how i blow dry my curly hair

his one's for all you gals out there with hair similar to mine!  Today's video is all about how I blow dry my curly hair!  I almost always blow dry my hair,

mostly

because I'm too impatient for it to air dry.  If you couldn't tell, I embrace the poof and I love volume.  The bigger the hair, the closer to God, right?  

I've been trying out Living Proof's curl line lately and have been enjoying their products, so I'm sharing my thoughts on some of those, as well as a few products from Original Moxie and Miss Jessie's as well.  I chat for a bit about those products, and than at 6:30 you can watch as I blow dry my hair and see my process (thrilling, I'm sure, but for the sake of thoroughness).

I'm still getting used to this whole video thing, but it's been fun to make "moving pictures" and I'm enjoying the learning curve.  I'm counting on getting less awkward as I get used to it, that's how it works right?  Practice makes perfect, eh?

Anyway, I digress.  Do you curly ladies out there have any favorite products?  Do you use any of the products I mentioned?  Like them/dislike them/meh?  It's a never ending hunt for the perfect product, amirite gals?  #curlyhairproblems

hairstory // going red

s women, our hair plays a huge role in our lives.  Hair styles can define decades,  bad hair can actually put a damper on your whole day, good hair can make you feel like you own the world, finding a hairstylist that understands your vision can be a lifelong quest, finding a magic hair product is like finding the holy grail, we cut and dye our hair after we break up, we chop it off after having a kid.  Our hair is part of our story.  It tells our story with us.  It expresses who we are and who we want to be.  It's with us every day.  It's not vain to admit that hair can feel important.  Hair loss is a huge part of fighting cancer, not because women are vain, but because hair is a part of us.  Sure it's "just hair," but it's the one part of your outfit you live with every day.

I am no different.  My hair has played a huge part of my story, and not because it's, well, huge.  My hair was a curly beast from the get go.  I remember my mom desperately spritzing detangler in it, attempting to get a brush through.  She had straight hair, thick, but straight, and I'm sure she had no idea that brushing through curly hair dry was a battle fought in vain.  I'm sure she thought that good mom's brushed their daughters' hair and so she tried, ever so.  For a long time I wished my hair would be straight and sleek like the popular styles of my adolescence.  I was the "big hair" girl.  A guy in my 8th grade class said I was 90% hair, 10% body (I took this as a complement, and I think he meant it that way).  With no curl mentor, it was a trial and error ordeal figuring out how to have a symbiotic relationship with my hair.  And as I did, my self confidence flourished.  I learned how to work with my curls, to embrace the bigness, and to care for my hair properly (lather, rinse, repeat?  No thanks, only if I want dry, damaged hair all of the time). I can't imagine myself without my big, curly hair now.  I still have the occasional bad hair day, like all of us, but hey, that's what fabulous hats are for, am I right?

Hairstory is about telling the stories of women through their hair.  Each woman's hair is braided with stories.  Stories of tears after bad hair cuts, hours spent crafting perfect prom updos, crazy late night dye jobs, rebellious high school cuts, chopping gum out of hair, playing "hair stylist" with your little sister.

I can't really remember how I became friends with Eleanor and Athena, it might've been on a photoshoot where Athena did my makeup.  As a Tacoma newbie, I was excited to meet and get to know more creative people in my new town and Athena and Eleanor at Embellish salon greeted me with open arms.  I could tell right away they were big thinkers, creative souls, and rad women.  They had an idea for honing their craft through inspired hair "makeovers" and wanted me to be on board, but first they wanted me to experience the process.  So!  I went red with them.  We spent 7 hours in the salon transforming my natural dark brown hair to a "lived in" red.  Usually they would've split the transformation into two salon visits but we figured we'd bang it out in one.

I'm not a salon girl.  Every time I've gone into one, I've felt ignored or misunderstood.  It seemed like no stylist got my curly hair or color visions, and no one could cut my hair worth a damn, so I swore them off.  But I was excited by Eleanor's attentiveness to my ideas and it was awesome to hear her thoughts and ideas as well.  Not only was Eleanor excited for my hair, every stylist in the salon was welcome to come over and chat, offer ideas or thoughts on the process and colors, and it felt like a truly collaborative and inviting environment, which was certainly a departure from the salon atmosphere's I'd previously experienced.  
By the end I was so excited to be a part of other women's hair transformation stories with Eleanor, Athena and Embellish!  With each participant we're doing a little questionnaire, and in keeping with the program, I filled one out myself!

