My hair, for a very long time has been the constant bane of my life. It’s not quite straight, not quite curly, it’s too fine, and it’s natural blonde is like this weird sandy not been washed in two months type colour. I grew it out over lockdown and was feeling the beachy blonde vibes. Until earlier this year when I say a picture of me in a bobble hat and realised I looked like Jay for Jay and Silent Bob. So in August I went to see my loyal hair gal Clare who always indulges me in my whims, got it lowlighted and had about six feet chopped off. I felt soooo much better! Now the only problem was how to keep it looking nice? That’s when Steph stepped in and told me about the Mark Hill pick n mix wand she’d be using. And it was quite possibly the answer to my prayers
The idea is actually pretty genius, you buy the handle and then all the different attachments separately depending on what you like, how long your hair is and how you want your waves to look. I’ve had an old style Remington set of tong which have always stood me in good stead for curls no matter what length my hair but I fancied some different options. I’ve now been using it for a couple of months, so let’s take a look at the pros and cons:
I love the variation and that fact that they’re almost always on 3 for 2 in Boots so you get three attachments for around £30. and of the 8 attachments I now have, there’s only two that I don’t like. It also came in handy on our recently holiday as I was able to just take the one handle, a couple of attachments (including a straightener one) so I had lots of options without having to take a billion different appliances.
The different barrels I do have have subtle differences but I think all things considered my favourites are the drop curl barrel and the glam waver barrel:
They’re the two that look most like you’ve curled your hair with straighteners. I also find, as a bit of an aside, sectioning my hair into 4 sections from top to bottom, and curling away from your face on all but the second bottom section (curl that towards yours face instead) makes the curls look a bit les uniform and more beachy.
The best of the rest:
I feel like the straightener attachment needs it’s own mention. It’s one of the newer attachments and I think it’s been a long time coming as I’ve wondered for a few months why there wasn’t a straightener option. And whilst it is great to that the straight option, especially for travel purposes, but the straightener itself could be better. You really need to clamp it down with your free hand to make sure it grips the hair properly. The hair just slips out from the plates otherwise, which is a bit annoying.
The two I really can’t get away with though are the mermaid waver; which just makes my hair look frizzy, and the easy tong barrel, which leaves a line where you clamp down on the bottom of the hair and it just looks a bit crap. They may work better on longer or thicker hair but thy just don’t suit me at all.
The cons of this are that there are two heat settings; either off, or hotter than the sun. So might be worth investing in a heat proof mat to stop burning your carpet or dressing table. There’s also no auto shut off like most stylers or straighteners have, which means, if you leave it on and then leave the house, you’re pretty likely to burn the house down. I’m not sure whether it’s the material the barrels are made out of, but I’ve used other tongs in the past, the curls have lasted a but longer, these ones seem to drop a little quicker, but that’s nothing some decent hair spray can’t fix. Just something to be wary of if the weather’s a bit damp!
All things considered though I think this is a fab idea and love you can get so many different attachments to suit what kind of curls you want or what kind of hair you have. It’s reasonably priced and would make an excellent Christmas present!
