Update!

Sorry I have been MIA for soooo long! I am trying to get back into updating and letting everyone know how my hair journey is going. Well....I BC'ed again in January 2012...I just felt like I had to start over again. I had dyed and fried my hair and it was time to begin again with the new knowledge I had about taking care of my natural hair. Recently, I got a sew in weave, and the front of my hair was pressed out to blend in with the weave...that was terrible. The left side of my hair is a bit straighter/wavier than the rest because it was ran over with the flat iron more times than the right side of my leave out...

I take everything with my hair as a lesson learned. I am moving away from this idea that long hair is the best hair. NO. Healthy hair is the best hair. I am striving to have strong healthy hair. I am also moving away from the idea that I can't have stylish natural hair or that I can't wear weaves and be natural. I love LOVE love my natural hair but I do like to wear my hair straight as well but I don't want any heat damage so...I've started wearing wigs that are the texture I want to try out. This doesn't mean that I dislike my natural hair, no it means I LOVE my natural hair and would like to keep my natural hair the way it is without damaging it with heat. I'd rather damage the fake hair with heat ahahahahah! Well, enough said, take a look at the pics from the past year of my new start on this journey...

           Dominican Blow Out May 2011 for graduation. It was cute, but it left the ends of my hair extremely fragile and limp.

 

After the blow out my hair had a looser/wavier curl. It didn't hang the same. The roots of my hair felt like newgrowth lol it was crazy. So I decided I would grow my hair out and start all over. But before I cut my hair, I would die the ends of my hair purple, something I had always wanted to do!

I loved it! But, to get the purple color to show up, I had to bleach my hair first. The purple color also showed up like a pinkish purple color that I didn't really like, and the bleach made my ends even looser. 

Then suddenly, I got a job offer at a day care so I had to cut the color off sooner.

So, I cut the dye off.

My hair was much shorter. As the winter approached my hair got drier and drier. I was still trying to pull my short hair into pony tails and buns the way I could with my longer hair. Eventually my ends began to suffer, and my hair was getting damaged from being brushed back all the time.

So.....

I love my short curls! But I wanted to protect them from the cold winter weather so I am wearing weaves throughout the rest of the winter.

I got a sew in weave that I turned into a half wig.

Now I am wearing a lace wig from RPG show.

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Flat Ironed Hair

****This was done in November 2010 using a FHI flat iron.



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My Progress as of November 2010.

Senegalese Twists

I LOVE my new braids! But I doubt I will ever return to the shop I got them done at.

This style took 4 hours and 2 people to complete.



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New Years Braids!

I was trying to wear my hair in braids for all of 2011. Unfortunately, my funds are just not there to do the types of styles I want on a regular basis especially since I wear my braids (any style and any price) for about 2 weeks before I'm ready to take them out.

I got these done on New Years Eve. They got fuzzy really fast because I washed them often. The picture on the top middle was taken about 5 days after I got my braids. As you can see, they are fuzzy from being washed.



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My Hair Around The House

I put this hair net on my head to protect my hair as I bum around on the couch. I don't want my hair to rub against the pillows on the couch so I figured this was a great way to protect my hair without having to wrap my hair in my night scarf or wear a hat (it's too hot for that).

I own a few hair nets because I work in dietary. I brought all of them from the beauty supply store.



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My Hair Today!

This is a simple wash and go that I styled. I'm trying to wear my hair out more. I've also been detangling my hair everyday. I smoothed back both sides of my hair with a soft brush and Eco-Styler gel (I have the pink one). Then I secured the sides with 3 large bobby pins. Of course, I wrapped a scarf around the front of my head to make sure my hair would be totally smoothed out.

Left Side

Right Side



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Alicia Keys Inspired Hair

This was day one. I was iffy about this hair style because I'm not a trendy person and I thought this looked too much like the mo-hawk hair styles that are really popular right now. But this style actually looked really chic and classy. It made me look pulled together so I really liked it.

The inspiration for this hairstyle came from Chisellecouture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2bbyTYG98o&feature=related Check out her tutorial of this style! I have subscribed to her on Youtube because she has so many cute hair style tutorials that I want to try. This is just the first of them.

Basically, this style is very simple but takes a little time to get it exactly the way you want.

You will need:

Small hair pins, gel and shea or cocoa butter (for smoothing hair), a soft brush, 2 ponytail holders and wet detangled hair.

Optional: A scarf for smoothing at the end.

This style comes out the smoothest when your hair has already been detangled. I did this style on my freshly washed hair just as Chiselle did but I'm sure this could come out just as good on dry hair (although I think natural hair would look better if this style was done on wet hair).

First, section hair into 3 sections: a left side, middle, and right side. Secure each side with ponytail holders. Begin smoothing the left and right sides of hair (first use your moisturizer-shea butter or cocoa butter then put the gel on top. This helps your hair stay soft and smooth rather than hard and stiff which would happen if you only used gel). Then brush the left and right sides back into a ponytail. Take the ponytail and blend the hair with the middle section. Begin twisting the middle section of hair in a tuck and roll fashion from the nape to the front of your head. Use pins along the way to ensure the hair stays in place. When the hair is twisted all the way to the front, begin creating the swirl. You can have your swirl more in the center or to the side of your head. This all depends on your own personal preference and the length of your hair. Secure with pins. *I wrap a scarf (I have a ribbon headband) around my hair to smooth the sides more and I put a wig cap on the top to smooth the middle. This is how it looks.

