OK, I realize I’m really stretching my usual Friday Fun post to the limit by blogging about ripping hair off of my body, but a friend asked for more on my pledge to be razor-free for September and October, so here goes…
I found a Moom sugaring kit on clearance last month at Vitamin Cottage and just couldn’t resist it (I know, so much for August and the Buy Nothing Challenge–I need to work on my consumerism in a major way when it comes to personal care products!). It had a jar of the sugaring mixture, the tongue depressors you use to spread it, and the cloth strips you use to pull the sugar and your hair off.
I came home, read the lengthy directions, and got started. As I mentioned previously, I only had about 11 days of growth and more would definitely have been better (the packaging recommended 1 cm of growth and I was at about 3-4mm when I first tried this). I have to say that I found the product easier to use when it was not heated–it’s hard to spread either way and I was able to get a better paper-thin layer with it cool than with it at the recommended 110 degrees (note that the max temp of 110 is WAY cooler than the scalding hot wax that you often get at the beauty salon). That may be different in the winter when it’s cooler in the house, but we’ll see.
At any rate, I have been having my eyebrows waxed about every other month for the past five or six years and I have to say that sugaring was much less painful, although I did have a rather large glass of wine before I pulled the first strip. Despite my hair being a bit shorter than it should have been, I got my legs from quasi-Amazonian to mostly smooth in about 20 minutes. My pits were a bit more of a challenge. One of the tricks to sugaring, besides getting the sugar spread on your skin in the thinnest layer possible, is having your skin pulled taught. Now if anyone can tell me how to hold your arm up in the air, grab the cloth strip, and hold your skin taught with only two hands, I would truly appreciate it.
Matt actually offered to rip the strip off for me, but I just couldn’t do it. Somehow it was easier for me to inflict the pain than to have Matt do it (I said it was less painful, I didn’t say it felt good! The arm pits were definitely more sensitive than my legs, although I’ve read it gets easier each time because the roots of the hairs weaken after repeated removal). So I had to apply the sugaring, put the cloth strip on, rip, and repeat a bit more than I would have liked and I still have noticeable hair (still packed tank tops for our camping trip–hope the Artz family won’t be too grossed out!). But again, I did not let the hair grow quite long enough and that should make a big difference.
I also wanted to point out that I have significantly less redness a few days after the sugaring than I usually get with waxing. Less ingrown hairs so far too, although I’m not sure why that would be the case. I’m not yet brave enough to do my own eyebrows!
So I intend to give the sugaring another try after our trip, which would give me a total of 3.5 weeks of hair growth. And I also intend to try this recipe for sugaring from Care2 when the Moom runs out. As much as I liked my nifty little kit (and the strips can be rinsed and reused many times!), there is no way I’m paying full price for a jar of cooked lemon-sugar water with some essential oils added.
1 comment
Miss Lynx says:
July 15, 2009 at 9:37 am (UTC 2 )
I’ve never been able to do my pits successfully, and I’ve been waxing and/or sugaring my legs for decades. I’ve only tried once in a while though – maybe if I were more persistent with it, I’d have gotten further. I do find doing my legs really easy, though, and I do make my own sugaring solution.
But the main reason I’m commenting is to mention that there’s an error in the recipe on the Care 2 site – you want to heat it only to the soft ball stage, not hard ball as they say. Hard ball is what you use to make hard candy!