What is your first hair memory?

As a young kid I don’t think I thought much about hair, I was more interested in running around outside getting dirty. I do remember my mom trying to get a brush through it and spritzing detangler to try to help, and I remember crying on the way home from the stylist one time. I don’t even remember what I hated about the cut, it just wasn’t what I wanted (though i’m not sure I even knew what I wanted). 

Describe your mom’s hair and her beliefs 

about yours.

My mom has beautiful, thick, straight natural red hair. I am forever a bit jealous that my brother got the redhead genes instead of me. I was pretty stubborn as a kid, and my mom decided to just let me be me, which meant letting me wear weird outfits and have frizzy, big, uncontrollable hair. I remember her trying to brush out all the tangles, and I think after a while she just gave up. Since she had straight hair, I don’t think she had any point of reference for how to deal with my hair, so I was on my own to figure out what to do with it, which meant I was in my late teens/early 20’s before I developed a healthy relationship with it.

 

What feelings did you have growing up 

about your hair?

It was just so big and unruly and nothing I did seemed to make it look good. There was a lot of poofiness and I didn’t know how to handle it. I just wanted to have straight hair so I could have all the cute hairstyles that were trendy at the time.

I had started embracing my curls later in high school. I wanted crazy curly big hair for my senior prom, so I went to the salon with my hair still wet after showering, figuring they’d use my natural curl and just pump it up. Nope. They straightened my hair and then curled it with a curling iron. It was absolutely nothing like I wanted and I was pretty enraged about it. One of many reasons I’ve stopped going to hair salons altogether. 

In many ways salons, as well as pop culture, made me feel like there was something wrong with me because of my curly hair. I couldn’t get the styles that all the celebrities had and when I went to the salon my hair was treated like it was straight and thin. Even when I finally had figured out what kind of cut worked well on my hair and told the stylist exactly what kind of cut I wanted, they still didn’t do it. My relationship with hair was tumultuous throughout my adolescence and teen years, obviously.

What were the trends in hair when you 

were growing up? 

It was the 90’s so Jennifer Aniston’s famous “Rachel” hair was all the rage. Of course never in a million years will my hair ever be anything close to Rachel hair, so that was pretty frustrating. 

What music were you into at 11 years old? 

I’m not sure about 11, but in Jr High I was really into Jewel and Lisa Loeb. I was starting to feel all the boy craziness and heartache that comes with crushing on boys who don’t like you back, so Jewel’s “Foolish Games” was basically my anthem.

What are some likes? Dislikes? 

I like: art, photography, Winnebagos, travel, Alaska, family, writing, avocados, creating with my hands. I dislike: politics, injustice, domestic violence, bullying.

Curly hair symbolizes…

Bold, power, wild, untamable.

Short hair symbolizes…

Independence, edginess, anti-establishment, punk.

Have you ever cut your own hair? anyone 

else’s?

I actually exclusively cut my own hair. I haven’t had a stylist cut my hair in years. After years of having stylists with no understanding of curly hair cut my hair as if it were straight hair, I realized I could do a better job of cutting my own hair, since I understood intimately how it behaves.  I’ve cut my brother’s hair before.

Have you ever done anything really crazy 

or dumb to your own hair?

In college I dyed a streak of my hair rainbow colors, and then in 2011 I dyed my hair two tone pink and teal. My hair was pretty sad after I bleached it, so I suppose that counts as doing something dumb, but it was fun while it lasted!

I loved being a redhead, but I think I'm too addicted to change to stay with one color for too long!  I'm already brainstorming my next change!  I'm on my way back to black, but for now I'm rocking the teal and I think I have one more change before I go dark!

