Archive for the ‘Hair’ Category
Denman D3 Brush & My Hair Type
It looks like I’m an official natural girl now since I own a Denman brush now! Ha! I’m kidding! I bought my brush from Sally for $8.99 and the model is a D3. I was on a mission to pick up a D4, like TightlyCurly.com recommends, but Sally didn’t have it. The next best thing was the D3 and I am fine with that. It comes with 7 rows of bristles instead of the 9 rows that comes in the D4. The brush is a heavy duty plastic and the bed (the orange part), where the bristles come out of, is a durable type of rubber ???. The bristles are plastic and I cannot see them bending at all as time goes by – that’s how tough they are. The packaging says it’s made in the United Kingdom. As I keep looking at the brush I’m thinking my mom could have owned a brush like this when I was a little girl…I’ll have to ask her about that because it looks so familiar.
My Natural Hair Journey Officially Begins Today
I decided to try out wearing natural hair about a few months ago. Every month since June I have been cutting the relaxed parts of my hair off until it was all gone. As of today, I still have some ends where there is relaxed hair (but not much) and the reason is because my hair is so short and it is impossible for me to see to cut. I don’t want to make a mistake and cut any natural hair. Some time this month I’m going to go to a hair dresser to have them remove any relaxed ends I may still have. I took some pictures and it looks like I got most of those ends removed. My hair has about 2 inches of hair all over my head (the back and sides being the shortest) and I think it’s a great starting point for me.
The story as to why I decided to go natural is simple. I find it easier to maintain my hair in it’s natural state than in a relaxed one because I workout almost everyday. I sweat a lot and therefore I have to wash my hair after every workout or it will ruin my hair. Ruin my hair as in it drying up and breaking off. And with relaxed hair comes styling and I really don’t have time to style plush I don’t like to rock straight unstyled hair. I like that I can wash my hair, let it air dry, braid it up and put a wig over it. I will stop wearing wigs once I start getting some real length…well, I won’t stop completely because I love wigs. Today I wore a wash and go…I washed my hair, conditioned, moisturized it and let it hair dry out in its natural state…curly (pics below), since it’s short and I find this is the best hairstyle to rock at this length.
My hair is soft and curly. This is the first time in my life where I’m “seeing” my natural hair. If I can remember correctly, my mom put a texturizer called Vigorol in my hair when I was 8 years old. Before that I cannot remember who my hair felt in its natural state and from looking at pictures it wasn’t bad at all. It looked like my mom had no trouble managing my hair so I’m not sure why she went with a Vigorol (she can’t remember why lol).
I get inspiration for maintaining my hair from a few ladies I subscribe to on Youtube and so far I’ve learned so much. I have also read two hair care books called Ultra Hair Care Growth II (which is OK) and Grow It (which I love and use as a reference).
My hair care regime consists of conditioner washing my hair after every cardio workout that has me sweating bullets and that’s about 3 times a week. I use shampoo once a week to shampoo my hair and that’s on my deep conditioning days. I deep condition every Saturday for 30 minutes using a conditioner with protein mixed with a moisturizer, with a plastic cap on and under a hooded dryer on high. At the moment I’m washing my hair with Organix Shea Butter shampoo which I think I’m not going to buy again after I finish it because it strips my hair something fierce and I don’t like how it feels after I wash it out the second time of washing. I use products by Aphogee for conditioner and moisturizer and I really like them. I also use Aphogee’s leave in coditioner and tea tree oil spray. I use Organic Root Stimulator Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion (creamy) to moisturize my hair with and Palmer’s Olive Oil Formula Olive Oil (solid oil) to seal in moisture. I detangle my hair with Silk n Child conditioner which softens my hair and makes it easy to remove tangles plus it makes my hair feel so soft. I use a very wide tooth comb to detangle my hair with and yes I get some tangling even though my hair is short and I do not use any kind of brushes yet. And I let my hair dry via air drying. I only use heat when I’m under a hooded dryer deep conditioning with a plastic cap on. I sleep with a satin bonnet on or a wave cap on. And that’s it. I also used this regime to transition from relaxed hair to natural hair as well.
