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From meh to mermaid: What it's like to get hair extensions

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I’ve had longish hair since primary school. But since I have weird orange hair (half of it extremely fine and blonde and the other half rather coarse and red) I’ve never really been able to grow it as long as I wanted to.

Women with heaps of hair just don’t know how hard it is for us girls who have thin hair. Those of you with #ThickHairPrivilege don’t get the horror of stringy cattail hair that just hangs limply down your back…

So when I got the chance to try hair extensions I was over the moon.

How did I get this amazing opportunity you ask? Well, it’s SCAR Hair’s 13th birthday – 13 years, how amaze?! – and they offered me easihair pro tape-in extensions. (For those of you who don't live in CT and aren't familiar with SCAR, it is basically your go to salon for all the edgiest and on trend crops and chops.)

Yep. I got a present because it’s THEIR birthday.

Look, I’m not going to lie… I had a few reservations:

a)      How would they ever match the colour? Like I said, my hair is orange.

b)      Surely it’s going to feel and look unnatural?*

c)       How the hell would I brush and wash it? *

*These two questions will be addressed fully in the follow up article.

Spoiler alert: it all turned out great.

The preparation

Anyway, I went for a short consultation with the lovely Britny from SCAR. She showed me her extensions to set my mind at ease – I couldn’t tell the difference between her actual hair and the taped in hair. We also matched one of the 29 colours perfectly to my hair. 

easihair pro

Britny suggested we use two boxes of the 16 inches to add both length and thickness to my natural hair. The 100% cuticle intact human hair would then be taped to the roots of my own hair, and I’ll keep it in for 5 to 8 weeks, depending on how fast my hair grows.

On the day

The entire process was really quick and easy. My hair was washed and blow dried and then I sat sipping a glass of crisp sauvignon blanc while Britny made short work of applying the tape-in extensions to my hair.


As you can see, the results were flawless. I couldn’t tell the difference between the extensions and my own hair, and it felt pleasantly thick and heavy.


I felt like a ginger Kardashian, and it was awesome!

Next week I’ll tell you how it’s going, and show you more looks…

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