I'll be sharing a bit more of my hairstory with Embellish, as well as some other fabulous ladies' transformations here on the blog in the future, so stay tuned!
salon photos of me by Athena Hitson

don't stop believin'

eah, teal.  I'd been getting super antsy about my hair color and after doing some test runs in photoshop to decide which color I liked best, I decided to go back to green!  My friend Bailey is kind of to blame, she always has the best hair colors (it's currently a steel grey which. is. awesome.).  If you've been around the blog for a long time, like really long, you might remember Bailey from the fashion shoot I did for my grad school portfolio.  I keep begging her to start a blog because her style is ON POINT.  I kind of want to steal every outfit she posts on Instagram.  Anyway, before she dyed her hair grey it was black-to-green ombre and I sorta fell in love.  Eleanor at Embellish, who did my red, took me green.  Originally I had planned to go from natural red, to "Ariel" red, to purple, to green, but I decided to just skip straight to green.  I kinda like how perfect it is for the halloween season! I was thinking of being Gamora for Halloween, but after cosplaying Gamora for BurlyCon I realized what a pain in the ass it was to paint yourself green, so I think instead I'll do Wonder Woman.  I got this amazing Wonder Woman onesie from Booty and the Geek at BurlyCon, so I'll probably just make myself a gold headband, put on my black wig and some tall boots and call it good.  Do you have any Halloween costume plans for this weekend?  

  top + jeans/courtesy of modcloth :: boots(similar)/thrifted necklace/handmade :: jacket(similar)/modcloth

5 ways to style a headband

arlier this month Salvage and Stone asked me if I'd be interested in styling some of their headbands, and I thought it'd be a fun opportunity to come up with a few different ways to wear a headband!  Since my hair is curly, all of these styles are done with curly hair, but you can definitely still work them with straight hair, or you can curl your hair prior to styling if you want a similar look but have straight hair.  
You can find the two headbands I'm wearing in this post here and here! THE HALF WRAP


 

This is a super quick and easy style.  With your hair down, just pull the headband down over your hair and then tuck half your hair into the headband, leaving the bottom half down.  Pull the hair at your crown slightly out of the headband to give it more volume.  For a full version of this, where you wrap all your hair into the headband, click here!  I left some hair out in the front, but you can also try wrapping you hair all the way from the front to the back.  

THE EXTRA-LONG PONY


 

You may have seen this extra-long pony trick bopping around the interwebs.  Separate your hair into two parts, top and bottom.  Make a half pony with the top half, clip it out of the way, and then pull the bottom half into a low pony, and then let the top half out of the clip.  Pull your headband over and you're done!  You might have to play around with the ponies to get them to integrate.  It's a fun way to make your hair look super long!

THE SIDE FLIP


 

For this style, take a very deep side part, all the way to your ear, and flip your hair over to one side.  Pull the headband over your hair.  You can leave your hair out, like I have here, or you can do a side pony or side braid with this style!

 THE BARDOT BUMP


 

Pull your hair into a half pony and clip it up.  Pull the headband on over the hair you've clipped up, then release the clip. To get extra bump volume, tease the hair at your crown.  Done!

THE CLIP BOUFFANT


 
Pull the headband over all your hair.  Take your hair in a pony and get some volume in the top (you might need to tease your hair to get the desired volume).  Take the end of the pony and twist it into a french twist-esque style and then clip the hair to secure.  Use bobby pins to secure any wonky spots or stray hairs.  

