5 days, no washing

by
No comments yet

I try to go as long as I can between hair washes, within reason. I can usually do about 5 days without it getting gross, with the help of dry shampoo and sometimes half-washes for my bangs in the sink. The gorgeous girls of Treasures and Travels did a feature a while back where they all showed the hairstyles that get them through a week of no washing, and since all hair types are so different (and I get lots of questions about how I make my wash last so long), I thought I would do the same!


So, about my hair texture: my hair is incredibly think and coarse. It's prone to dryness and split ends, but it usually has lots of volume and holds styling well.




Day one, fresh after a wash.  I usually wash my hair at night and blow dry my bangs with a round brush.  Occasionally I'll use a hair dryer on the rest of my hair for a minute or two just so it isn't soaking wet, but usually I'll let it air dry.  I work in a repairing treatment, concentrating on my ends, for extra moisture since my hair tends to the drier side. The morning after I wear my hair down and work the waves!



Day 2 is usually a half up/half down.  Sometimes I'll put it up with a hair elastic, but I usually use bobby pins and twist the sections of hair before pinning to give it a little more volume up top.  This is gonna sound elitist, probably, but after years of inadequate bobby pins, the ones from Sally Beauty have a much better grip than the ones from Dollar General.  In my opinion, they're totally worth a few cents more.


I'm glad that messy pony tails are having a moment, because they help me get through life with much less time spent drying my hair.  Day 3 is almost always messy pony day.  It's also the first day I break out the dry shampoo (I've been using Not Your Mother's); I'll spray a little in my bangs and work it through the top of my ponytail for extra volume.  The messier the better on this one, so I usually just rake it up as high as I can with my fingers and secure it tight so it stays bouncy.


Day 4 is when it allll goes up.  I've found a ton of hair tutorials for this style, but this one has got to by my favorite, and by far the easiest (I'm showing T and T some serious love with this post, #notsorry).  A little hairspray is always a good idea with a style like this, and I'm a fan of this one because it's not sticky.


You really can't beat a head wrap for hiding greasies.  This one is from Rayna Jaye, who makes the cutest ones in the land.  I'll run some more dry shampoo through my bangs put a little argan oil on my ends if they're dry, and I'm good to go! This is also a great style if you oversleep because it literally takes .2 seconds.

So there's a blueprint for taking your wash up to 5 days!  What are some hairstyles that save your wash?

messy buns with thin hair

by
No comments yet

My hair is too thick to do lots of cute things.  There's almost too much of it for milkmaid braids, buns sometimes look like planets on my head, and it's way too frizzy during the winter.  I've had trouble putting it in a messy bun before, but I finally conquered it. Having trouble with a messy bun isn't unique to thick haired ladies, though... our fine haired sisters have the same issue.


This is my cute friend Lindsey.  She's an elementary school teacher, so her hair has to be out of her way while she's molding the minds of the kiddos.  However, since it's really fine and slippery, it can be hard to find ways to put it up and make it stay.

We messed around with it last weekend, and came up with a way to put it in a cute messy bun in defiance of its texture (mwahaha.) Here's what we did:


Get some kind of thickening product on your hair.  A texture spray, dry shampoo, or even plain hairspray will work. Anything to make it stickier than normal.


After you've gotten some product in it, put your hair up in a ponytail as high or as low as you want your bun to be.  We opted for high.



Wrap the hair from the ponytail around the base and secure it with another hair tie. Make it as loose as you can.  Really, the only part that needs to be held in by the hair tie is the very end of your hair so that it's still in a bun shape.  You can use your fingers to mess it up and pull pieces out.

After it's all roughed up, use a couple bobby pins to pin down around your hair.  This is the part that makes it appear thicker because you're pinning a couple inches away from the actual base of your ponytail.  The messier it is, the thicker your hair will look.


Give it another dose of hair spray, and you're done!




headband braid

by
1 Comment

My hair is super thick, so I get layers cut into it to lighten it up a bit.  While layers are great for keeping my hair from giving me a migraine, they're not so great for when I try to wear a braid.  I'm sure it's happened to you - pieces falling out, bobby pinning until you can't feel your fingers.  Not so pleasant.
Well, here's a solution for when you want a side braid and your hair won't cooperate.


Here's how:
1. Put your headband on so that it goes around the front of your forehead - like you're going to wear it boho style.


2. Take pieces from the sides of your hair and flip them through the headband.  I do about two pieces to a side.  How much you use depends on how thick you want the braid to be - for a thicker braid, use less hair on the sides so that there's more in the braid.




3. Take the remaining hair and braid it!  You can do a regular braid, a fishtail, one of those ladder braids I have yet to master... go crazy.



And you're done!  Takes 5 minutes and looks fancy :)





trim yo' bangs.

by
1 Comment

Let's start with some honesty - I only get my hair cut twice a year at most.  I trim my own split ends at home. When I got bangs, I thought I was going to have to change that habit, and my wallet was none too pleased.  So instead of succumbing to broke-ness, I dug in and researched.  Now, I trim my own bangs - pretty successfully, if I do say so myself.
Here's some pointers to keep your bangs tidy between haircuts, regardless of how few and far between they may be.

1. Cut vertically, not horizontally.  In other words, like this:


Not like this:


Its tempting to cut straight across, because it's one snip and done.  But your bangs will look like a shelf of hair if you do that - not a good look. Cutting vertically in small snips keeps that piece-y look that your hairstylist cut in when you first got them so you look like you got a professional trim, not like an overzealous 5 year old's Barbie.

