Sunday, November 30, 2008

Must Resist Washing...but there are new products to try!


After much searching, (1 target, 1 rite aid, 1 food lion, 1 walgreens, 1 vitamin shoppe, and another target) I have finally found a bottle of Giovanni Direct Leave In. I'm very excited to try this stuff because 1) obviously since no one had it in stock, there must be lots of people who love it and 2) the product junkies on naturally curly have been raving about it. I'm dying to try it :)

Also, I ordered some Oyin Greg Juice, a spray leave-in/moisturizer/curl refresher off of Oyin's website back in early November. I don't recommend their site for ordering; if I end up liking it I'll use naturallycurly or amazon to get it from now on. It took a month to get to me. I know it's all hand made, but I'm impatient when it comes to hair products! I want to use them as soon as I place the order! Anyway, it's now sitting in the mail room, which is closed on Sunday! Grr! So I will have to pick it up after my morning class tomorrow and try it then as a refresher.

So basically my post today is just about how hard it is to resist trying new products when you know you don't need to. I just washed my hair this morning, so I'll be good until at least Tuesday, which means no Giovanni until Tuesday. I'll definitely post on the Oyin Greg Juice tomorrow though!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Pour Some Sugar on Me


I have to take a post to just rave about how much I'm loving brown sugar scrubbing. I was getting this white gunk under my nails when I would scratch my scalp and I was having some flakiness, so a quick search of naturallycurly.com revealed a possible solution. 1 tablespoon of coarse grained brown sugar to 3 tablespoons of your co-washing conditioner. I mix mine in a little jewelery dish that I don't use before I get in the shower, then I take the dish in the shower and just scoop globs out and scrub the heck out of my scalp using the pads of my fingers.

After the first time I did it, the flakes and gunk were nearly completely gone. I did it again in my next wash, and as an added bonus I got lots of root volume and I searched, but I couldn't find 1 single flake. From what I can tell, there are absolutely no cons as of yet. I'm thinking I will continue to do at least 1-2 per week. Hope all of your holidays are going well!!!

Monday, November 24, 2008

Thanksgiving at home :)

I'm home for Thanksgiving, which means many many good things! Among the festivities:

I got my very first ever Deva cut. A fantastic stylist in my hometown dry cut my hair, then washed it with Deva products (eh, they were ok. Not a huge fan for the price), then diffused it dry with a huge ceiling diffuser and then with the Deva hand fuser. I thought the Deva products felt a little heavy, so I cowashed when I got home to get some of my lightness and bounciness back. Today's pictures are my new hair cut post washing

Another fantastic thing about being home is that I have access to a well-stocked kitchen!!! My hair has been flaky lately, so when I cowashed after my cut today, I did a brown sugar scrub using one tablespoon of sugar to three table spoons of my suave coconut conditioner (it was really difficult not to eat this mixture; it smelled soooo good!) and gave my scalp a good scrubbing. I'm extremely pleased with the outcome! No more flakes! I am definitely stealing my mother's brown sugar and sneaking it back to the dorm :)

My grandparents are here for Thanksgiving, which means doting grandma takes granddaughter shopping :) She bought me a gorgeous pea coat that I'm very very excited about for an early Christmas present!

So basically, I'm having a pretty darn fantastic day.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My 2nd day hair experiment

Normally to get 2nd day hair I use a mixture of about 1 tbsp suave conditioner in a 6.7 Fl oz. bottle filled with water. I spritz it all over my hair (outer layers, in layers, flipped upside, everywhere!) and get pretty darn good results for 2nd day hair.

Yesterday my first mix of that stuff ran out, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to do a little experimenting. I used my L'oreal vive pro nutri gloss condtioner mixed the exact same way in the same bottle (I washed the bottle first) to see if this would be even more moisturizing. This is a picture from the mixing yesterday:




This shows you the size of the bottle and the shadow of the glob of conditioner that is inside waiting to be dissolved














Alright so now you know what that process is like. Here are the results!!





