-Why I chose this product / my history with the product -

To be honest, I don't often colour my hair. The only time I ever do it is to just cover the fact that my hair has suddenly become absolutely, unbelievably frizzy! and so it should be, the way I look after it. My hair touches my hip and it is a light/medium kind of browny colour. I have used this product three times before, sort of every 3 months or so. This time, I bought it and hadn't actually used it for about 7 months. I sometimes use it to dye my hair for special occasions and so that's another reason why I'm not really a regular user. The reason I do this is because I feel that dying your hair, especially a darker colour than you are now, makes it shinier and conditioned for a short while. Also, just to let all of you readers know, I will be reviewing the semi-permanent line of L'Oreal casting crème as I only ever dye my hair semi-permanently as I am too scared of something going wrong and me hating my hair forever. As my hair is so long (it would take probably 5 years to grow the colour out! Eeek!)

since Ciao doesn't have a separate product for semi and permanent this is why my review is in this category. Please don't mistake it for permanent, in fact, I'm not even sure you can get excellence crème in permanent; you'll have to do some snooping! I bought this product at boots and it's normally £6.98, which I think is a little pricey for a semi-permanent hair colour but it was a pound of so I got it for £5.98. To be honest, I think it's still worth the money and I will go into why in a while.

-What does it promise to deliver? / Does it meet these promises? -
L'Oreal casting crème promises to its users a whole range of crazy hair-affiliated miracles! Well, not really..the packaging states that the hair colouring will:

• Last up to 28 shampoos.
• Be Suitable for all types of hair (coloured, highlighted etc)
• Cover 70% of grey.
• Take 20 minutes to develop.

Casting crème gloss also conditions and provides visible shimmering tones. It has no ammonia and has a patented conditioning complex and has a non-drip crème application formula.

In my honest opinion, this is pretty much true to my experience of Casting Crème Gloss. It is gentle colouring that blends with my natural colour.

I chose the new colour of Golden Honey number 730 which is like a
dark golden blonde. The colour on the model on the packet looks phenomenal. Of course, my hair didn't look like hers, and I didn't expect it to. I know that it is very necessary, not with just this hair colourant, but with all to look at the little table on the back of the packaging which tells you what your hair will look like after using the dye depending on what your hair colour is now. As my hair was already "Dark Blonde" it meant that my hair would go a different colour to the colour of the models hair. This was true, and it did go pretty much the colour that the table showed me it would go. So that's all good and dandy! If you hair is 'light blonde' or 'blonde' and you use this dye you will be closer to the colour of the lovely ladies hair! Lucky you. By the way, this isn't the fault of the hair colourant that my hair doesn't look like the hair model lady's. It's just a fact of life, if you have darker hair, it's very difficult to get it lighter unless you maybe go to a hairdressers and have it done professionally.
I
did also have lovely shimmering tones, my hair was soft and smelt great after dying it and it was very shiny. After two washes since I did it yesterday, it is still shiny and from my previous experience it does stay shiny for a while afterwards. In terms of the 28 washes, providing the colourant lasts 28 washes with every colour, I can safely say that this does happen. As I am writing this review having only just used the product, I have not washed my hair 28 times. But with the colour I have used before, I would say that the product does last near enough 28 washes, I'd say somewhere between about 22-24 washes and so I'm pretty sure this particular colour will not let me down either. I regret to inform you that I can't tell you about the greys seeing as I don't have any! Lucky me! So the end result, in my opinion is pretty good, if you experiment, every now and then with different colours in the range of casting crème gloss you will soon find one you love and keep sticking to it. I kept using the same one when I used it before the golden honey because it was just right for me but I fancies a change with this one. Therefore, if you give this a go, first give it a go with a colour similar to your own and even if the colour doesn't change so much the conditioning the dye gives you is lovely that you'll even pay this amount of money to just use it as a conditioner. That's pretty much what I did this time and I didn't thin kthe colour would change whatsoever but it did a little and so I now have lovely conditioned hair and a nice new subtle colour. No one has noticed really apart from my boyfriend, but I like the fact that it's subtle, if you go for a totally different shaed to what you normally are then people will obviously notice. The quality of the colour is very good and it can even blend in highlights you no longer want but don't want to get roots while they grow out. If you choose a colour close to your natural, it will blend away the highlights. The first time I used this product, I used it for that very reason and it worked a treat!

-What do you get in the box? -
In the box you get:
• 1 tube of crème colourant (48ml)
• 1 tube of developer crème (72ml)
• 1 precision tip applicator
• 1 bottle of nutrshine conditioner (40ml)
• 1 pair of gloves
• 1 instruction leaflet.

-Application-
The application of the hair dye is kind of fiddly if you ask me. You had to open the seal of the colourant. To do this, you have to pierce the seal with the lid of the crème developer. Next you screw the colourant onto the top of the crème developer bottle. There are two problems I encountered at this stage. Firstly, when you take the top of the crème developer this means you can't put the lid back on when you are required to shake the mixture together so you have to put your thumb over the bottle. Second problem so far is that I found it really difficult to actually screw the colourant onto the bottle, you know when you try and screw something on and it just doesn't quite fit in the grooves? It's a little annoying. When the colourant is squeezed into the crème developer there is a problem also because the tube of colourant is a kind of metal material so it's hard to squeeze the colour out and you have to really push hard to get it all out. Kind of like squeezing out tomato puree. Shaking it is hard to get the mixture to all get together takes alot of time to mix it properly. Next the hair has to be wet and the product can be worked through the hair. You can use a nozzle provided in the pack and work through sections of your hair but to be honest I never do it I just squeeze it on my hands (I have gloves on) and just rub it in my hair. I worked it all through the hair and left it for twenty minutes. The colourant didn't drip as promised and I left it on for twenty minutes. When I washed it out, it seemed kind of sticky and took me a while to totally get rid of it. When it was all washed out, which took a few minutes I put the provided conditioner in. It only tells you to use half of it but I always use all of it. When it was dried it looked healthy and shiny and natural.

-Conclusion-
The product as whole is very good. I don't particularly like the application process but I have never tried any other hair dye which has other methods so to be honest I'm not sure how this method compares. I have used the product more than once and would continue using it as I know it provides good quality hair colour.

Thanks for reading!