I MADE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!

I'm so excited! So I know nobody reads this but my sister, but I don't care, I'm announcing this to the webiverse! I HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL!

For a long time I've been wanting to make videos but wasn't sure I was ready. Not that you have to be a guru to make videos, but I do feel like you have to have a reason for creating videos. Either for people share in your journey, or for you to be offering advice about what you have learned about working with your texture.

So after speaking to some people on youtube, and making recording videos for my personal use for months and months (just to check in on my growth, and to remember how i did certain treatments) I decided to bite the bullet and just DO IT!.

So find my videos HERE

New 10 Step Wash and Go Routine

Wash-and-Go Routine
1. Massage scalp with Black Castor Oil
2. Detangle while applying Super Sweetback Treatment as a deep conditioner
3. Sit under Bonnet for 25 mins.
4. Shampoo Hair with Blended Beauty Soy cream shampoo
5. Condition with Herble Essence Hello Hydration/ Suave Tropical conditioner/ Carol's Daughter Black Vanilla Hair Smoothie
6. Apply Carol's Daugther Black Vanilla Leave in conditioner
7. Apply a dollop of Miss Jessie's Baby Buttercreme
8. While 'shingling' hair, apply Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue
9. To stretch the curl, use blow dryer with directional nozzle to blast the roots of the hair while stretching it.
10. If hair needs an extra moisture boost apply Komaza Care Califia Moisturizing Cream

PRODUCTS GALLORE!

Okay. I've been MIA for a while, but I had to come back to post about ALL of the insane products that I picked up the other day from Honey Fig. I bought a TON of Miss Jessie's products. Some carol's daughter products, a new incredible conditioner and a awesome moisturizer. I'm Super excited.

So I jut did a wash an go using Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue. I like the product because it is SO moisturizing. it takes AGES to actually absorb into the hair shaft however. I'm going to be doing a post on what I did for my wash and go routine though.

Products I bought:
Miss Jessie's Baby Buttercreme
Miss Jessie's Stretch Silkening Creme
Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue - Smells amazing.
Miss Jessie's Sweetback Treatment
Carols Daughter Black Vanilla Hair Smoothie
Carols Daughter Black Vanilla Leave in conditioner
Komaza Care - Califia Moisturizing cream - I LOVE THIS PRODUCT
Kinky Curly - Knot Today
Oyin Handmade Whipped Pudding
Blended Beauty Soy Cream Shampoo - THIS SHAMPOO IS INCREDIBLE!
LUSH Caca Rouge Henna

This picture is of my hair out with flaxseed/aloe/olive oil gel. I took my hair down from the cornrows they were in. Sprayed a bit of aphogee keratin treatment, then used my home made gel (in copious amounts) and i am currently letting it dry. So far, I am happy with the results.

I BOUGHT A HOODED DRYER!!

I feel like I just joined the "Serious-about-hair-care club"!!!

It's a Gold N Hot 1400-watt dryer. It's the table mount one. I was going to get a conditioning cap that you can walk around with, but I don't think I can use it for roller sets so I figured it's best to get this and get the other one (it's only like 25 bucks or so) at a later date!!

So excited to test it out!

Product Update

I have gone a bit product crazy and purchased A SHIT LOAD of things!!!

So I went to Sally's (yeah, apparently they have a Sally's right down my street and all this time I thought they only had it in the States)

I've discovered recently that my hair loves Protein. It actually makes it crazy soft!

Silk Elements MegaSilk Heat Protectant
Aphogee Keratin Green Tea Reconstructurizer
Aphogee Two- Step Treatment
Aphogee Balancing Moisturizer
Man N Tail Daily Leav in Conditioning Treatment
Proclaim Foaming Wrap with Olive oil
Aloe Vera Gel

and a ton of random things like Rollers and clips etc

LENGTH CHECK!

So i haven't doesn't this in almost a YEAR!

Here goes a length check.

Front - 6''

Left Side - 5 1/2''

Right Side - 6''

Back - 6 1/2''

Honey aloe vera gel - I want to make this

My Product Wish list. Tell me what you think

Aloe Vera Gel
Glycerin
Coconut Cream Concentrate
Shea Butter
Miss Jessie's Curly Meringue
Miss Jessie's Baby Butter
Miss Jessie's Rapid Recovery
Oyin Handmade whipped pudding
Oyin Handmade Shine and define
Suave humectant
V-05 - Heat defense - Extreme heat
Xanthan gum

I'll probably add to this list. and I promise to do a length check very soon. I wish I kept up with the month to month length check because I know i've been having major breakage around my hair line. (the wig)

The many hair styles over the years

Since I'm on a posting roll (and no doubt i'll probably stop posting for like 4 months lol) i thought I'd post old pictures of myself when my hair was relaxed (if i can find any) and when my hair had weaves and when I wore the Full lace wig and the lace front wig (which i wear now).
Okay... i hope y'all are ready because I have LOADS of pictures to post up here!
So here i am with a weave in my hair (above) This was in... August 2006
Here I am with my hair out- but with a perm while on vacation in February 2006
This picture (above) was taken in April 2006. I was wearing my hair out (without weave)
This picture is when I was rocking the full lace wig back in September 2008. I wanted to buy a curly wig, while I grew out my natural hair.
This picture is really old. It's from 1st year uni, way back in March or April 2004. I wore braids for the entire year.
This crazy picture is from 2007. I was wearing a weave. You can see that I stopped perming my edges because I was fed up with breakage.

