11 curly days in Curly Girl

*Disclaimer: This whole entry will be about my hair, as I’m tracking my progress with a new method. So feel free to skip it if that’s not your cup of tea. :) That being said, if you have naturally curly hair and you aren’t sure what to do with it, feel free to read on and learn through my mistakes, as I’ve been learning so much and am beginning to love my curly hair for the first time in my life.

Honestly- I even bore myself when I look back through my previous entries in this book sometimes. But it is good to keep track to see what’s worked and what hasn’t for future reference, as I plan to keep this up indefinitely. And it isn’t boring while I write it. Just when I look back over them later.

Today is day 11 of my “curly girl method” adventure.

11 days of no brushes or combs. No hair dryers, curling irons, or flat irons. No sulfates or silicone products.

Honestly it’s going pretty well. I’ve had a few really bad hair days, but with a few really awesome hair days thrown in the mix as well. The worst days always seem to be Mondays when I have to be at the office. Which is also the worst day to have crazy hair since I see a lot of my business partners and they’re probably wondering what’s wrong with me. Ha! I’m beginning to care a lot less. And I also have a new game plan to shoot for a better look this Monday.

So far the biggest trial and error has been with the styling products and drying. Because the key to keeping my hair from being a frizzy mess is to lock the curls in with conditioners and styling products. And when you put styling products on wet hair, it takes forever to air dry it.

I dropped $16 bucks on a tube of DevaCurl Wave Maker cream for my hair. Because in my research, a ton of girls with wavy hair are just raving about it.

Well that was a mistake. Me assuming my hair was only wavy was also a mistake. I didn’t realize that those Shirley Temple ringlets from my childhood were still hiding under all the abuse. The Wave Maker just isn’t enough to control these babies. I might like it if I’m at the beach or something and going for a more unkempt look, so I’m not going to totally give up on it, but it’s definitely not something that will work for me on the daily.

I’m so tempted to post before and after pictures of my progress, but I’m also still a little terrified to post pictures of myself on this site. Maybe if anyone really wants to see them I’ll make a friends only entry and post a couple.

What’s hilarious is I dropped $16 on the Wave Maker, which doesn’t work, and the product that has worked the best so far for styling is a $3 huge bottle of LA Looks sport gel. Lol!

Talking to different people about this adventure, I’ve had some people tell me they hate hair gel because it leaves their hair crunchy. I always thought that too, until I started researching this method of caring for curls. The crunch is a good thing while your hair is drying. It’s called a gel cast, and it tames the frizz by trapping the moisture in, and holds the curl in place so it doesn’t frizz up and fall as soon as the moisture evaporates.
As soon as your hair is fully dry, you just scrunch all of your hair with a dry t-shirt or your hands. After that, your hair is soft and touchable, instead of the “wet, crunchy” look that most of us associate with hair gel. Learning this has changed my life! Lmao.

So I’ve accumulated a few products that I’m loving. As I Am co-wash. It smells so good. It’s a conditioner-based cleanser instead of your typical shampoo. I’m still using the Not Your Mother’s Naturals line for a regular shampoo (sulfate-free!), but I only plan to use that once or twice a week to do a deep cleaning. The co-wash cleans your hair without stripping the moisture out like a traditional shampoo would, since us curlies typically have much drier hair.

Using the same brand of conditioner, and I’ve added 2 Shea Moisture products for further conditioning. One is the Manuka Honey and Mafura Oil hair masque for deep conditioning. I’ll probably use this once a week or every other week to get some intense moisturizing. I also picked up their Jamaican Black Castor Oil leave-in conditioner. I heard great things about it because it’s light-weight, so it doesn’t make your hair look oily or weigh it down. And it smells SOOOO GOOOOD. Man Friend was making fun of me being a “pale white ginger shopping in the black hair care aisle” since that’s where the Shea Moisture and Cantu products are at our local retailers. But all white girls don’t have sleek, straight hair! I’m just sad no one taught me what I needed sooner. These products are a godsend.

Aside from finding the right products for me, it’s been a challenge to figure out how to sleep on my hair to avoid having to completely soak it down in the morning to get it looking right. Because it takes too long to dry and I don’t really have a job where I can get away with coming in with wet hair. But I invested in a cheap diffuser for the emergency situations when it’s unavoidable. And it’s usually fine if I just wear it in a “pineapple” (very loose ponytail or bun on the very top of my head) now that I’ve got a satin pillowcase. Then all I have to do is spritz a little water on it in the morning and maybe add a tiny bit of leave-in or gel to style before I go. This dries super fast and looks way better than I ever expected.

If I have to wash it kind of close to bed time, I found through trial and error that I can wrap a dry, soft, t-shirt around my head and just keep my curls piled on top of my head without a hair elastic so I don’t crease or damage it while it’s wet. And then it’s almost perfect when I wake up and scrunch it out. This is what I’m going to start doing on Sunday nights so it’s ready to go on Monday mornings.

I told myself I was going to give myself two weeks to get my curl pattern back before I went in for a trim, but somehow ended up trimming it myself on day 3. I’m regretting the decision a little, as some of the curls have changed their pattern since then. So in a few weeks, I’ll probably go in for another trim to fix what I messed up. It doesn’t look bad, but would have come out better if I’d waited like I originally intended.

The length difference is taking some getting used to. When straightened, my hair falls down my back to the small of my waist. I’ve been growing it out for sooooo long, and giving myself regular small trims to keep the ends from being awful. With me wearing it curly, it looks like it’s just below my shoulders. But it looks so healthy so overall I am pretty pleased.

This entry is soooo much longer than I ever intended. If you somehow made it through the whole thing, kudos to you. Why did you do it? :)