I woke up looking something like this. My hair is pineappled (well it falls down in the middle of the night so now it's like a messy ponytail)


















I take down the pineapple. I am now alert enough to make funny faces




















This is after my hair has been very thoroughly spritzed. I try and get product on every strand.



















I eat a nutrious breakfast while waiting for the hair to dry











And viola! It's dry!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Some pictures



My Cabinet of Doom















Budget restructuring













My hair today from various angles...today I diffused it (no plopping argh) and went out in strong wind


My Routine

I figure the next step in my blogging should be to post my current routine. It's a work in progress, but I'm very happy with it overall so far. So here's my step by step in obnoxious detail:

1) Wet hair completely in the shower

2) Take a palm full of Suave Naturals (currently on coconut scent) Conditioner, spread about a quarter of it on my canopy, then use the rest of get in underneath and scrub. I scrub for about two-four minutes depending on how many days it's been since I've washed. After scrubbing my scalp, I scrub the length with the conditioner that I spread all over earlier. Basically, I go in order of my scalp, then my canopy, then my length, with decreasing amounts of conditioner.

3) I rinse all of my hair while still using a circular scrubbing motion all over.

4) I comb all of my hair at this point with a wide tooth comb. Sometimes the amount of hair that comes out is scary, but I've learned that it's normal. It's because my curl pattern is tighter now that I'm CG, so I'm not losing hair throughout the day. I'm only losing it when I comb it out. And I check to make sure most of the hairs have a little white bulb on one end, meaning that they did not come out unnaturally, but they reached the end of their life cycle. The hairs that have fallen out just get caught in the clumps of curl rather than shedding onto my clothes during the day.

5) I apply about a half dollar diameter glob of L'Oreal Vive Pro Nutri Gloss (baby pink bottle--if you're going to try this, be sure to check that it's the bottle without amodimethicone in the ingredients list) to all of my hair, outer layers and inner layers. I don't scrub it in, just finger rake it through.

6) Leave on the L'Oreal for about 3 mins (sometimes I shave during this interlude)

7) Rinse out L'Oreal until the hair feels clean but still silky. Then I turn the water to cold and rinse for a few seconds, then hop out of the shower

8) I use my hands to squeeze the length a couple of times just so I'm not making a mess on the dorm bathroom floor

9) I do not let my terrycloth towel touch my hair. Absolute no-no. Terry cloth = frizz. Fine for my body, not my hair!

10) Travel from the dorm bathroom to my room, put on a t-shirt, then turn my attention to my hair again

11) I finger comb out my hair until I can run my fingers through my hair with no real resistance.

12) I apply Kinky Curly Knot Today as my leave-in my raking about a quarter size glob into my hair and then gently flipping my hair upside and scrunching several times.

13) I apply Kinky Curly Curling Custard using mysterflavored's method on naturallycurly. Watch the video here

14) Then I apply about a nickle sized dab of Herbal Essence's Totally Twisted Gel by scrunching it in, just like the KCCC

15) At this point, I roll my head back upright and place curls to fix my part. I spray on a concoction of my own making that consists of 1 tablespoon of my Suave conditioner dissolved in a spray bottle of water all over.

16) Then, if I'm going to air dry or if I have time, I will plop in a long sleeve t-shirt for about an hour.

17) If I can't plop, I will diffuse it using my Conair Ionic Tournaline hair dryer with the diffuser attachment it comes with. I dry until it's about 80% dry, then air dry the rest of the way.

18) If I could plop, after an hour, I take it down, and let it air dry without touching it.

19) No matter how it got dry, either by diffusing or air, once it is dry, I gently flip my hair upside down one last time and scrunch out the crunch by just scrunching my hair all over. Roll my hair back to upright, and it's done!!

Monday, November 17, 2008

My Hair

Ok, so I think what really helped convince me to go CG was looking at the before and after thread of pictures on naturallycurly.com (I'll add this as a link on the sidebar). Just as a reference, here are my own before and afters as of right now.

I took this picture on Oct. 28th, 2008, with the intention of it being a before picture. I though it was a pretty ok hair day.


This is my hair on November 12th (12 days into CG). It's curlier, shinier, softer, and bouncier.