This is me with a short Weave. I must have cut off the ends. I always did weaves by myself (i would never pay someone to do my hair...ever). And when the ends were starting to look mated I would cut it into a short hair style before it was time to redo the weave completely.

MY NEW HAIRSPIRATION

This is Louel83 from the Netherlands. She is probably the first person on youtube I've found with long hair that closely resembles my hair type which is such a relief because of course....you want to know what you're hair is going to look like as it grows out. There are loads of girls rocking long hair on youtube, but I know that their hair just does not represent what my hair looks like. They either have a far tighter curl, or a far looser curl...or their here was just not a ridiculously thick as my hair is. (Y;all don't eve know the half of this thickness) so I really had no idea what my hair could potentially look like as it grows out. That is until I found Louel, who has the greatest afro. I'm just so sad that she's not making videos anymore an I only recently found her. :(

2 Years Natural

I just realized I've been natural for 2 years! My last perm was June 2008. I had not consciously decided to go natural at the time though - I did that in September of 2008 when I decided to buy a lace front wig and was doing research on youtube (where I fell upon the natural hair care channels which changed my life. The lacefront wig ended up being a major set back (pulling out the hair in my hair line so i wore my hair out while it was transitioning all summer long). This was also a major set back because I worked at a summer camp and had to swim with the kids daily and was out in the sun for the majority of the day. It's a wonder how my hair started growing at all. I should probably mention that I didn't 'Big Chop'. I transitioned for a VERY long time...a year in fact.

When i went to London i started wearing wigs as a protective style which is when my hair began growing, but it is also when i stopped caring for my hair. So i have yet to find a happy median. Despite all the setbacks my hair has been growing. Hoepfully in another two years it'll be at a length long enough for me to wear it out and styled without worrying too much about peoples reactions.

I think although i've gone natural and my faimly and friends are supportive i'm not 100% comfortable with the idea and still wear wigs etc. Perhaps I make excuses which are practical, like 'in the winter the Canadian weather damages the hair, and in the summer the pool dries it out' but at the end of the day, I definitely have trouble with the length of my hair. I am NOT a short haired person. I have never had short hair. Actually that's a lie, i did in Grade 12, when my hair was at it's worst as far as damage. I had permed it, coloured it, flat ironed it, you name it I had done it and I had NO idea how to care for it, other than greasing my scalp with Dax. It was horrible. After I graduated and started uni, i wore my hair in braids, then i took up weaves. But despite wearing weaves I still had to perm my hair. I then began wearing weaved without perming my hair just to see how long my hair could grow before I had to perm it again. Eventually I was tired of having to pay for weaves and settled on investing in a lace wig. (you know the story from there).

I thought i'd just recap my story. Not necessarily for everyone benefit, but for my own. Just to remember how far my hair has come, because it's so easy to forget. I honestly thought I had only been natural for a year for some bizarre reason.

So to sum up
2 years since last relaxer
1year 8 months since deciding to go natural
1 year since transitioning and chopping off ends (I had about 6 inches or so on my head... there are pictures if you trackback a bit)

Coconut Cream relaxer

Since I'm finished school for the summer and have a bit of time on my hands before I start working I have gone HAIR CARE CRAZY! I've been catching up on all my natural beauties and I've been educating myself on the new hair care products (or maybe old?) that we just HAVE TO TRY!

Anyway, I was doing some research on effective ways to naturally loosen your curls. I always henna my hair because of the various benefits and I have heard that it is a good way to loosen your curl, but i'm not sure it has over the 4 times I have. My hair is very very very fine but very very very thick (so not coarse and thick, fine and thick - as in I have LOADS of hairs on my head). When I henna my hair, it coats each strand and makes my hair coarse and thick. So it gets even bigger. I've definitely noticed that my curl pattern has changed from when I was a child before I began relaxing my hair. Anyway, i'm trying to get back to that, or at least ease the maintenance of my natural hair. (I don't care how many times people say it natural hair is definitely high maintenance... but so is relaxed hair if you know how to care for it.)

I discovered this video on a effective natural way to 'relax' your hair using coconut cream and coconut oil i believe. Check it out, I'm dying to give this a try when I pick up the products from my beauty supply store. I'm interested to see if and how it works.

