Relaxed Hair Tings

The month of June has gone by and I decided to flat iron my hair. It's been a while, my hair is longer and I need help with my hand eye coordination. Needless to say it was a bit of an arm work out. The flat ironing step alone took me just under an hour. I hadn't really thought through my game plan but it all worked out in the end. There's definitely progress. I think the next time I flat iron will either be end of year or in the new year with the first relaxer. Then I'll see if it will be worth doing it more regularly if not for practice.  Growing out the hair in layers is interesting. I can put my hair in a bun just not all of it regardless of the position. This calls  for some creativity in styling with clips, side combs etc. In the background I am continuing to work on deciding my staple products. A mix of allergies and wanting accessible products that work is the reason behind it. It's not as easy as I thought it would be but progress is being made. Once I have...

Not only am I not great at taking photos, I don't always remember to take any. I had my relaxer touch up and this went well. My hair is growing and thriving. I have been enjoying my blow dry wash routine. I need to properly time it and will report back. Wash routine including blow drying is about an hour. Adding in relaxer steps on relaxer day comes to just under two hours. This is so good! My current challenge is finding a shampoo that agrees with both my hair and scalp. The ors shampoo is the only one working for me at the moment.  I'd like to have a moisturising shampoo as well and potentially a back up. Next step would be to do the same for my conditioner and other staple products. Having a go to line up and back up mean when something gets discontinued I'm not completely left out to dry. Having a focused line up also means I can work on my technique, diet, exercise, rest etc because I know the products work. Hope your hair is thriving. Do you have back up products that...

I can't believe April is over! The past couple of weeks since my last post I have been trying to see what my hair and scalp like.  Making my scalp happy continues to be a challenge. My hair on the other hand is happy and growing along nicely. I need to find a solution for my scalp to make sure more issues don't come up down the track. I am not too worried as some of my staples are ok. Some of the areas I am looking are shampoo, conditioner and deep conditioner. After eliminating the use of any oils on my scalp I noticed a big difference. It might just be the combinations I was using weren't working. I have been thinking of reintroducing some coconut oil on my scalp at least on wash day and see how that goes. I use it to seal in moisture and my hair likes it. In other words the experimenting continues. I usually give it three to four weeks to see how my scalp is reacting. If it's super irritated and itchy I stop clarify and give it a break. I also had a few washes were I...

It's been a while since my last post. My hair is growing out nicely.  Since the last post I have been washing my hair weekly and decided to just blow dry and not flat iron as well. I am mostly home and generally keep my hair covered under a scarf. Blow drying gets my hair dry and stretched in less than 10minutes. The brush attachment really helps with the process.  As my hair continues to grow, we are up in another level of awkward length. It's not quite ponytail length but it's rubbing against my neck in the back. I had to do a few experiments to find a way to keep it off my neck. This led me to the pictured side comb. I have two sizes small and the pictured large. I basically twist my hair in the back and put it up and use the comb to hold it in place. It's quite good and so far I had no issues. No more little fro on the nape area! With exercising and weather changes I had found that area would shrink and frizz up. If I want to go out I just wear my scarf over or a ha...

This is a photo after today's wash day. After deciding to go on a flat iron regimen and my hair being short again I thought it would be good to have monthly check ins. My hair is doing great! It's thick, soft and fluffy. Keeping it straight has meant very little tangles or knots. There has been very minimal shedding and hardly any breakage. I have also been wearing my hair out more. All around a great experience so far. I have started doing two shampoos as part of my routine.  One clarifying and another for moisture. I am using my ors shampoo for clarifying and my tresemme for moisture. I have done this for two wash days now and I like the outcome. This will help me get through my product stash too. I have gone through my oil mix and olive oil and I will not be bringing them back into my routine. My scalp did not like them so they have to go. I still have coconut oil which I am mainly using to seal after styling my hair. I am still perfecting my flat iron technique. This time I...

First flat iron of the year! My hair is still too short and I haven't been able to get my hands on a pencil flat iron. I noticed the plates on my cordless flat iron are a tiny bit smaller than a standard one and decided to give it a go. I flat ironed on 190degrees and the flat iron lasted about 25minutes. I had to finish the top part of my head using my standard flat iron and it wasn't too bad but it's definitely too big at the moment. After debating on whether to wait until my hair had grown out a bit more to flat iron it I ended up giving in and doing it. There's no better time than now to start practising. My new goal is to flat iron my hair in 25minutes before the flat iron dies. My hair is soft, healthy and has plenty of volume. I am happy with this wash and flat iron outcome. It is a bit uneven in some spots since I hacked it off but I am not too worried about it at the moment. This will get fixed up later. How is your hair going?

First wash post relaxer was yesterday. Since I decided to use up as many products as I can washing has to increase.  Currently looking at weekly and see how that goes. Before I get into this wash some observations from the past week. Heat styling is sustainable at the moment. The major factor is whether or not my scarf stays on  my head at night. If it doesn't stay that means I would need to freshen up the style with heat during the week. Ideally I would like set and forget styles with minimal manipulation.  Safe to say I wake up without my scarf more often than not. At my current length it's not quite simple when it comes to refreshing a style.  With that in mind blow drying is on hold until I can easily put all my hair up in a bun. I want to stick to the bun as my go to protective style. Braiding and me don't really seem to mix well especially when it comes to take down. Back to this wash day. I started off with applying my oil mix all over my hair and covering it with a ...