ghd Flat Iron

Ok ladies, I must rave about my new flat iron.  I got the ghd Rich Ruby Gift Set on Black Friday and have been using it ever since.

I had been looking for a new flat iron for a while before getting this one.  My old flat iron was a trooper.  It was made by FHI and I had been using it since like 2007!  Well, a couple months ago, the cord connection became finicky.  It would only turn on if the cord was placed in a certain position.  I kept using it like that for a while because I couldn't decide which new iron to get.  Then ghd was having a 50% off sale on Black Friday, so I pulled the trigger.

Well, it wasn't love at first sight though lol.  I actually was annoyed right from the start because this company is British, even though they do sell in the US and have a US website.  When I tried to buy it on their website, my credit card company flagged the transaction as possibly fraudulent.  So I used a different credit card that went through ok.  I thought all was well, but ghd then decided my transaction was shady and placed my order on hold.  They didn't provide me any contact info so I couldn't even call them to explain what happened.  I emailed them but apparently British people celebrate American Thanksgiving too because I got an out of office message saying they were out for like 4 days!!  What!!!  I was really annoyed with that, and might have sent them another email letting them know that I'm more than happy to spend my money elsewhere if they didn't want it.  =P

A few days later, they did approve my purchase and since they ship out of LA, I received my flat iron the day after.  Of course, at this point, I'm like... mehhhh... mentally preparing to return it already.

But... I opened the box, and woah, it's so pretty!

This is what it looked like, with a wrapper outside of the box:

Here's the actual box when you take the wrapper off:

Tadaaaa!!!

The storage/travel case is heat and water resistant, and has a divider on the inside, a zipper on top, and flap over.  It's bigger than I thought it would be:

So then, I went to try it out right away.  It heats up within like... 10 seconds or something crazy fast which is awesome.  But then I realized that there was no temperature setting!  My old FHI iron had a range or 250-475.  Even my friend's Conair flat iron from Target that costs a lot less had temperature control.  I couldn't believe that a flat iron that costs this much didn't allow you to adjust your own temp.  So I googled this, and apparently they believe there's an optimal temperature setting for everyone's hair, and it's around 425.  Well, I thought that was a little cocky of them.  I knew from my experience with my old straightener that nothing less than 475 worked well on my hair, so I was pretty sure this iron was going back...

Well... I'm totally eating my own words now!  This is in fact the best straightener I've ever used!  Whatever temperature it is set at does wonders for my hair!  It doesn't burn, and makes it smoother.  I have pretty straight hair already, but I do have bangs and they are usually really messed up looking when I wake up in the morning.  This iron makes it look perfect, and I also quickly run it over the rest of my hair too, just because it makes it uber straight and shiny!  I can sleep on my hair all night, and it is still as straight as can be the next morning.

I also only use flat iron to curl my hair.  For some reason, when I use a curling iron, the curls fall out quickly.  But when I use a flat iron to curl, it stays forever.  Seriously, forever.  It won't fall out until I wash my hair.  So that was my next test for this flat iron.  It passed the test with flying colors too!  These two pictures below are the finished product of my hair with looser, kinda like beach wave curls.  I basically used thicker strands of hair while curling, and held the iron on my hair for shorter length than I normally would.  I really like relaxed curls.

For my boudoir photoshoot, I curled my hair using this flat iron as well, but I made slightly tighter curls by using smaller strands of hair and holding my flat iron onto it longer.  I actually curled my hair the night before the shoot, then slept on it, and it still looked pretty good the next day!

So there ya go, best flat iron ever!!  Now I know why it costs so much.  If I had known how well it would work, I would have paid full price for it a long time ago!