My Curly Hair Journey

My Quest for Curly Hair - "The Transition"

I want to create a sequel of blog posts that document my hair care journey, but more importantly my "transition" back to curly hair. Now I have been straightening the hell out of my hair for many years now,  and I have been regularly getting hair 'texturisers' which is a mild version of a chemical hair relaxer. I was looking at old photos of me with my afro hair from 2015 and I couldn't help but miss the curls, straightening my hair consistently for the past two years has caused SO much damage and breakage, in fact I recently had to have the dreaded "big chop" which strangely didn't result in tears. But I think that was only because I got braids a few days later, I seriously urge you gals with curly hair to think long and hard before you decide to start straightening your hair because I can honestly say that it is a decision I regret so much!

June 2017

As you can probably tell my hair is beyond damaged by this point, it is relatively short now but the "big chop" is still yet to come..

September - December 2017

So these braids took around 5 hours to install, they were installed quite tightly but it didn't actually hurt at all, which is quite rare for braids.

The day after I got my braids, all ready for Tokyo world

A couple of months into having my braids, when they started going all fuzzy at the top, to be fair though they lasted a whole 3 months without unravelling at the bottom and did me well. I think next time I will get them a lot shorter though because they reached my bum and were really hard to maintain being so long!

December 2017 - Now

This photo was taken straight after my braids were installed (in my uni house obvs explains the mess) it took 7 hours!! Yes 7 hours for them to be installed, my hairdresser was really ill that day so she had to keep stopping for breaks which slowed the process down. She did her best to seal the ends with water but she was rushing because I had plans and had to leave my house at a certain time so it wasn't done properly which is kind of annoying as you might be able to see from this picture that they are unravelling a bit at the bottom, so I will have to re-seal these at some point. 

I have wanted ombre braids for ages and honestly love them so much but I have the feeling that my hair won't last as long because the ends are already unravelling, my hair is getting quite scruffy at the top because I don't wrap it up at night (spare no sympathy for me) and I have only had these installed for 11 days. As mentioned above I wanted my braids to be shorter this time but my hairdresser told me that as I had two colours mixed together she couldn't cut it?? Really annoying but I know for next time, ideally I would have liked them shoulder length because its more manageable for washing etc. 

But this is where I am at so far, I have started using the Shea Moisture Coconut & Hibiscus Curl & Shine Shampoo , Shea Moisture Coconut & Hibiscus Curl & Shine Conditioner, alongside Shea Moisture Hibiscus Enhancing Smoothie , now these products are a little on the pricier side especially if you're a student but so far I have started to reap the benefits! When I took my first lot of braids out my hair was still quite straight from the excess amount of texturising but after using this smoothie it has slowly started to restore some of my curls back. I only had 9 days in between braids and bought these products on the 4th day, so I haven't been using them for very long but when I eventually "leave out" my curls I will do a full review on these products

 So here we go, the start of my journey to curly hair (wish me luck guys!) 

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post!

Love Leah xx