Sunday, April 22, 2012

DIY Curly Bob

On Tuesday, I was home sick with a fever. (I totally blame this on the fever.) I saw this YouTube video How to Cut Your Own Hair. So I did. (And yes, I would totally love to have the curls of the woman in the video!)



It's an inverted curly bob, and I really love it. To judge by all the compliments I've gotten, other people do too. (I've never gotten this many compliments on my hair!)

So many people mentioned the curl. Our CEO said how much she liked my hair. Even the straight men gave me compliments. (One guy said, "Your hair, it is very beautiful")

I guess I'll wear this style a little more often :)  (And look! My spirals are starting to show up for the camera! Shy little things, aren't they? :))


Monday, April 16, 2012

Myths and Realities About Wash N Go Hair

Over at CurlTalk I see a lot of women asking for "Wash N Go" hair. They want to enhance their curl, but they don't want to have to work at it. And who can blame them? We all have so much going on in our lives, and some things seem like they should just be simple. And daily hair styles seems like one of those things. (Special event hair styles are another thing entirely.)

To me, enhancing your curl is like wearing make up. Do you have to do it? Of course not. You don't have to wear make up and you don't have to style your hair, and people will not lynch you if you don't. (Trust me, I've done the no make up and no hair style thing for over 40 years and except for that one time, I've never been threatened with a lynching. But that time doesn't count, because there were extenuating circumstances involving a mad scientist and his creation :)

Also like make up, you can either use one product or lots. (Some women won't go out of the house without putting on lipstick, other women won't go out of the house without putting on foundation, blush, mascara, etc.)

When you want to enhance your curl, you can use one product (usually a curl enhancer of some kind), or many (curl enhancer, mousse, gel, plopping, diffusing, etc.)

I think the two biggest reasons women want that mythical "Wash N Go and look fantastic" hair are time and feeling like a fraud.

Time? It really doesn't take that much more time to put some product in your hair. When you're new at it, it takes longer, but once you've had a week or two to practice, you get really fast :) I air dry my hair in the car while dropping my son off at school and driving to work (I turn on the heater). If I have an extra 10 minutes at home, I will diffuse my hair dry.

I think one big reason is "feeling like a fraud". They think that if they have to work at curly hair, they don't really have curly hair. I understand it, but it's not true. If you have to exercise and work at being fit, does that mean you're not really fit? If you wear make up, does that mean that you're a fraud? If you have to clean your house...ok you get it :)

Hair, like everything else in our lives, needs a certain amount of maintenance. That doesn't mean you're a fraud :) So give up the idea of "Wash N Go" hair, find out what you can do with what you've got, and then decide how much effort you want to put in your hair on a daily basis. As you improve your skills and your techniques, your time investment will become less, and you may discover that your idea of "Wash N Go" expands.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Photo Trail

I'm going to post some pictures of my Curly Girl (CG) journey. Before, during, and after, if you will. These are not for the faint of heart! :) But, sometimes you don't know how far you've come, until you see where you were.

Before CG. This is from my wedding, hence the make up, and styled hair. June of 2009.



This is from June 2011. (Why, yes, I do only take pictures once a year. Just kidding :)) This was 6 months after my Perm From Hell. You can see the damage and the frizz, plus, I still don't have any curls! At this point, I was learning how to take care of my hair, but hadn't started CG yet.

 This is from April 2012. (Ok, it's from today.) I used some new products I'd gotten from Spiral Solutions. You can't really see it in these pictures, but trust me, my hair has more wave, more curl, and even some spirals going on! I've been more or less CG since 3/9/12, so a little over a month.



Friday, April 13, 2012

No brush, no comb?

I stopped using a brush a while ago. It was making my hair a frizzy mess, instead of actually doing what I wanted a good brushing to do :) I switched to wide tooth comb only, but only dry hair, since I'd been told wet hair was so fragile.

Then, last month, I started using my comb in the shower, but only when my hair was full of conditioner. I would still comb my hair after it dried, because I couldn't Scrunch Out The Crunch (SOTC) enough, and it made my hair look wet or producty. (Some women can carry that look off. I am not one of them.)

A few days ago, I switched to only finger combing my hair in the shower (with lots of conditioner). I SOTC when it's dry, and maybe finger ruffle and/or finger comb to break the clumps and get more volume. So, this is my third(?) day with no comb and no brush. I think it's working great, but I don't think it would work unless your hair is super fine and super thin like mine.

But I could be wrong :)

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Hair Type

I've been hanging out on naturallycurly.com for a while. It's a very informative site about how to make the most of what curl you have. People rate their curls according to one or two of many different systems. For example, according the naturallycurly.com system, I'm 2a or 3a. That means I have either wavy hair (2) or curly hair (3), and the "a" means that it's fine hair.

The Curly Girl Handbook by Lorraine Massey rates them by visual appearance as well. How much spring factor, and how much they curl. According to that system, I'm closest to being a Botticelli, or Cherub.

I mention this only as a starting point for the appearance of my hair. Mostly, when I need to find out what works best for my hair I focus on density (thin), texture (fine), and highly porous. My goals for my hair are (obviously) to be healthy. After that, I can't decide if I want volume (because my hair is both fine and thin) or if I want to develop my curl, so that I'm more firmly in the Botticelli camp. I'll add a "current status" picture this weekend. It will be my first PBC (Post Big Chop) picture :)

The Big Chop

Back in December of 2010, I got a perm. I know, I know. Why would someone with naturally wavy/curly hair get a perm?

At some point, I'll post the whole story, but for now, let's just say it destroyed my hair. Parts were fried off, and the stuff that was left was very damaged.

I started coddling my hair, and reading about the Curly Girl method. I finally went CG on 3/9/12. On 4/9/12, I decided to do The Big Chop and cut off all the remaining damaged hair.

That was yesterday. This is my journey.