I would like to nominate myself for some sort of amazing blogger award for being willing to post these pictures of myself on-line. Look at my hair! I look like a crazy person. Oh, and this is right before bed, and I had been on-call the night before. So, I'm super tired looking. Sigh.
Anyways, you might remember last week's post about curling your hair without heat by wrapping it around a headband. I mentioned trying with 2 headbands in order to have the curls start higher on my head. I thought this would help with the inconsistency I had in curl size as well (I had some super tight spirals, some big waves and one small chunk had come out straight despite being wrapped. How this straightened my wavy hair I don't know.) Anyways, if you look down in the comments you'll see the discussion about adding a second head band, a'la Kim Kardashian's strange wedding head gear.
And above that's obviously what I looked like once I finished wrapping my hair. I did the horizontal band first, using an elastic Goody no-slip headband, and then added a more diagonal stretchy fabric headband (also from Goody) over the first one. I did find that it was easier to wrap all of my hair using 2 headbands, though I have an insane amount of hair so this might just be something particular to me.
Read on to see if this more advance technique of lazy hair curling worked!
So, while I'm not a hair dresser, I'm certainly not a schlub when it comes to hair either. I'd say I'm a bit above average in skill when it comes to dealing with my hair. And I have insane amounts of it. I'm really looking forward to playing around with it more for these posts.
So, my plans are:
• My usual hair product reviews
• Pics and links to hair styles that I've been inspired by, and if I am able I'll attempt and show you how I did with it
• I'm a "2a" in Curly Girl speak, and I just bought the book! I'm planning to read it and maybe even do the "no-poo" method. So, expect a few posts about this.
• I have a series planned with Aussie's Sarah Potempa
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.)
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.
Yup, things have been a bit quiet around here lately. I promise that I'm not ignoring the blog, rather I'm doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff with my limited blogging time.
1) So, there's been a big reorganization in my office, which I'm still not done with. I had products everywhere and things that needed to be tested or have already been tested were all jumbled. It was confusing. Things are better now, though I'm not done.
2) During my reorganization, I realized that I've really been putting off writing about a lot on skin care products. Which has always been my favorite category. The issue is that these products just take more time to write about, which is hard when I'm spending a lot of time with my little one. (Total aside- she isn't so little! She's just hit 7 months and is so tall I just ordered her the next step up in car seats. I can't believe it!)
So, to help remedy the ignoring of entire areas of beauty products, I've decided to start a little schedule. You'll see it off to the right side of the page, and while those images won't take you anywhere now you'll find that eventually you'll get to all Monday posts, etc.
This coming week I'll address each day's topic in a little post and ask for feedback about how I cover certain items. As well, I'll likely be posting mostly once a day (in the past I've posted as much as 2-3 times a day), but on days that I do post more than once the "bonus" post will never be of the same category as the main post. As well, there are definitely some categories that aren't in the days of the week above. Like nails. I love me some nail polish. I'll be posting mani pics a few days a week, just kind of randomly.
3) I couldn't resist and revamped the graphics a little for fall. See, the girl is now wearing a trench! And a berry colored lippie!