Hair Type: 4A or 4b …I’m really not sure, but I am in the 4s.
Anyway, my goal is to grow my hair and to keep it. I want big, curly hair and that’s what I’m shooting for. So today, I start my journey with 100% natural hair. So here is October 2010, Month 1 pics (after a wash and deep conditioning treatment)…
How I Store My Wigs & Ponytails
Somebody sent me a question asking me how do I store my wigs. I don’t have a great solution for storing my wigs and it may even be sad as to how I store my wigs (ha!), but this is the way I store them. You have all seen these hanger clip plastic storage thingies, right?.
My mom had a few of these in the 80′s when we were kids that we tore up a lot and now I have three of cheaper quality, but I only use it to hang up my wigs because I don’t have enough room to keep wig heads (I have two heads and like 8 or 9 wigs/ponytails) and I don’t want to keep the boxes they came in because they take up too much space and when I want to rock a particular wig I don’t want to have to go on a hunt to locate it. So I hang each of my wigs (two clips) and ponytails (one clip) alike, in a wig nets and voila! Stored! Saves me the space, torture of having to store them another way, find them and nobody bumps into them AND the baby can’t reach them. LOL!
I bought three of these in Chinatown (I can’t even find these in the dollar stores at all) for like 2 bucks each and I hang them in my closet.
*shrugz*
If anybody knows of a better way as to how to store wigs outside of bag, box or wig head please let me know.
A Much Needed Hair Care Sally’s Haul – 15% Off
I had gotten a 15% off coupon code for this month from spending over $25.00 at Sally’s last month so I went and purchase a few things with my discount this past Saturday afternoon. I was happy to get 15% off – I love discounts.
Background…I chopped all of my hair off again (referred to as the “big chop”) because I got tired of relaxing it and doing stuff to it a lot because I work out a lot – I have to wash more, condition more, wet more, moisturize more, etc. I decided to give my hair a rest by not putting any chemicals in it as far as any straightening ones are concerned, wearing protective styles and just wearing wigs over it. I love wigs and I have a few so it’s what I’m rocking these days. Underneathe my wig is a short afro which is nice and soft and all natural for once…again. I haven’t had natural hair in a long time so this feels so liberating.
I decided to go with BuidableBeauty’s hair recommendations (you can find her on Youtube – she has relaxed long hair and that’s fine – I’m sure the products she uses works well on natural hair too) and I bought a bunch of Aphogee hair products from Sally’s. I didn’t pay over 10 bucks each for any of the hair products. I picked up a table top hair dryer by Gold n’ Hot (because my current one is vintage, older than me and just doesn’t look nice anymore) which was priced at 40 bucks, but there was a discount of 5 bucks so I got it a bit cheaper. I’m only using the dryer for deep conditioning purposes only. I would have gone with the Ion dryer that was 10 bucks more, but they were all sold out.
DISCLAIMER: I am not into debating about what to use in natural hair or how to grow it or whatever. I know how to grow hair period so do not send me any hate mail! I’m not here to educate anyone about going natural, believe me. I’m here to share with you all how I do things and what I like to buy and whatever and everything else that intrigues me pretty. Got it??? OK!
I also bought several different types of combs, a bottle of Silken Child detangling conditioner (she says this is good for badly tangled hair) and three empty spray bottles ($1.99 each) to so I can apply my leave in conditioner and my home made anti-itch elixir (ha) whenever my hair isn’t feeling fresh when it’s not time for a wash.
To the pictures…my total bill came to liek $108. and with my discount it knocked it down to about $86.
Aphogee Balancing Moisturizer, Aphogee Keratine 2 Minute Reconstrutor, Aphogee Keratin & Green Tea Reconstructurizer (<—that word makes me laugh), Aphogee ProVitamin Leave-In Conditioner and Silken Child Extra Moisturizing Conditioner:
Picture of one of the empty spray bottles I bought and the comb pack I picked up.
