Hair Idols: Tracee Ellis Ross

You can't deny the fierceness of her hair.  When Girlfriends is on, I find myself paying more attention to how Joan was going to wear her hair in that episode.  Sidebar:  I'm still salty about how they got rid of the show like that without a proper goodbye.

Rage against the Machine...

So recently I started a new project.  It's different from other projects that I've been on because it's a bit more formal in terms of attire.  I'm talking about suit with jacket formal.  For the first time in a long time, I'm wondering:  what will I do with my hair?  For my last project, I came on board with a curly style.  This time however, I started the project looking like this:

Birthday Press

To be honest, I can't stop thinking about how I'll wear my hair for the duration of this project.  I don't want to scare them with the wild mane, nor do I want to sacrifice the health of my hair.  What to do?  What to do?  Well, God must have heard my cries because today while cruising my Reader, I see this post on curlynikki.com from Mahogany Curls, who shares her set on natural hair.  I must say...hair came out fly.  Check the videos out and let me know what you think.  I may be alternating between something similar and my curlformers.  Any other suggestions for me?  Is it wrong that I'm letting 'the man' dictate my hair?

Something New

I tried something new with my hair this weekend. I did my normal deep and cowash. But then I set my plaits on the grey rods that I recently purchased.

Pros:

• Extremely quick. Since I only purchased 10 rods I only did 10 plaits.
• Very defined

Cons:

• Took forever to dry. I was finished setting it around 6:30pm on Sunday. I let it air dry until Monday at 9am. At this point I could feel moisture just by touching the roded plaits. So I sat under the hairdryer for 1 hour. My hair was STILL not completely dry. Luckily I didn't anywhere to go. So I pin curled the plaits for the remainder of the day.
• Tighter curls than I would have liked (negative hang time). This may be due to it being roded/pin curled for 2 days.

Summary: Not worth the drying time. I should only try this on a dry braid out.

Model Behavior

The beautiful Selita Ebanks recently rocked this scully to celebrate her Bday. Now that I am going natural lets face it, my crochet hats are more prevalant than ever. But I restrict myself to low key places like work (Ha!) or running errands. I have never considered wearing a hat to socialize with friends. I barely wear them around boo thang. I have to give it to Selita though, she kept it real funky. No embellishments at all. Do you feel that hats have a time and a place? 

Rod Results

I look, I feel, I smell like money....

I'll never have a bad hair day again with these in my back pocket.

Dry Rod Set

It's been 5 days since I curlformed. And lets just say the curly fro was getting a little to fro for me. So my original thoughts were to dry braid tonight and keep it moving. But while at work I realized I had misplaced (not so much) my satin pillow case. On top of the fact that I had a 15% off Sally coupon burning a whole in my purse, all signs pointed to a beauty store run. Of course I never walk out with just one item. I did almost run out of curlformers last week, so hey I'll take a pack of those. Then I saw the Flexi Rods. My girl Tracy has been having wonderful results from her rod sets, and I secretly wanted to try them anyway. So....you know I bought some.

It was then kid on Christmas day ish. I had to use them tonight. So I separated my hair, added about 5 sprays of Giovanni Leave In, a pump of mousse, and then roded. I used one pack of rods, resulting in 10 sections.

We'll see what the morning brings.

My Neck Of The Woods

A friend noted that I should measure my new growth. With only a few weeks until my 9th month of transitioning (where has the time gone?), I gave it a go. Yeah, I failed. All I had was a tape measure (seamstress in me). It was difficult to hold the tape, hold my hair stretched and get an accurate reading all at the same time. So I settled for pictures instead. Also Tootsie recently asked me if I had some canche donche (sp), a nice way of asking if I had that Kizzy Kinte. You be the judge.

Curlformer part II

Ok, so I gave the ol curlformers another chance. Well, I was determined to pull it off actually. I was not about to let them get the best of me again. So on a recent snow day I decided to just take my time and get r done. It took about 3 hours from co wash to finish. I did stop for a snack break though.

I did an overnight DT with Honeysuckle Rose and EVOO. The next morning I did my normal co-wash with HEHH. Then I got down to business. I combined my back sections ( I co wash in 4 sections), and began to tackle it in rows. I separated the rows into medium sized boxes. I sprayed each box with my leave in mixture, slathered on one pump of Mousse then finally curlformed.

