Charles Worthington Relax and Unwind Blow-dry Straightening Balm

...this was an assortment of Charles Worthington hair products with the labels stuck on slightly skew-whiff, one of which was the Relax and Unwind Straightening Cream.

Now, my natural hair is thick, bouncy - and utterly mad . My hair seems to be incapable of deciding whether it is straight or curly, with the result that I have some crazy kinks, accompanied by a vast amount of frizz. My mum doesn't straighten her hair, so I was happy enough ...
...go!

The packaging is as you see above (except that mine had the wonky label!) so I won't bore you by going into infinite detail about it .

The back of the product tells me that this product will do the following:

Relax kinks, waves and curls with long lasting hold to keep straightened styles in place .
Increase hairs resistance to heat styling damage.
Give a moisture boost with Panthenol and smooth ... more

Ah, my mum the Boots employee and her mysterious staff shop goodybag of delights ! Boots are very strict on quality control on the products they manufacture, not just their own brands but big brands manufactured under licence . If the label is just a little bit wonky, into the on site staff shop with it, and usually at a pretty hefty discount too . My mum picked up a 'lucky bag' from the staff shop, at the hefty price of £1, and this was an assortment of Charles Worthington hair products with the labels stuck on slightly skew-whiff, one of which was the Relax and Unwind Straightening Cream.

Now, my natural hair is thick, bouncy - and utterly mad . My hair seems to be incapable of deciding whether it is straight or curly, with the result that I have some crazy kinks, accompanied by a vast amount of frizz. My mum doesn't straighten her hair, so I was happy enough to take this off her hands and give it a go!

The packaging is as you see above (except that mine had the wonky label!) so I won't bore you by going into infinite detail about it .

The back of the product tells me that this product will do the following:

Relax kinks, waves and curls with long lasting hold to keep straightened styles in place .
Increase hairs resistance to heat styling damage.
Give a moisture boost with Panthenol and smooth the hair for a high shine finish .

This all sounds really good, and exactly what my frizzy mad mop needs. On top of this, this product will last for 24 months once opened, and contains moisturising rice protein .

Using this is simple - Simply wash your hair as normal, squeeze out any excess moisture, and then smooth a little of this through your hair and blow dry, then use straighteners to complete the look .

Now, I'll be honest, I've not been using straighteners for long, and I usually use only a heat defence spray . I wasn't too sure how much of this I needed to use at first, (I have shoulder length hair) so I squeezed a very small amount into my hands, rubbed them together and smoothed my hands over my hair . I figured I would rather use to little, and have slightly frizzy kinky hair, than too much and have my hair look lank and flat because of the weight of numerous products .

And actually, a little seems to go a long way - even with the first stingy application, I did notice that not only did my hair seem to straighten more easily, but also that is was less frizzy and a little shinier . In addition, it seemed that actually moving the straighteners through my hair was easier, with my hair catching less .

This doesn't have any particular smell to it - just a very mild slightly fruity scent, but nothing that lingers on the hair once styled, or on the hands. And I didn't find that my hair felt heavy when using it , or that I had to wash my hair any more often than normal . However, I do not straighten my hair very often, probably only one or two days a week - perhaps if you were to use it daily it might well wear the hair down.

Overall, I think this product is great - I don't straighten my hair too often, but when I do this makes a noticeable difference , making the style easier to create, and much sleeker looking . Having looked on the Boots website, the normal price of this is £4.39 for 150ml, which I think is very reasonable as a little does go a long way!

A great product for taming my mad mop - 5 stars!  

...less