Protective Style: Two Strand Twisted Sock Bun

I think I've been deep conditioning all wrong. The other day, I had the best deep conditioning experience ever! I mixed Aussie Moist, vatika and olive oil together and literally saturated my hair with the mixture. Normally, I'm a bit light-handed on the conditioner. My DC results are usually good, but the other day, they were great! My hair seemed to soften immediately and it had amazing slip. After saturating my hair, I covered it in plastic and sat under my soft bonnet dryer for 40 minutes.

Something, I've learned since going natural is that my low porosity hair requires heat to feel deep conditioned. No matter how long I baggy, it will never be as effective as a heated, deep conditioner. #finally figuring out my hair

After my DC, I put my hair in a protective style to protect it from the elements. I wanted something elegant and classic. I've been seeing a lot of sock buns lately and really wanted to give it a try. I wasn't sure if my hair was long enough, but to my surprise, I just managed to wrap my strands around the donut. YAY for new styles!

After rinsing out the DC

What are some of your favorite protective styles?

Preserving My Wash and Go

Tonight, I'll twist my hair and leave it in twists for about one week. This week, I decided to wear my hair out and do a wash and go. To preserve my wash and go, at night, I simply put my hair into two low buns. I leave the front of my hair pulled back, as styled below and in the previous post "Hide Your Awkward". The ends of my hair, I moisturize with diluted leave-in. I used to moisturize my hair at night with oil, but I noticed, I still woke up to not-so moisturized hair. This was the result, even after wetting my hair. I think the trick for me is definitely applying leave-in to my ends and then wrapping my hair with a satin scarf. My hair really seems to love leave-in conditioner.

This is day 3 of my wash and go.

On another note, I am heading to the US next week and am really excited to see family and friends. While there, I plan on testing out some products to figure out what to bring back. The goal for me is to select two conditioners (that can serve as a leave-in, deep conditioner and co-wash conditioner), one styling product that lasts a long time (maybe shea moisture or kinky curly) and henna. I hope to stock up and bring these items back with me. On another note, my hair is lighter than usual due to the summer (and maybe my use of honey). I recently wrote about doing henna, however, at this stage, henna will definitely give me red hair near my hairline (see picture). I'm entertaining the idea of adding indigo to my henna for a dark, warm brownish-black color. It would be nice for fall and I think darker hair generally looks more lustrous and shiny than light hair.

Hide Your Awkward,

Hair that is. As I've posted previously, my hair is in the awkward stage. It's chin- to almost shoulder-length, when wet, then shrinks up to ear- to chin-length, when dry. The part of my length that I find most awkward is definitely the front and sides of my hair. They grow significantly slower than the back of my hair and I always end up with a mushroom-do once it dries. Because of this, I usually wear my hair in puffs or buns. However, I really love wearing my hair out and miss it so this week, I decided to wear it out and try to hide my awkward lengths.
To do so, I simply smoothed them back the front and sides of my hair, almost as if I'm putting my hair in a half-up style. I then secured the hair in place with hair pins. I tied a satin scarf around the front of my hair for about 10 minutes to smooth my edges. And voila, a simple solution to wearing my hair out and not feeling like a giant mushroom!

Is your hair in the "awkward" stage, what are some of your favorite styles to get you through it?

Two Strand Twists

Tonight I decided to switch things up a bit. I've been a wash n go girl since I've gone natural. What this generally entails is me co-washing my hair twice, sometimes three times per week and wearing my hair out or pulling it back into a low puff. According to some hair specialists, it's not the best practice to wet your hair daily, as this can cause hydral fatigue, as the hair is being submitted to a continual cycle of swelling with water, stretching then shrinking as it dries.

