New Wavy, can't get my hair to look good, please help
Dawn.Holder
Registered Users Posts: 6
in Hair Type 2
Hi everyone,
I've been stalking here for about 2 months. I decided to try CG as I wanted to help bring out whatever natural texture my hair had and to get away from using heat as my hair does have damage from heat/chemicals.
I've learned a lot from the forums here and tried a lot of the techniques and have a large bin full of products at home but I'm really struggling with making my hair look good; at least to the point where I can walk out of the house without wearing a hat. At this point I'm getting very frustrated and leaning towards going back to the curling iron!
I've tried the squish and condish and spritz and condish and putting product in my hair while it's soaking wet, then cover in a microfiber towel (plopping does nothing for me) then pixie diffuse then sotc. I get very nice waves but they look too piecey and producty. I'm almost wondering if my hair color contributes to it not looking good? I'm growing out an ombre and the look just is not attractive.
I've also tried putting product in after the shower, and after the microfiber towel (which is great; I can definitely tell a huge difference between this and a regular terrycloth towel!) and then either air drying or pixie diffusing and then I get thinner waves but still very separated looking and very much like I'm a refugee from the 80's!
I had my hair cut last week by my regular hairdresser and explained to her that I was trying to embrace my natural texture but she still cut my hair as if it was straight and did a round brush blow dry; also she used freaking thinning shears!!!!!!! so now my fine hair looks thinner on the sides.
I'm not sure where to go from here, I guess what I'm looking for is any advice on how to get my hair to look less piecey and deal with frizz?
Thanks so much!
Currently using:
Deva Curl no poo/low poo (alternating due to hard water)
Suave naturals coconut condish
AG recoil, Deva Curl Arcangel gel
Carol's Daughter sacred tiare serum on ends after sotc
I did try the gelatin protein treatment but it didn't seem to do much other than straighten my waves.
My hair is 2A, fine, med-high porosity and medium density
I've been stalking here for about 2 months. I decided to try CG as I wanted to help bring out whatever natural texture my hair had and to get away from using heat as my hair does have damage from heat/chemicals.
I've learned a lot from the forums here and tried a lot of the techniques and have a large bin full of products at home but I'm really struggling with making my hair look good; at least to the point where I can walk out of the house without wearing a hat. At this point I'm getting very frustrated and leaning towards going back to the curling iron!
I've tried the squish and condish and spritz and condish and putting product in my hair while it's soaking wet, then cover in a microfiber towel (plopping does nothing for me) then pixie diffuse then sotc. I get very nice waves but they look too piecey and producty. I'm almost wondering if my hair color contributes to it not looking good? I'm growing out an ombre and the look just is not attractive.
I've also tried putting product in after the shower, and after the microfiber towel (which is great; I can definitely tell a huge difference between this and a regular terrycloth towel!) and then either air drying or pixie diffusing and then I get thinner waves but still very separated looking and very much like I'm a refugee from the 80's!
I had my hair cut last week by my regular hairdresser and explained to her that I was trying to embrace my natural texture but she still cut my hair as if it was straight and did a round brush blow dry; also she used freaking thinning shears!!!!!!! so now my fine hair looks thinner on the sides.
I'm not sure where to go from here, I guess what I'm looking for is any advice on how to get my hair to look less piecey and deal with frizz?
Thanks so much!
Currently using:
Deva Curl no poo/low poo (alternating due to hard water)
Suave naturals coconut condish
AG recoil, Deva Curl Arcangel gel
Carol's Daughter sacred tiare serum on ends after sotc
I did try the gelatin protein treatment but it didn't seem to do much other than straighten my waves.
My hair is 2A, fine, med-high porosity and medium density
0
Comments
Yesterday the products I used were KCKT, SM Fruit Fusion Mousse and KCCC (this also has reduced the 80's look but think I will only be able to use it in the winter). It took forever to diffuse too with all the extra moisture but even got great second day hair out of it too.
If your hair is stringy and greasy, you might be reacting to something in the products you are using. Some people find that their hair reacts to glycerin this way (some people's hair is very sensitive to glycerin). If you have some glycerin-free products to try, I would use those instead and see if anything improves. (Note: Glycerin is usually OK in any rinse-out products, like shampoo and regular conditioner, but it is more of a problem in products that stay in the hair, like leave-in conditioners and stylers.)