Cornrows and conditioner baggy

Okay, so I took down the saran wrap this morning and honestly it didn't do anything for my hair. Like at all. I don't think i did it correctly. Plus I didn't sit under a heat cap or anything. Anyway, i left my hair open today, and decided to get my mom to braid it for me today since she hasn't in years. So she cornrowed it up for me. I trimmed off my ends and finally decided to put my ends in a condioner doggy bag. I've seen it done before...here... but never tried it. We'll see how it goes. I think my ends need some love, because the ones that I trimmed today were a knotted mess.

Straightening Natural hair and a cling film hair wrap

So after my honey treatment I rinsed my hair. I didn't shampoo it and I didn't condition it at all. Which I completely forgot to do, I was just blow away by how moisturized and soft my hair was (I honestly just realized.... as I was typing this... that I didn't condition my hair). Anyway after rising my hair I detangled it and placed my hair in rollers.I then blow dried my hair on low heat. I planned on sleeping in my hair like this until I got frustrated at how long it was taking and decided to comb-blow dry my hair.
This sped things up some what. Once my hair was completely blow dried I put my hair in braids and thought I would sleep in them like that. But once again I changed my plans and decided to take out the braids and blow out my entire head just to see what it would look like. Here are pictures of my hair after I took out my braids and the one below is after the blow out. I wish you could see how insanely shiny my hair is with NO product. I mean. aside from olive oil and honey left overs i suppose. These webcam pics don't do it justice. It's just insane. Not to mention the henna treatment already gives my hair a wicked auburn shine. I forgot to take pictures while I was straightening my hair, but basically I part my hair into two sections, top and bottom, and work my way from side to side of my hair in smaller pieces while using the flat iron (maxi glide) to straighten the hair. The maxiglide setting goes up to 10 and i straightened my hair on the 3 setting. In my opinion it was still WAY too hot, but anyway. So if you're wondering why it isn't Bone straight, that's why. This is the result, which i think is horrendous to be honest lol. I think it has to do with my wretched untrimmed knotted up ends, and the fact that my hair was being straightened while It had sugar on it. Way to damage my hair (it's the first time I've used heat since going natural - over a year ago- too).
I really wish you could see the colour and shine! Anyway, after this I brushed my hair around my head into a wrap around and decided that I'd try the cling film wrap that I saw moncherie(?) on youtube do. Her hair is relaxed I believe So i know I wont receive the same flowy results, but damn it's worth a try. We'll see how my hair looks in the morning. I'm excited. I'm going to trim the ends too. Cause they have go to go pronto!

Honey Oil treatment

I am a sticky mess. Honey and Oil everywhere! Lord have mercy.

Okay, so basically i'm doing the Honey and oil hair treatment. I was bored and in the kitchen and notices that I had honey so I thought, hey why not. My hair is wrapped up in a plastic bag now. I'm going to wash it out in an hour and I'll see how it comes out.

Last night I put my hair in big twists (I was bored) and took them out this morning. This is the result, for ppl with my texture and length, wondering what it would look like

Hair pics again - JUNE 9th

I just took out my cornrows and put a ton of conditioner in my hair (I have a tendency to this every now and then). Gonna have to braid it back up again. Man I can't wait till my hair grows out properly. I mean it's quite long now, but it's still definitely something I have to get used to and comfortable with. But short hair definitely does not suit my face. IMO. Anyway, I'm still growing it out. I probably won't wear it "out" definitely wear it pulled up, for another year and a half.

Twist out

So this is a twist out look. I am definitely not feeling this AT ALL! This is the first time I've actually tried a twist out on my hair after just washing it. I'm going to have to put it in cornrows before I leave (within the next 45 mins). Ugh.

twists

So here's my hair done up with twists. I'm probably gonna take them down tomorrow and go out like that. my hair needs a bit of a break. Plus it's insanely hot outside in Toronto right now so I can be bothered covering up my hair. I did my hair using suave conditioner and coconut oil. So it's feeling incredibly soft now. The henna definitely made it very shiny. My hair is definitely thicker (as if it's not thick enough as it is), but it's feeling good.

So this is my hair right after a wash. I did a henna treatment last night. Then washed it out (which took ages), then i did a cholesterol treatment for a few hours. Then washed it out and this is the result. At the moment my hair is feeling VERY coarse and hard. Which is usually does after I do a henna treatment (even though the deep conditioner is supposed to counter balance this). Anywho, I think i'm going to put it in two-strand twists. And my mother generously offered to plait my hair tomorrow night, which is nice of her, she probably hasn't done my hair since I was 11 or so. Anyway. I'm glad my hair is growing and it's healthy. I'm going to trim the ends while I do my twists as well. I'll put up a picture of the end result.