natural curl routine

A couple months ago I was contacted by Original Moxie to see if I was interested in trying their hair products.  I've had a pretty natural hair routine for quite a while, so I was excited to see a company making natural products specifically designed for curly hair.  They use essential oils in their products too, which obviously was exciting as I was already adding Cedarwood essential oil to my conditioner to help with hair growth. I've been trying to be extra nice to my hair these days because I lost a ton of volume from being on birth control, and I think some of my curl as well.  As silly as it sounds, I have a ton of my identity wrapped up in my big hair, so losing some of that has been frustrating.  My hair stopped falling out once I stopped the pill, but about two weeks ago it started coming out in droves.  It was like I was 14 all over again, pulling handfuls of hair out when I'd rake my fingers through my hair.  I'd like to kindly recommend to my hormones that they stop messing with my hair.  My hair feels about half as thick as it did 2 - 3 years ago, so hopefully things will stop freaking out on the hormone front. Part of me hates that I have so much of my identity tied up in my big hair.  It never occurred to me that I could lose it.  I've always had big curly hair.  In a way it's a security blanket.  When I cut my hair off a couple years ago I felt so not myself, I couldn't wait for it to be long and big again.  It took so many years of fighting the big poofy hair as a kid and teen that now that I'm finally in love with it, it's hard to deal with having it just fall out.  Boo hiss, hormones.  I've been doing all I can to keep my hair happy, so I was excited to try some natural products that are made for curly girls.
These three products are my standard shower routine products.  I've been avoiding regular shampoos for quite a while now, since shampoo strips hair of its natural oils, so I usually only wash with shampoo on occasion, but I was interested in seeing how the no-foam shampoo worked.  It doesn't lather at all (as you can probably assume from the name), so it's a bit harder to work it through the hair, but it definitely doesn't make my hair feel stripped at all.  In the past when I've used other normal shampoos my hair feels so dry and stripped out after I shampoo, and I feel like I have to condition like crazy to get it back to feeling right.  Right now I'm kind of going half and half with the no-poo thing.  For days when I have lots of product in my hair I like to have a little help getting that gunk out, so the Get Clean! no foam shampoo is nice.

I always always always always condition.  Mostly because I can't get a brush through my hair any other time than when there is conditioner.  I like to put conditioner on and let it hang out while I shave, then brush the tangles out of my hair and rinse.  I usually like using their Intense Quench conditioner, but when I don't feel like I need a ton of conditioning power I use the Featherweight conditioner, which is a lot lighter.  Their conditioners aren't quite as "slippery" as other conditioners I've used, which is because they use butters, oils, and other nutrients to condition, rather than chemicals which give that slippery feel.  It makes it slightly more difficult to comb tangles out, but I much prefer having my hair conditioned naturally than having a bunch of weird chemicals that only make my hair feel slippery, not actually condition it.  I've also been preferring the Intense Quench because my hair is currently colored, so I like to give it as much conditioning love as possible to keep it happy. After I get out of the shower I spritz a bit of Twist Mist in my hair and diffuse to dry.  The other day I forgot that this is 100% natural oil and my brain decided to spray it on my hair like it was hair spray and holy cow my hair was SO oily.  Whoops!  It's amazing for getting a bit of shine, but because it's all oil, it's definitely better used in moderation.  
These are a few products I use, but not all the time.  I actually love the Sweet Poof spray.  It's perfect for the 2nd or 3rd day when the curls have been slept on and are a little flat and sad.  I actually decided to test it to see if it really did volumize, by using it on one side of my head and not the other and it was really funny how lopsided I looked.  Definitely works to boost curls up and re-volumize.   Another couple products I occasionally use before blow drying are the Oasis moisture gel and the Everyday Leave-in conditioner.  The leave in conditioner is also nice for applying to second-day hair to give it a little boost, and the Oasis moisture gel is another great one to apply before I blow dry to give my curls some buoyancy.  
These two products I've only used a little bit.  I really like the Lux Locks for adding some shine to the ends of my curls.  I used the Emollience Pre-Treatment overnight (they recommend applying overnight or at least 15 minutes before washing), and it took me two showers to get it out of my hair, haha.  Super penetrating moisture.  I think next time I do it I'll just do it for 15 minutes instead of overnight.  I liked it though!  I'm always on the lookout for good deep treatments to occasionally give my hair some love.  These are the only products I've been using for the past couple months, and it's been nice to have products that are designed to work together and on my specific hair type.  Before that I was just using random stuff I found at the health food store, and old tressemme products I've had for about 8 years.   If you have any questions about my hair routine that I forgot or skipped, let me know and I'll try to answer them in the comments! 
Original Moxie is celebrating Earth Day this weekend with a sale, so you can get 30% off any order over $30 using the code EDAYOM14.  I'm also doing a fun giveaway next week with Original Moxie, too, so stay tuned!
This post is sponsored by Original Moxie and I received products to try and use. All opinions and thoughts are my own. Thanks for supporting those companies which keep Delightfully Tacky alive and kicking.