Before Meets After - Silk Press On Natural Hair.

One of the beauties of natural hair lies in the fact that you are able to switch up styles and the look of your texture depending on your mood.

 I've had a couple of requests in the last month for silk presses and I happily obliged each one especially because they typically don't last too long in the high humidity and heat of Lagos; however, during the Harmattan season, there was less moisture in the air and so the probability of the hair staying straighter longer was higher.

When you want to straighten your hair, it is imperative you get some sort of protein condition prior to the use of heat appliances. This is because using direct heat (especially the flat iron) will compromise the integrity of the hair structure and since we know that hair is made up of Keratin (protein), fortifying it first before applying heat will lower the risks of attendant heat damage.

Simple Heatless Stretching For My Wild And Free Afro.

Like every naturalista, I like to have my hair stretched out now and again but would rather do it without any direct heat. I've tried a number of heatless methods and so far, the best method has been threading. The thing with threading though is that it takes a bit of time and my arms start to ache and I start to get cranky!

I was watching a YouTube video from 'TheChicNatural' and I saw her do something which seemed so easy and effective and I was determined to try it out! In her video, she washes, conditions and then puts her hair into 4 ponytails, twists them and then pins each twist across her hair in an opposite direction so the hair stretches while it dries.

I tried it the first time a couple of washes ago and I loved it!! I initially did what she did which was use bands to hold the ponytails tight at the base but because my strands are so fine and the hair in my crown is very coarse and dry, I noticed I had some tenderness there and breakage! Err no that was not going to be happening!

So I decided to increase my portions to about 8 and instead of using a band to get the base stretched, I would braid the base and then twist the rest. Another trick to getting the most out of this is not to use too much product in the hair while it is still damp and to make sure the hair is THOROUGHLY detangled.