Hair update

I'm horrible at this hair blog. Probably because I have like a trillion other blogs. Anyway, so I thought i'd post a picture of me with my natural hair, and a picture with my wig.

So the below is the wig I wear daily. This is actually a new one... it's got bangs, and I like it. The one below that is my natural hair. It's grown out SO freaking much, it's insane. I'm thinking i'll start wearing it out in about 2 years. Since I live in Canada and the weather is so erratic I tend to wear my hair in protective styles for the majority of the year. Last year I wore it out during the summer, but because I have a summer job at a camp and I swim daily and i'm pretty active with the kids It means having to wash my hair everyday and If it's "down" then it's really difficult to manage as far as daily washings, so I'm thinking this summer i'll keep it in plaits so I can rinse my hair like that. As far as the winter goes I never wear my hair out. It's far to cold and far to dry.

But in 2 years when my hair gains a bit of length, I'll definitely start wearing it out in the summer time. I love big hair.

Hair growth comparison

I thought I'd put up a comparison of my hair over a 1 year period. The image on the left is from March '09, the image on the right is from April '10. I knew my hair had grown over the year, but I guess I didn't realize just how much.

Hairspiration

I've just dicovered another chicalaties that I'm adding to my Hairspiration list.
This is Chime. She has got the biggest and best hair in town. Seriously. This is my ultimate hair goal. Completely the reason why I went natural...to rock BIG ASS hair.

This is a re-post from naturally obsessed - here It's a great Natural hair care site.

1. Breifly explain your hair routine.

I co-wash my hair weekly with Aubrey Organics Honeysuckle Rose Conditioner only. I also deep condition my hair weekly with Aubrey Organics GP Conditioner. I use shampoo to thoroughly cleanse my scalp every 3 months. I usually wash it when it then load my hair with Giovanni Direct leave-In Conditioner and detangle it. Then I seal it with coconut oil or jojoba oil. I ususally wear my hair in twists for a week to allow my hair to rest then the following week I wear it out.

2. Have you ever regretted your decision to go natural? If so, why?

Not at all!! Going natural is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

3. What is the best thing about being natural?

Rockin big hair!! I love big hair! It is so fierce! I also love that it is ealthy and unique.

4. What 3 products can you not live without?

Giovanni Direct Leave In Conditioner

Aubrey Organics Honeysuckle Rose Conditioner

Coconut Oil

5. What 3 products would you never buy again?

Aubrey Organics Island Naturals and Blue Camomile Shampoo, Giovanni Vitapro Fusion Leave In Treatment. They all made my hair feel dry and stiff.

6. What makes your curls "Glam Curls"?

I use Giovanni Direct Leave In to enhance my curl!! I love the different sized curl my hair has. Some are coily, others loose, some curly/wavy. My curls are Glam Curls because my hair is big and FIERCE!!!! Gotta love natural hair!!

Update

This is the most recent picture of my hair. It was taken two days ago. I just taken out my corn rows and washed my hair. There a tiny bit of conditioner in there.
This was taken over a month ago. I took out my cornrows lathered a bunch of suave conditioner in there and put it back up again.

So clearly my hair is growing. Not as fast or as long as I'd like it. I've been wearing it in protective syles over the long British winter, and I may or may not wear it out over the summer. I wore it out last summer but I would swim daily as part of my job and I think that really did a number on my hair. (despite rinsing it and conditioning it after every swim).

I have completely stopped co-rinsing and deep conditioning. I'm really disappointed with myself, but honestly the main reason is time, money and lack of products in the UK.

I'll be back in Toronto in 2 weeks so I'll get back on regimen then. I'm gonna try some aubrey organics poducts as well as a cassia treatment.

Repost from Curlynikki.com - Short Hair twist out

I don't do a thing to my hair anymore :(

So I've been insanely busy with school. It's finally a new year and a new Semester. I was able to go home for Christmas and brought back some shampoo and conditioner, but aside from that my hair care has been seriously lacking.

I've brought my Organix shampoo and still use Suave hair conditioner and coconut oil, but aside from that I haven't been doing anything to my hair. I haven't been washing it frequently (I wash it maybe once every 2-3 weeks). I basically keep it in cornrows and where a lace front. Which is starting to scare me because the sides where the "hair prong" things go have been rubbing out my hair. (EEEEK!) Anyway, My hair is still growing but i've noticed that i'm shedding a lot. It may be because I don't comb it often. I've also noticed I have a lot of knots in my ends. I haven't been trimming regularly either. Basically I've abandoned all hair care. I think in the summer when I'm back in Toronto i'll try and sort it out again. (Although I usually work at a summer camp in the summer which requires swimming everyday...) ugh. I don't know what to do.

Here are some recent pictures of how My hairs doing. These were taken after washing my hair. There's still conditioner in it.

I'll do a length check sometime soon, as I haven't done one in a few months.