I know it sounds convoluted. But it worked.

Day 1

Day 3

Day 5

Bad Hair Day Remix

Last week was rough.   The 12+ hour days were not conducive to me having good hair days.  I didn't have the energy or time to put into my hair.  The weather did not help with the situation either.  It was rainy and windy.  All in all I wasn't feeling too fierce.  I had lost all hope on Wednesday night after a 14 hour day and had decided that I was going to break out the emergency wig that my sister made for me.  While on the phone I started playing with my hair and wondered what it'd look like in a bun.  Didn't know how I felt about the mini bun action going on but I called Miss G for a quick consultation and I decided to just rock with it.  The top section is clipped up (I have a habit of always pulling my front back) and the back is up in a ponytail.  I wrapped a stocking leg around the pony to give it some weight, then wrapped my hair around and secured with another ouchless band.

I was quite pleased with the results and decided to rock the glasses and pearls to play up the schoolteacher look.  I got several compliments and this will definitely be a fall back style for 'bad' hair days.  (Since being natural, I find that my truly bad hair days are few and far in between)  I think I will invest in some pomade to smooth the 'kitchen'...lol.  Recently, I'd been seriously thinking of cutting my hair for my birthday (2-19 and I do accept gifts), but after my success, I don't think I want to let any go.

What's your fall back style for your not quite as good hair days?

Dear FbN: Product Testimonial

So after hearing about the great results that Miss G had with the Giovanni Mousse,  a loyal reader, Tracy, wanted to also share her good experience that she had while experimenting with some new products.  

Testimonial!  So I just took my rods out and my hair is softer than ever!  I tried to post this but this is what I did:

Put on dry hair Aubrey Honeysuckle Rose Co then added EVOO on top of that, put on cap and sat under dryer for 20 min.  Rinsed and cowashed twice with Giovanni Smooth as Silk. The put in some HEHH to comb it through.  Put in Giovanni Leave-In and Giovanni Mousse Foam and set on rods...two hours later under dryer my hair is softer than ever before.  

Wha'ts different? The DC with Aubrey and EVOO and the HEHH at the end.  The rest was "normal" and I never achieved such soft results before.  

If you want to share of your product reviews or hair-perimentations, please send to us.  We'd love to hear about your experience.

Stay Fierce!

 

I've been slack...

Miss G definitely called me out on the last post about my slip into slackdom.  I can't even deny it.  I've let the unimportant things like my job take over.  Not a good look.  Not only have I not been doing my blog homework, I haven't been too good to my hair either.  I didn't feel like dry braiding last night, so I just went to bed.  I went to work looking a ham and I have no one to blame but myself for being lazy.

As Miss G mentioned, I did get a chance to purchase the Giovanni Mousse last weekend and use it for my curlformer set.  I must say I was pleasantly pleased.  Although I got scared halfway through the process that my curls would be hard because I'd used too much, my curls came out nice and soft but still had some hold.  I was hoping to also try it with the dry braid out to see if it would improve my definition but like I said- womp, womp to that.  I was hoping to come home and try it, but I forgot that this is Super Bowl weekend so my Sunday hair schedule would need to be changed.  I'm also going out of town this weekend, so I couldn't move hair day to Saturday, therefore I had to have hair day tonight.  I didn't even get into my house until 9:30 then I had to rush to cowash and curlform by 11 so I'd have some chance of my hair being dry before the morning.  Having to rush also meant skipping out on the DC.  This hurt because I had made a promise to myself to DC at least once a week.  *Sigh*

I know, I know.  I need to do better and don't worry, I will do better...hold me to it.

I think I'm in love

Yall know I was looking for a setting lotion. Well I think I found it. My hair loves this product. I did a dry braid out to salvage last weeks horrible curlformer experience. I sprayed each section with my leave in/glycerin/water mix. Then added one pump of the mousse before braiding and rodding the ends. It was probably one of my best braidouts. My hair had dumb definition and crazy shine.  I will definitely try this product with future curlformer attempts. I guess I hyped it up cause Toots even got some. Haven't heard yea or nay from her as of yet. She has been slack on so many levels. Yeah I said it.