Wash Day: Twist Take Down

New growth after 4 weeks

By the time I took my twists down, I was 12 weeks post relaxer. Because of the fact that I was so lazy about taking care of them while I had them in, I really didn't know what to expect from my hair. Yet, I didn't experience a lot of breakage or anything along those lines so I was pleased.

{1} After removing all of the twists, I coated my braids with PM Tea Tree Moisturizing conditioner and my garlic oil mix. I put on a plastic cap, scarf and left it on overnight.

{2} When I took the braids out my hair felt great. I finger detangled, but some how forgot to fully detangle before shampooing. Always a mistake after protective styling!

{3} Sectioned my hair into 4 and shampooed with ORS Creamy Aloe three times. My hair wasn't feeling the best at this point. I could tell detangling was not going to be good.

{4} Towel wrapped my hair to soak up excess water.

{5} Applied L'oreal Damage Erasing Balm and Aubrey Organics Replenishing conditioner for several hours under a plastic cap.

{6}Rinsed with cool water followed by an ACV rinse. I did not rinse this out of my hair. I let it sit for a few minutes before squeezing out the excess. My hair was back to feeling pretty good, but still tangled.

{7}Towel wrapped my hair to soak up the excess liquid.

{8} Section by section, I detangled and applied my leave-ins (Elasta QP H2, Shea Moisture Reconstructing conditioner and safflower oil). Detangling took about 45 minutes. It was definitely due to not thoroughly removing my shed hair in the beginning. A lesson I shouldn't have had to repeat. It could have been a lot worse though.

{9}Put some Eco-styler gel on my edges, brushed them smooth and put on a scarf. Let my hair continue to air dry.



So, initially my hair felt great. But the more my hair dried, the more the moisturized feeling disappeared, which left my hair feeling so dry and crunchy. Ugh. I knew I was going to be co-washing pretty quickly. I moisturized it again to give myself a day before I had to wash it. I think protective styling spoiled me because I really was not thinking this wash day. I didn't detangle properly. I didn't think about how far into my stretch I was and how that changes things, i.e. I should've washed in braids and used more moisturizing products. Thankfully, my mistakes didn't leave me with any damage and I already know how to fix my dry hair issue.

10 comments 12 weeks post, crochet braids, senagalese twists, taking out crochet braids, wash day

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Hair {& Blog} Update

First things first: I hit my 4 week goal for my protective styling!! *cheers!* It wasn't even as hard as I thought it was going to be. I wanted to take them out at after about two weeks because I had so much new growth, but it was easy once I got over that. I probably could have kept them in for a couple more weeks if it weren't for all the new growth. New growth is (almost) always the reason I want to take these styles out early. That, plus the fact that I get bored with my hair quickly. I think I had half an inch after two weeks. No exaggeration. Check the pic! The thing I always worry about with a lot of new growth is too much shed hair causing issues. So, I re-twisted the perimeter to make myself feel better.

I have to admit... I was a complete slacker when it came to my hair this past month or so. I feel like I didn't moisturize as often as I should have. And... I did not wash my hair at all for the whole time I had in my twists ya'll! Lol I should be ashamed huh?! I didn't even use my dry shampoo! I am such a champion of keeping your scalp clean, but umm... yea it just didn't work out this time. Surprisingly, my scalp did not protest AT ALL so I dont actually feel too bad about it. Last week was the first time it started bothering me and itching. By then, it was time to take them out anyway. 

Even though I didn't do the best job taking care of my hair in the twists, I am happy to report that my ends are still in good shape. My current goal is to keep my ends up by protective styling. I joined the 30 days without Split Ends challenge with Jeni of JustGrowAlready and Divachyk of Relaxed Thairapy and am so glad it was a success despite my bad behavior :)

Because my hair seems to grow like weeds when I'm protective styling, I'm really motivated to try to keep it up for the rest of this year. I still find it unbelievable how much my cornrows grow out in such short periods of time when I have in crochet braids. In the picture below, it is hard to see where the braids even begin! You can check here for what they looked like originally. This personal protective styling challenge is working out well because I currently do not feel like being patient or devoting the time it takes to do my hair like I usually enjoy. Next up is box braids. They will probably be done crochet style as well just because it's so much faster and easier for me. I'm going to wait about a week before installing them just to give my hair a little rest.

New growth after a couple weeks

Last, but certainly not least, my beloved Macbook Pro shut down on me!! I literally turned it off one day and it refused to boot back up. Major sadface. I still don't know if it can be revived, but the blog was way too quiet last month. I don't know how much longer I'll be without it at this point so, I guess for now I need to try to master blogging from my iPad?  If any of you ladies know of some great apps for this, I'd love to hear your suggestions.

10 comments crochet braids, random hair talk, senagalese twists, update

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My Senagalese Twists/Crochet Braids

I finished my twists! I LOVE them, too. I'm so surprised at how they turned out since it was my first time doing them. I keep getting asked where I get my hair done as if it were done professionally, which makes me feel really good. Yay! 

I am so indecisive ya'll. I tried two other ways, got half of my head finished, and then completely took it out before I settled on this way of doing it. Originally, I was going to do single twists all over my head, but I was not really feeling the way it was turning out so I decided to leave the perimeter of my hair that way and do the middle crochet style. It would have all been done in one day if it wasn't for me running out of hair. Fortunately, it did not end up taking as long as I thought it would.

I used the same kind of hair I did for my last set of crochet braids, Sensationnel X-Pression Braiding Hair. I had 3 packs of 1B and a little more than a pack of 1B/33 total. I cut the hair in half. My braiding pattern was simple, but not straight back. I wanted it at a slight angle so the twists would hang the way I wanted. I did not think about combining the braids near the bottom until it was too late - probably because I had already been in my hair for too long. So I just flipped each end up and sewed it on top of the braid.

When crocheting the hair in, I would pull half of the hair to the other side of the braid and tie it instead of pulling all of the hair through the loop and knotting it. I hope that makes sense. This technique allows the hair to completely surround the braid and eliminates the "knotty" look that a lot of ladies find unattractive with crochet braids. You can see in the picture about how the twists covered up the braids as I began filling them in the top section. 

Once I was done twisting a section, I would wrap the ends around a flexi-rod to help keep the twists tight until I was ready to seal them and because I wanted my ends to be curly. This also made sealing them really easy. When I was done, I just dipped each rod in extremely hot water, leaving it for a couple minutes. After soaking up most of the excess water with a towel, I let my hair air-dry overnight with the rods. I had great results in the morning. The curls, of course, loosened up pretty quickly. So the longest lengths are grazing my waist. I didn't think I would like it that long, but I actually do. It'll be pretty versatile to style, too.

My goal is to leave this style in for a month. Just four weeks! It shouldn't be as hard as it is for me to leave a style in for just a month. I can always find a seemingly good reason to take them out early. I really want to be very mindful of protecting my ends in hopes that it will help me stop feeling like my hair "needs" to be trimmed. Hopefully, that will be enough motivation.

10 comments crochet braids, protective styles, senagalese twists

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