M.I.A again!

Ok, so it's exam season again & on top of 4 exams I also have lots of coursework due in & society responsibilities. So sadly I might have to be "Missing in Action" until my last exam which is at the end of May.

About my hair:

I've had braid in since Friday the 6th & i'm really happy with the results (they're a few inches longer than what I normally get - grazing MBL). I'll probably keep these in until early/mid June so look out for another relaxer update!

I also stocked up on my African Pride Braid Sheen Spray:



& made another batch of my oil mix (this time containing: coconut, almond, olive, JBCO & plain ol' caster oil).

Anyways, good luck to everyone else who might have exams around now & don't worry I have a lot planned for when I come back.

Wash day (extra long post)

My hair has been in a bun constantly (sorry for the lack of pictures) and the time has finally come for me to wash my hair. Every night (or every other night depending on how my hair felt) I would moisturise and seal my hair by spraying (distilled) water, using cantu shea butter (to seal the water), the the ors olive oil moisturising lotion, followed by herbal essences beautiful ends and finally sealing with KTC coconut oil (more on why I used so many products in the post before this). Afterwards, i would remove my hair-band, twist and tuck under the ends of my hair and wrap it in a silk scarf. 

1. The night before, I prepoo'd on dry hair with coconut oil and left it in over night. 

2. I then de tangled my in sections the next morning and put them in loose twists (picture below):

3. I decided to use the Keracare Hydrating Detangling shampoo (so I could do a product review soon) and added 30ml of the shampoo to 30 ml of water creating a 1:1 ratio of shampoo to water. I created sections with the sections (lol) and added the mix directly to my scalp on dry hair.

I had planned to use the ORS Aloe Vera clarifying shampoo first but I forgot (woops)! Although this isn't too bad as I want to start stretch my clarifying shampoo from once a month to once ever 6 - 10 weeks.

4.In the shower I tried washing my hair in sections but this took too long so I ended up washing it altogether.I let the shampoo run through my hair (from my scalp) and then added the Herbal Essences Hello Hydration conditioner/co-wash to the ends of my hair (because I didn't want to strip the ends too much by adding shampoo directly).

5. After washing my hair, I towel dried it for 5 mins and added the Aphogee 2 Min Reconstructor, popped on a shower cap and left it for roughly 15 minutes  (although the bottle said 2-5 I wanted to strengthen my hair in preparation for blowdrying & the braids I plan on getting tomorrow).

6. I washed then Aphogee 2 Min out and then added the ORS Replen Pak for about 50 mins.

The end result of the above was extremely soft hair! I also did the strand test in the shower whilst washing out the ORS replen pak (so on wet hair) and the result was stretched hair which bounced back.

7. I towel dried my hair for 5 mins and then added  some cantu shea butter & that resulted in:

 ignore the straggly ends, I was worried about this too but it must be the because of the difference in textures. 

8. I then let my hair air dry out (as the cantu shea butter stopped it from dripping) for 4 hours and then proceeded to moisturise and seal my hair. 

Setback number one!

After getting a relaxer, I noticed that my hair was underprocessed in the middle but the woman reassured me that it wasn't so bad and proceeded to straighten it so that I couldn't tell the difference. Then after failing to keep the middle of my hair moisturised and thus having to result to using every moisturising product I could get my hands on I decided to do some research online. I found that wetting the hair with water before moisturising and sealing it would help leave it moisturised for long, so after wetting my hair a bit the real texture/state of my hair was revealed to me:

 As you can sort you can sort of see the roots and ends are bone straight but the middle is texlaxed. 

Now whilst my hair was straightened, the fact that the middle was a different texture wasn't a problem and I had very little breakage but as soon as I sprayed it with just a little bit of water and my hair reverted back, the breakage started to increase up until the point where I sometimes left my hair in my silk scarf throughout the day and night and didn't touch my hair at all for a day or two! 

At first I decided that I would leave the middle texlaxed and grow my hair out so that eventually I would cut it all off but as the days went on & my hair started to break more at the point(s) of demarcation I decided that a corrective relaxer was necessary because if not I would end up going back to NL if not shorter :(

So the plan is to get another corrective relaxer in June & hopefully I should have 100% relaxed hair (not sure on whether or not I should go back to the same place though).

As for my goal of APL by June 2012 - I'm not too sure if the breakage has jeopardised that & I'll just have to wait and see in June (fingers crossed I'll make it). 

Look out for a Wash Day post later on today :)

Just a comparison I thought might inspire people!

I just wanted to share with you guys a bit more info - some of which I should have disclosed 3 months ago. Ok, so I'm going to post an embarrassing picture of my hair in December: 

Pay attention to the areas in the red circles, as you can see my hair was beyond damaged at this point. I was so disgusted by my hair in December that I was prepared to cut it to about ear length & start all over again. However I decided to wait until march before I made any drastic decisions. What you see in the red circles is the results of over-manipulation, over-lapping relaxers & heat damage. 

Just looking at this picture makes me want to hurl! This picture was supposed to be my first length check however due to the state of my hair I decided to skip my beginning length check. To tell you the truth after taking this picture I was prepared not to bother with a HCJ, I thought it would take years for my hair to look presentable & that I might as well not bother as I am not a very patient person. I'm not too sure what made soldier on through & start my HCJ but I am ever sooo grateful I did. In just 3 month not only did I repair my hair but I also grew it to grazing APL! My ends are now in a much better position and I have various blogs, YT channels, K.I.S.S sistas & Hairlistas to thank!

This blog post was supposed to talk about breakage (well the lack of in my case) but I went off on a bit of a tangent lol after going through my webcam pictures, I guess I'll talk about breakage on my next post.