Goody QuikStyle Half-Round Brush Review! (From the Holday VoxBox by Influenster)

Hey guys!

So I was very happy to receive a Goody QuikStyle Brush in my Holiday VoxBox to try absolutely free in December. I included the review below in my regular blog, but I needed to make an independent post for the brand challenge. The Goody QuikStyle is a new brush that Goody came out with and I felt really lucky to be one of the first ones to be able to try it!

According to the review page on Influenster:

"The GOODY® QUIKSTYLE™ Paddle brush works like a towel and brush in one. The super absorbent (and antimicrobial) microfiber removes 30% of water from wet hair to help speed your drying time! You can effortlessly detangle right out of the shower and continue using it while you blow dry!"

I actually received a half-round brush, but that's actually really good because I don't own a round shaped brush yet but I do have a paddle brush.

Goody QuikStyle Brush in Half-Round Shape ($11.99):

This brush actually pushed me to do my very first blowout ever. I don't do my hair. I am the most low maintenance person when it comes to doing my hair ever. I'm not sure what it is. My hair routine consists of running my fingers through my hair to get the big tangles out, or I put it in a ponytail. And not even an interesting ponytail. Just a Goody No-Hurt band ponytail. I think that doing your hair is the most time consuming and frustrating thing ever... Henry really wishes I would try to put it some effort, so I've started trying to hairspray my little frizzies down as a compromise. 

Anyway, I really wanted to make the most out of this brush, and got inspired when I watched a YouTube video of a fellow Influenster trying it out. This brush has microfiber bristles that kind of remind me of the ones that I have on the sponge I use to wash my car. They're really soft and smushy, and do a great job at absorbing water. It claims to make drying time for your hair shorter since the bristles help soak up some of the water after you towel dry your hair. It's true. It does make the drying time faster. I usually just let my hair air dry, and did try doing half my hair brushed with the Goody QuikStyle, and left the other half just normal towel dried. The half that was brushed was dryer when I checked it about 20 minutes later, and my hair looked nicer on that side. So I've been using this after I shower now ever since then. 

I also looked up a YouTube video on how to do an easy volume blowout, which came out great using the Goody QuikStyle! It wasn't bad for my first time, but I wish I had taken a picture. In terms of keeping it clean, it's not that bad. I just pull out the hairs that get stuck in the bristles and wash the soft bristles once a week with soap and water. I think a brush like this would be really handy in a gym bag, or during the summer when everyone is going to the pool or beach. I was skeptical about the brush at first, but since I got to try it now, it does seem to make a little bit of difference in drying time.

If you'd like to read more reviews on the Goody QuikStyle Brush, just click here to access those on the Influenster site. It's an absolutely great program and if you're a consumer who loves trying out new things and reviewing them, I would definitely consider joining!

Kiss Nail Dress Review!

Hey everyone!

So I started this blog so that I could do brand challenges for Influenster, since most of the brand challenges require a separate, individual review of each product in their VoxBox. Kiss Nail Dress Adhesives will be my very first one! Yay!

Kiss Nail Dress in Limited Edition Style KDS03WG Couture ($6.99/set):

Here is the introduction of the product as seen on the Influenster review page:

"Introducing Kiss® Nail Dress™, ultimate nail fashion for tips and toes! Just peel, apply, and shape for a manicure that lasts up to a week. On in minutes, off in seconds without remover. Nail Dress is available in 21 different styles, many of them featuring 3-dimensional jeweled designs. Check out Peplum, a deep silver with multi-colored gems for a pop of color, or Babydoll, for a golden and glamorous jeweled look. Skip the topcoat, Nail Dress has it built in.

With 28 strips in each package, you can cut up your extras to create designs that can be used on top of polished or artificial nails. Add some pizzazz and use with imPRESS® Press-On Manicure™ by Broadway Nails for the ultimate DIY manicure. Nail Dress doesn’t dry out the way other polish strips can, so you can save them to use on your next mani. A nail design booklet is included in each package, just in case you need a little inspiration.

And don’t forget about your feet! Nail Dress looks awesome on toes, too – just use the square side of the sticker for a perfect fit."

I absolutely loved seeing this in the box. It seems like every VoxBox I've gotten now has given me the opportunity to explore new forms of making your nails pretty. These were adhesive "stickers" that you could put on your nails instead of polishing them! They were really easy to use too. All you had to do was match up the correct nail sticker to the size of your nail, similar to using press ons, and then there's a tab that you peel off to expose the sticky part, then you just line it up and press down evenly to stick it onto your real nail. I would recommend soaking your cuticles and pushing them down before you start. Once you have the sticker on, you just fold over the remaining part that's too long over your nail, and then take the file to file the rest of the adhesive off. Took me about 15 minutes top from start to end. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and it came out pretty nicely, even though I didn't match up some of the nails correctly (some came out too narrow). 

I thought the pattern that I got was pretty cool because it was 3D-ish, and it looked really fashionable. My boyfriend thought it looked busy, but he doesn't really like things that are asymmetrical (#Engineerforabf). It didn't last for more than a day, but that's expected for me because I didn't get to smooth out the ridges out on my nails. I have really deep ridges on my thumbs, so no adhesive ever really stays for long unless I take a nail drill to it and smooth it out some. As soon as I took a shower that night, it started to come off at the top, so I just peeled them off. That was a great feature, since I didn't need any acetone. I do wish it would have lasted longer though. Next time, I'll do a better job at preparing my nails and see if that makes a difference. Also, another thing, which could be a pro or a con is that since it uses the shape of your real nails, you have to be really good at shaping your own nails yourself. When I used the press-ons from the College VoxBox, all I had to do was take a nail clipper, and cut my nails short. With these adhesives, I was, unfortunately, going through a bad nail week where I had broken a couple so I had to cut them all short. Usually, my nails are a nice medium length and these probably would've looked nicer if I could have kept my nails unbroken that week, but it was New Year's Eve, and I really wanted to try these out. So it could be a pro if you have lovely length and shape on your nails, but if you have no idea how to shape it and have really short boy nails (like me in the pic below), then you're wasting the value. It's a little pricey for me, but I would say it was worth it since you can't really do that kind of design on your own using nail polish (unless you're some kind of nail guru). I would purchase again.

You can see more reviews on the Kiss Nail Dress here, on the Influenster site. I was very lucky to receive this product free from Influenster in my Holiday 2012 VoxBox. Thank you Kiss and Influenster!

And thanks for reading!

TheRxNina