I also find that scrunching too much once my hair is dry causes it to frizz and lose clumps. I try to hold each section of hair in my towel for several seconds before moving on to the next part rather than just scrunch randomly and haphazardly all over my head. If you see places where your hair is not clumping nice once you are out of the shower, you can add additional leave-in to those places, or else you can add more water (the latter is kind of like the Super Soaker method, but you don't have to do it all over your head, just where you are seeing you need more clumps).
RO: IN Harmonic
LI: CJ Beauticurls; Jessicurl (JC) Gelebration Spray
DC: JC Deep Conditioning Treatment; Weleda Rosemary Conditioning Oil
Stylers: JC Confident Coils; IN Volumizing Spray; IN Perfect Hold Hairspray; John Masters Sea Mist; Bumble Bb. Gel; Kenra Firm-Hold Gel; Sevi Blue Yarrow Sea Salt Spray
Low-porosity 2a/b baby-fine hair
Here's what I've come up with so far. This is different from anything I've seen other people describing but it's the only thing that's worked for me. Super soaker didn't work, or else I was doing it wrong. I had such high hopes for that, too
So I'm in the shower. I detangle my hair, then flip it upside down. Then I pull the back portion back so it's falling down my back again. So half my hair is covering my face and the other half is down like normal, if that makes sense. You can keep all of it forward if you want though. This just helps me separate everything more easily.
So here's the important part. I run my fingers or a shower comb through my hair under the shower until it separates into clumps. I then move my head out from under the water. I smooth each clump down so no stray hairs are escaping and there are no tangles. I run a small amount of conditioner over each clump to kind of stick it together. Then I scrunch some of the water out (but not all!) very gently without disturbing the clumps. You could scrunch clump by clump of you have to. At this point each clump is forming a nice corkscrew shape. I run leave in over it even more gently so as not to pull it out. I get out of the shower and apply other products by smoothing them over these clumps and then scrunching them in. Diffuse, SOTC, done.
Sometimes dye/bleach can screw up the way our hair responds to products in terms of porosity but even then many people have varying porosity throughout their natural hair anyway... So it shouldn't be a problem.
My hair is too fine for any kind of scrunching and I have more wave and curl now by leaving it alone than I did with any gel, diffuse, scrunch, etc method. Just my personal experience for my own hair... Everyone is different and you'll have to play around with it... And the CG method takes a looooong time to figure out and the hair also can take quite a long time to adjust. Good luck.
2b/2c - f - iii - low porosity - normal elasticity
Holy Grail: Matrix Biolage Cleansing Conditioner for Curly Hair
I rotate through the rest of my products depending on weather and etc but usually don't need them
I try not to use products tested on animals if I can help it.
Link: Updated hair picture January 2017
Thanks to you also Mei, it is taking time to figure this out; sometimes I wonder if I'm making it harder than it needs to be and one day I'll discover that I didn't need to try quite so hard! You have great waves without using product!
If you need any hair ideas, I have a video where I talk about my go to hairstyles for my wavy hair. www.youtube.com/heyjaybay93
Hey! Thank you so much! I forgot to subscribe to this thread and never came back to check for replies. My hair is having a winter identity crisis at the moment, but I really appreciate the compliment! I have some product in my hair in that picture. I think a curl enhancing cream and mousse.
Back to your hair, though. I do find that if you have a weaker wave pattern you have to be super gentle with it and basically tell your hair where you want it to go. Otherwise it tends to get wonky. I actually made a gif of how I put products in.
b9ZVgK.gif (400x224)
It's also on my new blog (ahem shamelessselfpromotion) https://allthewave.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/how-i-learned-to-love-my-poofy-hair/
I think I need to grow out the bleached parts, get my hair healthy. I've resolved not to use the curling iron and it's been two weeks! I use the old fashioned sponge rollers to give my hair curl. On the week-ends I experiment with products and methods; hopefully one of these days my hair will start looking better, but at least it's getting healthier.