I have been raving on about my hair, just because I feel like I have finally started to understand it and nail the curly hair look without having to rely on heat and hair straighteners. I have had a love/hate relationship with my hair (still have bad hair days now and again) but I am so much more in love with my natural hair and love seeing girls falling in love with theirs!
I have a new bible, https://curlygirlapproveduk.com/ that I consult before I make a decision on a product, it is surprising how many products on the shelves claim to be “for curly,natural hair” that really aren’t for it!
I am constantly watching hair videos and routines on instagram and youtube but why look for inspiration in strangers when you have people around you. I asked three of my closest friends, who are also on a journey of self hair love and care, to send me three of things they are now doing which have helped them on their very different curly hair journeys.
I’ve been using the curly girl method for about 3-4 weeks now and have only had a melt down once! Here are 3 things I’m doing right now
- Experimenting. I’m more of a wavy curly girl than a ringlet or coily curly girl so a lot of what I have been reading on line I have had to take with a pinch of salt. And I’m not only experimenting with different types of products but different styling methods, different drying methods, different combing methods, different sleeping methods – the lot of it. When I’m air-drying from washed it works for me to style my hair with my head upright (usually tilted to one side whilst I apply product and scrunch), otherwise when I flip my hair it creates tangles and knots and I lose my clumps which is really annoying and doesn’t give me a good result.
- Praying. Not just praying for my hair to go right but using the praying method for applying products before scrunching is a god send and is only something I’ve discovered on the curly girl journey. It helps you to ensure that you’re applying product to the whole of your hair rather than just the roots. If you put product in your hand and scrunch you’re only going to get the ends.
- Scrunch the crunch with argan/jojoba oil on your hands. This step is SO important, especially for a wavy who can’t really use the curl creams / milks. When I started this journey a few weeks ago I already knew that gel and mousse made my hair go super crunchy and I really wanted to avoid that so started using curl defining creams / milks for ADDED MOISTURE and I’m yet to find something that actually sits well on my hair without making it look like I’ve bathed in coconut oil. One day I read about scrunching out the crunch and it has changed my life! Once the product (gel/mousse in my case) dries and creates a crunchy ‘cast’ over your hair apply a couple of drops of natural oil such as argan or jojoba, turn your head upside down and scrunch your curls (shake your roots if you want to add volume). This gets rid of that crunchy look and feel and leaves you with beautiful, bouncy, well defined curls, as you can see from my ‘after’ photos. Being a wavy, it’s too heavy on my hair to add a curling milk in before my gel / mousse so I skip that part and have been getting some amazing results.
So lets get straight into it, 3 things I do better…
1 – No shampoo! Co-washes only (wash with a conditioner which is cgm approved) and use hair masks regularly.
2. Realising less is more! I’m still on my journey to find my perfect combination of hair products but I restrict myself to using 2 at the same time (making sure they’re cgm approved) I used to use 3 or sometimes even 4 to style my hair and it would just weigh down my hair and make it look limp and lifeless.
3 – Scrunch out the crunch! curly hair deserves dedicated time too! I used to think that curly hair should be easy and you could whack in some hair products and your good to go. Maybe for other types of curly hair this is true but for me my hair turns out best when I take the time the scrunch my curls after applying my products, usually until I get hand/arm ache! and if I’m feeling extra dedicated I’ll add some twists in to help form the curls
So I went on a full mission with my hairdresser to grow healthy curls after all the damage I caused it. Probably starting in 2016. Three main things I did to get healthy hair back:
1. Regular cuts & treatments. I used to go for cuts and treatments every 6 weeks to get my colour and healthiness back. Then I slowly started to space my appointments out more and more but began doing weekly treatments at home as well for the time in between using my hood. That all helped the condition of my hair and stopped it breaking.
2.Stopped dying and wearing extensions. Wearing my extensions used to break my hair too because I was wearing clip ins every single day.
3. Used less heat on my hair (in the form of drying and straightening).
Now there are quite a few patterns I pulled out from the above comments, that also ring true to me and are probably the best starting points on your curly hair journey. Reducing the heat damage on your hair, experimenting on products (everyone has different things that work for them and I don’t think any of us have found THE perfect combo) and scrunching that crunch to activate those curls!
Now to end off, here are my picture updates (thank you ladies for sharing your pictures, I know that its hard to look at your before pictures when the hair was not glowing as it is today)
Happy Monday!