When I take this off my hair is totally smoothed out. All of the little pieces of hair that stand up lay down.



In the video, Chieselle says that Alicia's middle section was braided but Chiselle did a two strand twist. Well, because of the length of my hair and the curl pattern, it was very difficult for me to two strand twist while wet (I could feel my hair snapping) and it didn't look smooth. So I decided to twist my hair into a French roll basically.

This is day two. In order to refreshen this hair style, I had to re-smooth the sides, un-pin and un-twist the middle section and re-wet and detangle the middle section. Then I retwisted the hair and pinned it up again. This time, I wrapped the middle section in a position on the side of my head instead of directly on top of my head (as I had on day 1).



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Side Puff

Put your puff to the side for a new and fun look! This laid back style was so quick and easy so I will definitely wear my hair like this instead of the normal puff in the back style. I detangled and cowashed my hair. Then I put grapeseed oil and Eco Styler gel in my hair to smooth the sides down. I wrapped a ribbon scarf around the front of my head and waited until the hair dried before removing it (this is when you know your hair is completely smoothed out and ready. If you take the scarf off too earlier you risk the chance of your hair frizzing up again). This style looked really cute with the scarf on but I decided to take it off and show my waves.



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My Fave Celeb Hair Pic!

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1 Year 6 Months Post BC

I shingled my hair with Eco-Styler gel (the pink one). I started by cowashing with Pantene for curly hair. I detangled my hair with my fingers and then shingled my hair with the gel. I guess this isn't a true shingling because I didn't totally saturate my hair with the gel but I was impressed with the way my hair hung because the gel weighed my hair down a bit. Eco-Styler gel is thicker/heavier than Kinky Curling Custard which is primarily made up of aloe vera gel. My hair did shrink up above my shoulders as my hair dried. The following day, my hair still had the same curls but my hair was very tangled.

You can see my roots aren't totally saturated with gel. They started to poof up faster than the ends of my hair. I always want to focus more on my roots when I apply defining products but I also don't want products on my scalp.

Another thing I'm happy about? My hair can make an easy ponytail now!

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Latest Hair Pic. 1 Year, 5 Months after the BC

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It's Been A Long Time!

1 Year Later
So It's been 1 year and 3 months since I did my BC. These are my vacation pics from the Bahamas. My hair LOVED the weather there!








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1 Year After the BC!

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Celebrity Hair I Love!

Jill Scott!

So, my boy friend really wants me to comb/brush my hair out like this just to see what the fro would look like. I'm not a big fan of combs, and I don't ever brush my hair when it's dry...

So what did I do to achieve this look without the brush and comb? I did a twist out. I twisted my wet hair, and allowed it to air dry. When I took the twists out, I separated them. My hair was already stretched thanks to the twist, and the separating created a more uniform fro look instead of separate sections of hair. As the day went on, I had a chunky fro, which I then gently pulled and stretched more with my fingers. It took some use getting used to but it was cute. Next time I'll take pictures :)


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Another view of the ponytail

This is my freshly co-washed ponytail. January 2010... full ponytail?

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Finally made it to 1 ponytail!

And can you believe, there are no clips in my hair! I use the Chicoro method to smooth my edges, and lay my hair down. 

Here's how I do it:

1. In the shower, I co-wash and smooth my hair towards the back of my head. This first smoothing step involves the use of a Denman brush to detangle/smooth the strands.

2. I lightly rinse the conditioner out in the front of my head (I want some conditioner to stay in the middle, because I will continue to add more water to my hair during the smoothing process, and I don't want my hair to dry out, so I keep some conditioner in it. The remaining conditioner will/should be rinsed out by the time that I'm done smoothing). 

3. Then I smooth shea butter on my edges, my nape, and the remainder of my hair. 

4. I grab my boar bristle brush/any soft brush, wet the brush and then gently brush the edges of my hair. 

5. Add more shea butter on edges/top & middle of hair.

6. Add gel just to edges.

7. Smooth with wet brush.

8. Tie knee sock over front of head ensuring that all hairs are inside.

9. Grab remaining hair and pull into a ponytail.

10. Done :)

Chicoro's method is pretty much the same as mine, except she demonstrates how to do this on dry hair. My hair is too short to do on dry hair, I need it to be wet so I can really grab it to fit into the ponytail holder. Check out Chicoro's method to see detailed pictures 

here: 

http://public.fotki.com/Chicoro123/hair-care/tutorials/smooth-hairline/

The top of my hair still does not reach the back of the ponytail holder, so if I were to wear a ponytail, I would need to put some clips there to hold the hair down. I can't wait until my totally fits into a ponytail holder, nice and smooth, with no need for any clips! The end of this year I hope :)