Last month was Amazon Prime Day and if you were browsing my blog in the past few weeks you may have noticed I had a little widget on the side of my blog showing some workout clothes I purchased that day.

It’s now been a month and I think I can finally provide a solid review — at least for one of the products. Out of all the sets I purchased, I decided to keep only one thing: these Lululemon Dupe yoga pants.

In case you’re interested in a set of Gymshark or Lululemon dupes, please do read on because I can at least give you my thoughts on all of these items I purchased, and the reasons I decided to return most of them.

It’s Black Friday today so many of these items are back on sale or even cheaper than when I’d purchased them. So here’s my quick summary of why I kept (or didn’t keep) the following items:

1. OLCHEE Crop Top Yoga Activewear Set in “E: Pink and Grey”, size 2-4 – Returned.

I bought the crop top & shorts set and intended to mix and match this with another pink/grey Gymshark dupe set (see below), but the material was slightly different and the colours were slightly off. This wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker had it not been for poor fit as well.

This set didn’t fit me well. I have thicker upper thighs, and the elastic around the bottom of the shorts is fairly tight. The shorts aren’t long enough to reach down to my slimmer lower thighs, meaning the elastic pinched in the fat on my upper thighs and made it look incredibly unflattering. The bra fit okay-ish, but I felt like it was a little large on me around the ribcage area. I didn’t really like it enough to keep, and especially not given the ill-fitting shorts.

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I finally snapped.

I did it. I finally snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was way too hot and my hair was way too long with way too many split ends… so, last night, I finally went at it with a pair of craft scissors – the same pair I used to cut my hubby’s hair a few weeks prior.

We went from this:

To this:

To this:

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