I really want to wash my hair only one time per week, I don't think I can go much longer than that. However, without a protective style, my ends immediately get dry and frizzy, hence the constant rewetting. I've been searching the web for protective styles that might work for my hair. Right now it's in an awkward phase and I can't bun it and I don't like weaves or wigs. So, what did I do? I went to the web to for inspiration. I stumbled across a video on Youtube by HeyFranHey where she does a tutorial on two strand twists. The end results are beautiful and her hair almost looks like it's in a twist in curl, even though she's rocking twists. Then, I found a post on Curly Nikki on the Twist and Turn Two Strand Twist by Shelli of Hairscapades (major hair crush). Well, both of these ladies have long hair, so I wasn't sure if it would work for me.

The only way to find out was to give it a shot. What did I have to lose beside a few hours of my evening. On the bright side if the twists look cute I will save a lot of time. I can twist my hair on Sunday, wear it in twists until Thursday and then rock a twist out Friday and Saturday. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but this could save me loads of time on my morning routine. This week, I did my monthly cassia treatment and my hair felt full, soft but I also had major shrinkage. The idea of wearing twists and stretching my hair a bit didn't sound so bad after all.

So to prepare my hair I shampooed and then deep conditioned with my FAVORITE semi-DIY deep conditioner:

1 TBSP melted shea
1 TBSP argan oil
2 TBSP cheapie non-cone conditioner

I then used my spa steam treatment and sat under my soft-hooded dryer for 1h 30mins. After I rinsed the DC out with a conditioner. This left my hair soft and tangle free.

I did about 30 - 50 small to medium-sized twists (lost count). When I reach the end of the twist, I just twirled it to hold it in place. The final result was really pretty, however, with my hair in the awkward stage my twists began to shrink and helmet head was in full-effect. I tried tension blow-drying the twists for about 2 minutes and lost patience. Then I decided to try to semi-band my twists to stretch them. I plan on leaving them like this over night and look forward to seeing how they look when I remove the bands.

Uuh, my sides are almost chin length but shrinkage is major, thus the helmet head shaped hair.

Banded twists

Next day:

Do you two strand twist, any tips for maintaining them?

xoxo

Professional Puff

Too Cute?

The other day, my husband and I decided to bring sexy back. We got all dressed up and had reservations at a restaurant. I put on a little black dress and went to the bathroom to check my hair. I had already worn it up earlier in the day and wasn't going to do anything special, because it still looked good. As I pondered which headband to accessorize with, the hubby sees me reaching for one and tells me in his opinion I should go without it.

At first, I was a bit put off, because I always wear headbands...did that mean he had a problem with them. I asked him why he felt I shouldn't wear one. His response, sometimes less is more. He explained that he finds me really cute when I'm dressed casually in jeans and a tee and put on a headband. However, he felt that an outfit, like the one I was wearing didn't need the cute accessories. I appreciated his honesty and in the end agreed. It made me realize, since becoming natural, I always have some sort of cute accessory. Trust me, I love accessories, but maybe I've been hiding behind them a little. So now when I get ready, I assess whether the headband brings anything to my outfit or if it's simply overkill.

As I wrote in a previous post, I've been wearing a lot of puffs lately. Normally I would wear a puff and put on a headband or scarf, but I tried something new recently. Here is a cute style (puff+retro bump) inspired by Simplyounique, if you don't know her, look her up on Youtube! Her videos are honest, to the point and show her journey from big chop to her current length. She is very positive and inspiring!

P.S. - 1 year ago and a day from today was when I last relaxed my hair!! So, I've got 11 months of growth, technically (considering that new growth would normally appear one month post-relaxer).

Change of Mind

I'm over 8 months into my transition!! As I approach my one year mark, I'm really excited for all the future holds. Not just for hair, I'm not THAT obsessed. I've been doing some side projects lately and getting back into some things I used to enjoy a lot, but somehow stopped doing. I don't know why, but around the end of every year, I get energized and motivated to take on more and learn new things. Although I hate the cold, I love how winter forces us to become more intimate and reflect more on life (or is that just me).

