Easy Heat Free Curls? Is It Possible?

So, remember back when I decided I was going to follow a Pinterest Challenge, and try heat free curls by curling my hair with sock bun curls? And then I said nothing for quite a while? Well, I was tinkering. For a long time. It turns out that the sock bun curls are not as easy as I had thought that they would be.

Problems I had with the sock buns:
• My hair is about 2 inches below my shoulders right now, but it didn't seem to be long enough to wrap enough around the sock and get a really secure bun. I tried adding more stability for the bun with claw clips, hair pins, Goody Spin Pins, you name it and the sock bun was basically out of my head by about 3 am, when I was up to feed my daughter.
• My layers were definitely not sock bun friendly. They aren't short and numerous a'la Rachel Green in the late 1990s, rather I have only a few and very long layers. It was nearly impossible to get the layers well integrated into the sock buns and then to keep them in the bun.
• I did try to get around these issues by doing 2 sock buns, one on top of my head and one at the nape of my neck. This helped somewhat with the layer issue and the not quite long enough issue as it helped to minimize these issues for rolling up the sock bun. But, everything still fell down.

So, I scrapped the whole thing and went back to the drawing board.
Read on to see what ended up working

For realz. She looks amazing! This is Jessica from Happy Together, I found her via a quick Google search. Look at how amazing her hair looks. And she's super cute pregnant. I love her blog and she's become a frequent read for me now, I've just been really inspired by many of her projects. (Plus, her hubby is in the Coast Guard and I grew up in Coast Guard City USA. Yes, there is one. Regardless, this makes me love her even more.)

Jessica followed a video from The Lipstick Diaries. Take a gander.


So, here's a quick peek at what products I've been using when attempting this:
• Oscar Blandi Volumizing Spray: This heat activated spray has been really helpful for adding a little extra oompf to my roots. While I have a ton of hair, there is so much that it tends to get weighted down. A few sprays on my roots, which I then spread around by running my fingers through my hair or using a wide tooth comb.
• Aussie Sun Touch Shine Conditioning Spray: This is a very light weight leave in conditioning spray. I concentrate it near the ends of my wet hair and then comb through with a wide tooth comb. It does help with shine, but not so much that my hair looks too shiny.
• Aussie Aussome Spray Gel: After the other 2 products have been applied and then combed/spread through my wet hair, I have been spraying a little bit of this spray gel all over my head and then combing it in and then drying my hair. It has a medium hold and with a light spray I can't tell it is in my hair.

So, once my hair is dry, I did wet it slightly using the water bottle. Don't overly spritz your hair, you want it to be able to dry. I pictured 2 different head bands above. The choice of which to use depends on how big your head is, how much hair you have and how you think you'll be most comfortable. I used the blue knit head band since the elastic stay-put is a little tight on my head already and then add in wrapping that giant amount of hair I have around the head band... yeah, that just didn't sound very comfortable.

So, here it is completed. This was my first attempt, I've done this a few times since with tighter winding. Because I have so much hair, it was difficult to wrap it all around at the end to have it stay. You can see that I wrapped it some and then put a pony tail holder around it to hold it in place while I slept. It stayed put, but make sure you really do wrap it well here. The first time I tried this out, the hair was not wrapped around the head band enough and I ended up with fairly straight hair in the very back. So, be careful!

As well, note that I only have the one headband, and it dips down in the back, like a head band usually does. Wrapping in the back with this dip meant that those curls started out lower on my head. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm planning to actually use 2 different head band next time. I'll use the Goody Stay-Put elastic head band straight around my head, a'la Kim Kardashian's strange wedding head gear. I'd then wrap the hair at that level and then put the knit stretchy head band in the same location as the first attempt, and wrap my hair from below. I think this would just separate things a little bit better so I can wrap more tightly and things would create even prettier curls.

Here's how it looked at the end! I think it worked out really well, and would work for many hair lengths, layers, and hair types. My curls lasted all day, I just ran my fingers through my hair and I was ready!


Update!
I've found a better method for heat free curls with long layers. The results are much more consistent and it was much easier with my little shorter layers.



The Aussie products were samples, I bought all other products mentioned in this post.