Hiya, 
It's been a while, how's everyone doing? Hope fine! As you all know, May is the month of NO HEAT! So all month long I have kept up with the no heat policy by trying out different protective styles using big plaits, flat twists,bobby pins and I even brought out a wig!

Check them out, be inspired;




ALL PINS!- I held the top half of my hair with bobby pins and turned the ends out into something like a flower and pinned them down, then twisted the back half up and pinned it down! Simple!!

Hiya,
The weekend is here in a flash! Wow! I was browsing through different hair blogs over the week and came across a very interesting, informative blog that has had me hooked all week. It's called curlynikki.com and is run by an African American lady called Nikki with beautiful natural hair, she also has ladies with natural hair that often contribute to her blog and one particular post caught my eye the other day.

Basically the post talked about a new method of ensuring your hair is well moisturized and the moisture sealed in for longer than the regular moisturizing and sealing I have been doing. This method is called the LOC EASE METHOD.
LOC stands for Liquid, Oil and Cream; these are the products you will put in your hair in their appropriate sequence
EASE stands for Edges, All over, Sections and Ends; listing the sequence in which the products are applied to the hair.
 The lady went ahead to post a picture of her hair before and after using this method and I must say, the difference was clear! So I decided to try it and to be honest I didn't need much convincing as it makes sense, sometimes we moisturize and seal our hair without focusing on vital, sensitive parts and they remain neglected and before long become problem areas.

Okay let me elaborate a bit more on this method;
L- First you use a liquid based hair product, my liquid of choice was my Glycerin/Water mix in a spray bottle, your's could be leave in conditioner.

Hiya,
How was the weekend? This weekend I gave my hair a little TLC! You see, let me confess, I put my hair in a top knot/bun on Wednesday last week and literally ignored it till Saturday! All I did while it was in the bun was spritz my water and glycerin mixture all over the hair and brush the edges!some times ignoring your hair like that can be beneficial to it because you are not combing and brushing and loosing hair BUT if you make the ignorance permanent thats when you will cause wahala!

Any ways back to my weekend, so Saturday morning came by and I mixed what was left of the first bag of henna I bought with an egg 




 sectioned my hair and slapped it on from root to tip, covered my hair with a paper bag and then my shower cap and lounged about the house for 3 hours. This concoction was recommended to me by the Indian lady at the Indian shop where I bought the henna from plus I did some research and I  must say, henna is all the rave in the natural hair community o! Apparently it's also a great protein treatment, hmm protein and condition all in one! Love it; as you know Im the girl with relaxed hair that treats it as natural hair :)

When the 3hours were up, I mixed some pure honey with the TRESemme anti breakage conditioner I bought at Target(basically any good conditioner is fine)  and slapped that on my hair too, loved the yummy smell. I am just calling it a smoothie for efizzy!*wide grin*

Then I allowed my hair to air dry and when it was almost dry decided to do a Bantu knot which I have not done in ages! 
I sectioned my hair into 2 sections, moisturized my hair with my whipped Shea butter 

then applied a pea size amount of TRESemme curl hydration which I love( just saw it, got it, never read a review and It works great for creating soft bouncy curls plus it's not expensive)

LOVE THE CONSISTENCY(light and moisturizing)

Then I twisted the section from root to tip and then all around so it formed a knot, then I tucked the ends away but you can use pins for a more secure hold. I created 6 knots, wore my satin bonet and went to bed. 



The next morning, I loosen the knots; the 2 in front loosened themselves overnight :(  I spritz over the hair my water glycerin mixture and used my fingers to shake things up at the roots, flipped my head from side to side and ended up with soft beach wavy hair just as though I did a twist out! 


Not bad, at least I gave my hair the acknowledgment it was seeking!lol

Did u show your hair some TLC? Let me know below. This week I'm working on my protective hairstyle look book post for inspiration to readers looking for protective styles so stay tuned!

Xxx
Dabs

Hiya,
How's everyone doing? Hope the May Challenge is not getting the better of you.My hair has been thriving with this challenge and I have been focused on doing more interesting styles with my hair as protective styles and will be showing them off to you guys soon but in the mean time, Ive put this post up to address a hair issue that was brought to my attention by one of my readers.

She complained that her hair was too light and not full enough to pull off different hair styles. So I gave her the usual advice of using castor oil to thicken her hair but in the mean time rather than brood over how light her hair was in an updo for instance, she could simply Tease it!

How do you think Models on the runway have big voluminous hair like this;

May is here already and I have decided to challenge myself on many fronts! My diet has been tweaked as a few of my friends and I have decided to loose 5kg this month! So help us Lord! A better diet and more water intake is bound to improve my hair, so that's an added bonus.

Hair wise I'm challenging myself as well as you my dear readers to totally avoid  any kind of HEAT all month long. No blow drying, thonging, straightening or even roller setting! Zero heat! 

Heat has been proven to be really bad for your hair and those quick heat fixes; a straightening process today, curls from your thong tomorrow add up in a bad way by drying out your hair and making it brittle and prone to breakage; yes even with a heat protectant and believe it or not there are better heat less styling methods that create the same results as heat methods. Let's explore them this month!

To get my hair straighter without heat  this month I will try wrapping my hair like this

source

But switching the direction of the wrap is important so you do not apply too much pressure on your edges. I would have shown you guys how to do it myself but I'm exhausted however if you need me to illustrate how I wrap my hair let me know below and I will oblige you :)

To be honest just the process of moisturizing and sealing my hair makes it straighter. Also I heard Henna makes hair straighter so I tried it last weekend and all I'll say is my hair feels more manageable, not necessarily straighter though and I loooooveeee the red tint it gave my hair! 

It was worth the shot, will be trying Henna again!

For curls, you can go heat less and still have great bouncy curls! How? Well there are the Flexi rods people use which I must say are super uncomfortable to sleep on! Instead of them I use satin foam rollers.

 I saw these at Sally's and I decided to just try them out and I must say I was blown away by the beautiful result! The satin kept my curls from drying and frizzing out and they formed into soft spirals as though I used a curling Iron! Really love them and I recommend them over the Flexi rods for the comfort I experienced while sleeping since they are foam and the satin that did not dry out my hair. See results below!

So you see, you have quite some options in terms of styling without heat thus there's no excuse. Get on board this challenge and let's see how well our hair will fare without heat through out the month of May and stay tuned for other challenges in the coming months. Thanks for stopping by!

Dabs