Just wanted to share my own transformation. And since the girls on naturallycurly say it will only get better with time, I'm very excited about the upcoming weeks.

I Should Be Writing A Shakespeare Paper Right Now


Hi blog world! I'm Laura Lee, from naturallycurly.com. As the title suggests, the real reason for the creation of this blog is so that I can procrastinate on writing a paper. Don't worry, it isn't due until Friday.

I'm a first year in college, hence the title and domain name of the blog itself. I'm a 2c/3a curly. That's me and my boy -->
We like to make funny faces.

I'm planning on using this to post my musings on things related to being CG, products, routines, etc. and also mixing in random thoughts and/or rants about the world outside of having curly hair (I know, I just found out it exists too).

This is still a work in progress. I'm playing around with layouts and options and things. I will try and be a good blogger and post regularly, but no promises since I am busy. Anyway, I've run out of productive things to say for my intro post. I hope at some point I post something in here that someone, somewhere, will find useful...or at the very least entertaining :)

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Long Sleek And Straight Hairstyles

Long, straight and sleek has been a very stylish and popular haircut these days.All you need is a flat iron and some smoothing serum to make it really, really sleek. It’s cool to have it really long, flat, straight and balanced. But to add some character to your stylish haircut, have it layered at the surface. This helps to create that unblended look. Highlighting some of the layers is also another way to add variation.

Long,straight and Sleek hairstyles
Long, straight and Sleek haircutsLong, straight and Sleek haircuts
Long, straight and Sleek haircuts

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Long Sedu Hairstyles For Women

sedu hairstylesjennifer lopez blonde sedu hairstyle

Sedu hairstyles are hairstyles for women that are very straight thanks to the Sedu hair iron. The Sedu hair iron makes it so one no longer has to use harsh straighter to obtain a straight and sleek long hairstyle. The Sedu hairstyles see many different styles and lengths with one major thing being of common ground, the hair is straight

long straight sedu hairstyle
long sedu hairstyleMany celebrities have straight sedu hair and I am sure that like me all women desires to have sedu hairstyles like celebrities. It used to be that any time a person with curly hair wanted straight hair; he or she had to go to a professional salon and pay to have the hair straightened.

jennifer aniston sedu hair styles
sedu long hairstyle long straight sedu hairstyle
long straight sedu hairstyle long sedu haircuts
sedu hair style celebrity sedu hairstyles
sedu haircuts long black sedu hair
sedu hair

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

2009 Long Prom Hairstyles For Girls

So,if you have long hair, you may probably wear a lot of pretty, practical ponytails or other easy styles, but for a special event you may want to consider long prom haircuts that are more romantic and elegant. Some hair styles you can do by yourself, but the others may need a professional’s care and skill,and all will be fabulous.

However, if you are not going to have your hair styled in a salon, you should practice your style several times before the big event, no matter how simple it is.Here are some kinds of long prom hairstyles,beautiful looks you can create for this special night.

Straight Long Prom HairStyles
Straight Long Prom HairStyles
Combined Long Prom HairStyles
Combined Long Prom HairStyles
Curly Long Prom HairStyles
Curly Long Prom HairStyles
Classic Long Prom HairStyles
Classic Long Prom HairStyles

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Pictures of Long Hairstyles For Round Faces

Hairstyles ideas for round faces can be unlimited. There is no right or wrong hairstyles for round shaped faces.However there are hairstyles that compliment round face shape womens, and should be taking into consideration, when choosing a round shaped face.

Women with round face shapes should be diligent about finding a talented hair stylist, one who knows their craft well when it comes to face shapes and hair types.If you have a round face, you can try these hairstyles.

Catherine Zeta Jones long hairstyle for round face
Catherine Zeta Jones Long Hairstyle -Long hairstyle for round face Curls works great with round faces as long as the curl begins below the lips Curls works great with round faces as long as the curl begins below the lips Round Face Shag Hairstyle
Round Face Shag HairstyleHair style for round face
Hair style for round faceRihanna’s long layered, curly hairstyle, works easily on round face shapes
Rihanna’s long layered, curly hair, works easily on round face shapes