2. Cut 'em dry.  This is probably the biggest mistake DIY trimmers make.  When your hair is wet, it's longer than when it's dry.  Cutting your bangs wet often leads to chopping off more than you meant to, only to realize it when you dry your hair and it's too late.  Dry cutting makes sure that you're only trimming off what you need to.

3. Keep to the middle.  If you had a good stylist, your bangs aren't a straight shot across your forehead; they're shortest in the middle by a tiny amount, frame your face on the ends, and are blended into the sides of your hair.  We can't recreate that, because we did not attend the same school of hair magic that our stylists did.  When you're trimming, keep most of your snips towards the middle of your forehead, where you bangs are shortest.  That's where the annoying hairs getting in your eyeballs are located anyway, right?  Stay away from the blended sides, because you can't do it.  Believe me, I have tried.  It wasn't pretty.

Follow these three tips and you can cut your amount of trims in half!
Pun intended.




the hair post.

by
3 Comments


I've been meaning to write this post for a while.  Like most women, I have a love/hate relationship with my hair, and it's a passionate one.  When I love it I really love it, and when I hate it I wonder if I could pull off Natalie Portman's V for Vendetta look.
I'm in the process of growing my hair out, like probably 80 percent of the female population.  If we aren't growing it, we're cutting it, and I vacillated between the two pretty often before I decided to run hard and fast after the mermaid locks of my dreams.
I recently switched to a more natural approach with my hair, and I've been getting lots of questions about it from my friends.  So, here are the basics of how I take care of my hair.

I wash with baking soda.  It's formally called the "no 'poo" approach, but that just makes me think of constipation and I steer clear of using it. I'll put the equivalent of about 3 teaspoons of baking soda in a repurposed travel sized lotion, fill the rest up with warm water, and give it a couple shakes to mix it up.  In the shower, I'll squirt it liberally along my hairline, making sure I get my temples and my bangs, since that's where I get the oiliest.  In lieu of conditioner, I'll use a solution of diluted apple cider vinegar in an old conditioner bottle - 2 parts water to 1 part ACV.


Since that probably sounds really weird for those who haven't heard of this method, here's the science behind it - conventional shampoos contain sulfates, which lather up to strip your hair of oil.  In theory that sounds good, but your hair actually needs the scalp's naturally occurring oil to remain healthy and not get frizzy and dried up.  When you wash your hair with a conventional shampoo every day, it strips all the oil from your scalp, which causes your scalp to produce more oil to make up for what it's loosing - making your hair get oilier faster, and shampooing every day to become a necessity.
Pantene really put one over on us, huh?
The baking soda solution only dissolves the excess oil on your scalp, so that it retains enough to be healthy without looking oily.  The baking soda/ACV method actually lets you wash your hair less often because your scalp isn't trying to produce tons of oil.  I wash my hair about twice a week and only need dry shampoo every once in a while.
I'll explain the ACV too, since its bound to raise some eyebrows; apple cider vinegar naturally balances the pH of your hair, detangling it like a conditioner would do, but with the added bonus of giving it body.  While your hair is wet, there's the smell to contend with, but it goes away completely once your hair is dry.

Truth be told, I cheat the system a little.  About every other week, I'll spread coconut oil all over my hair as a deep conditioner and sleep with it in.  When I wash my hair the next morning, I'll use a conventional, sulfate-free shampoo to make sure I get all of the oil out.  I love Organix Coconut shampoo for this, which you can find here.  It's also a great shampoo to switch to if you aren't sure you want to completely go no 'poo.  Sometimes when I know I'll be going to class with wet hair (I am staunchly against blow dryers for anything but my bangs), I'll use Aussie's 3 Minute Miracle for conditioner rather than the ACV solution, since not using any kind of conditioner on my hair isn't really an option. You know those electricity balls you can put your hands on to make your hair stand up?  If I skip conditioner, my hair does that on it's own.

Other than that, it's pretty basic! Like I said, I don't use a hair dryer except on my bangs, and I try not to cake on the product.  I take a B-complex vitamin that contains biotin and make sure that I drink enough water.  I also trim it myself - not a whole lot, but every couple weeks I'll check and snip off the dead ends so that it's healthy but I don't lose any length.
My hair is healthier than it has been in a long time, and it's growing pretty fast! Mermaid hair is within reach, friends.

around the world braid

by
2 Comments

I have shared about my issues with growing my bangs out and how I'm dealing with it.  At work especially, having my long bangs in my face is really irritating, and I get bored just bobby pinning them back.
The other day I was messing with my hair before work, trying to find a way to put it up that I liked and kept my hair out of my way.  As usual when I start messing with my hair, braiding was one of the first things I tried. This is what I ended up with, and I've worn my hair like this about a dozen times since. It's like a half milkmaid braid - I like it better because it's not all up; there's still a bit around your shoulders.


Start by deep side parting your hair, almost all the way to your ear.  If you care about whether the part is straight, you'll probably want to use a comb, because it's hard to do with just your fingers.  Once you have it parted, start french braiding across your forehead.





Instead of stopping at your ear, keep the french braid going around your head.  Do it pretty tightly to keep it from falling apart - after the braiding is done, you can always go back and rough it up.  I prefer my hairstyles messy, so I always go back and loosen the braids up.  Grab small-ish pieces of hair to add to your braid so that it doesn't get too lumpy around the top.





Eventually you'll want to switch the side of your head you're braiding from to bring the braid around the nape of your neck. Once you get back around, there's always an annoying strand just left hanging there.  I grab it, twist it under the braid  and finish it off by regular braiding the rest of my hair.


(forgive my derpy face here)

This style is great for second or third day hair, or any time you just want it all out of your way.  Plus, it only takes about 5 minutes!