Speaking of winter, I've let the bun into my life and am kind of loving it (shh don't tell anyone)! I noticed that braidouts were starting to pull my hair out, the constant rebraiding routine at night, was just not doing me any good. For the moment I am wearing my hair in a bun during the week and switching it up with my flexirod set sometimes. I'll see at the end of the year if I have achieved more growth, but I can say for sure that my hair feels healthier since I've eliminated braidouts. Once I'm all natural I'll try my hands at it again, but for the time being my transitioning hair just couldn't handle it! To make the style a little more playful, I've been wearing cute headbands and also wearing a high messy bun. I even received compliments from the husband, who wasn't super crazy about buns (or any updo for that matter) before (guess he's transitioning too)!

On another note, I took a huge decision last weekend! [Drum ROLL]...

I gave my stock of relaxers to my former Dominican Salon!! Yes, the creamy crack is officially out of my life! On Saturday, after my Zumba class, I stopped by and asked if the salon owner had any use for them and she was thrilled to take it off my hands. She was really shocked that I decided to stop and wished me luck. It felt genuinely heartfelt and not like "good luck, you're gonna need it sistah!" I have to admit, I went through withdrawals after leaving the salon. That day her hair looked pretty amazing, so shiny and bouncy! But then it dawned on me, I felt pretty damn good all sweaty and glowing after my work out. And you know what felt even better? The fact that I could go home and wash my sweaty scalp, just like that and not worry about ruining my perm. Later that day I went on Curly Nikki and read some inspiring transition stories, which reinforced my belief that this decision is for the best. This is starting to sound like a bad break up "Affirm relaxer, it's not me, it's you. This is really for the best, we've experienced 18 eventful years together and that's something we can both look back on and smile about. I just really need to be on my own for now-- and by that I mean forever, no hard feelings."

XOXO

Annabel

P. S. - At the end of this month, I'll be posting new growth comparison shots.

Protective styles. Do I have to?

I am almost 8 months post-relaxer. The date of my transition chop (TC) keeps changing from 1.5 years to 1 year. There are days like today, where detangling is a breeze and my comb just glides through my hair. And then there are days when I can barely pull a comb through my hair. This yo-yoing causes me to frequently change my TC date. As of today, my TC date is on March 5th, which is 1 year after the start of my transition.

I really want to have more length before I chop, partly due to the fact that I'm afraid of hating my hair short and curly. Tiny cropped fros are cute and look wonderful on many people, but I'm not sure if it will suit me. I'd hate to chop off myhair at and not love it, without any solution. I'm not a fan of weaves or extensions, so that wouldn't be an option. My hair is growing and I'm trying to do everything I can to keep it healthy, so it grows to its full potential. I'm eating healthy, exercising, deep conditioning and using natural oils. I've reduced my use of direct heat. The first time I used a flat-iron was last week and I hadn't used it for 3 months prior to that. However, there is one thing I am not doing a lot of and that's protective styling. 

Protective styling, often referred to as, a low manipulation styling technique (e.g. bun) that keeps the ends of the hair tucked away for an extended period of time. I really dislike my hair in buns, particularly in its current state. I have really thick new growth and my relaxed ends are thin. Add that to the fact that my hair is all different lengths! Whenever I put my hair up it just looks odd! Typically, I prefer a braid out or roller set as I enjoy wearing my hair down. I've read that protective styling is a must for length retention. However, I just really don't want to wear a style that I don't like.... So that's my dilemma, protective styling, do I have to? According to many, who have transitioned to natural hair--- yes!

I want to have really healthy hair, so if this is what it takes I am willing to try. So until the end of October, I will enjoy letting my hair down and starting next month I will challenge myself to do protective styling for 30 days to see if it really makes a difference. If by the end of November, I notice healthier, moisturized hair, particularly, my ends, I will do more protective styles. The only problem, I am not very talented when it comes to styling, so the only protective style I know of is the dreaded BUN. I'm not really a fan of buns, always thought I looked so matronly when I wore them! However, it seems like this is the only way, so I'll have to just deal with it for a little while. Guess, I'll go out and buy some cute headbands to make it a little more playful!

Peace & Love!

Just think my head looks odd when I sport a bun.