Newest Products

ya'll know i'm a product junkie. i know i need to deal with this, but lets put that aside for now and let me tell you about the two newest products in my stash. let me start off by saying that one of these products has a bad "cone" in it. a "cone" is the end part of a certain type of chemical that they put in hair products. good "cones" will help moisturize hair while bad "cones" will basically be like petroleum, they will make your hair feel waxy and smooth, but they will in fact be sealing OUT moisture. but the use of a good clarifying shampoo will take care of that. all the stuff about "cone" i learned from my sister who is a natural hair and natural product person. she's very particular about what she uses in her hair.
but i have an relaxed attitude about most hair care products. i use shampoos with laurel sulphates and all that stuff. i use products and i don't always check the back for the ingredient list. the only thing i always stay away from is mineral oil. i just pretty much listen to how my hair responds to certain products. my hair feels soft and healthy. i don't have a problem with dry hair or split ends or shedding and breaking or any of that. so i use what works well for me. i do make my own daily spritz for my hair that is only full of good stuff, though. i do try to use good things in my hair as well, too!! but i don't stress about whats in a lot of products, especially if my hair responds well to it.

anywho, the first product is: Hydrating Tea Tree Mint Leave-In Moisture Mist by Organix.




this is the one with the good "cone". I've used the shampoos and conditioners from this brand in the past. It was okay, but I didn't feel the results were worth the price of the bottle. The tag line on the bottle says: An ultra hydrating blend of Australian tea tree oils to add moisture and strength, while nourishing your hair with replenishing moisturising milk proteins and micro infused peppermint oils for hydration and balance.

I was going to write out all the ingredients, but i got lazy. needless to say, there are 16 ingredients and some of them are dimethicone copolyol (the good "cone"), Australian tea tree oil, soy milk protein, peppermint oil, glycerin, silk amino complex, and vitamin E. the first ingredient is water, the last is fragrance. i love the smell of tea tree oil. this product has a nice blend of tea tree oil and mint smell and the smell lasts on my hair for days. my home-made spritz i use had tea tree oil in it,too, so i tend to use that more just because i know exactly whats in it, but every few days or so, i like to use this as well for that added minty smell.

the second product is Color Extend by Redkin.


the tag line says: Shine Enrich. Protective shine serum for color treated hair. and then is says Cranberry Oil a little father down on the front of the bottle. this is the product with the bad "cone". this product has 19 ingredients, most of which are chemical compounds that i can't pronounce. cranberry oil is 10th on the list. this product is basically suppose to work like Frizz Ease, but it also has a color protectant in it. i don't care about "smooth fly-away, and impart a mirror-like shine" part, but i do feel that my color is staying vibrant a lot longer than it usually does. red is one of the hardest colors to keep vibrant. it fades and washes out so fast! i really feel like this product is helping with that. and it smells really nice, too.

so there you go. these, along with my home-made daily spritz, are the only things i'm using in my hair. the spritz on a mostly daily basis, these two products on a weekly-ish basis.

Palmrolling With No Product

so, i lost my nappy loc tool and i made a few homemade tool out of paper clips. it worked really well when i had longer hair cause my locs tapered down naturally into smaller tips and i was able to lace that through my homemade tool. i wasn't able to lace the whole tool through my loc like the NappyLoc tool. i just inserted the tip through the new growth, put the tip on my loc end through the tool, and drew the hair through. but with my new haircut, my sister cut my hair straight across which gave me very blunt, fat ends. so i was no longer able to fit the end through the tip of my home made tool. so my answer to this was to just palmroll. i know i wrote a couple of posts ago that i had tried this again and i didn't like the outcome cause i was finding the gel that i used was getting caught in my hair at the point where the loced hair met loose, unloced hair. well, to combat this, i just palmrolled with absolutely NO PRODUCT!!!! after washing, i just did the palmroll method i did a video about in my Tried Palmrolling Again... post. and it held pretty damn well, if i do say so myself!!!!!! definitely as good as when i used the ORS lock and twist gel! and it lasted just as long, too! i was able to go three weeks in between palmrolling before i noticed the twists loosening! AMAZING!!!!!!!! this was the answer to all my problems! but eventually i wanted to latch again cause i get pain when i get too much loose hair.

what was that, you say?

yup, when i have too much loose hair at my scalp, my head gets tender and sore. why? well, i'm not quite sure, but i've hypothesized that its because the hair of each loc doesn't grow in evenly. so, for example, the hair on one side of my loc will grow slower than the other part and my loc will start hanging funny and i feel the stress of that hair being pulled tight as it tries to hang evenly because of the weight of the loc. kinda along the lines of when you get braided extensions in your hair and you try and put that freshly braided hair into a ponytail, and because the hair was braided in one direction,usually down, it hurts to try and pull it up into the ponytail. get what i'm saying? but when i re-latch and there's less loose hair, the tenderness goes away. i don't know what that's about, but there you go! LOL
so, i bought two more NappyLoc tools, one medium sized, which is the size i had before, and one large sized to help deal with the larder ends. i re-latched my hair over three days about a week ago and i'm feeling mighty fine!
as my hair grows in, depending on how lazy i'm feeling, i may palmroll again for a few months before i latch again, or i may just go right to the latching, i don't know. it will depend on my mood. but i'm glad i found out that plain water will work just as well for me!

All Red!

so its been 2 months since i cut my hair and i'm loving it more and more. I've done a couple of new things with my hair since November. I went all red! that's right, from root to tip! before, with my red tips, i bleached my hair first to get it as close to white as possible so the red would really POP!!! but i left like 5 inches of black root for contrast. well this time, i didn't do any bleaching. the L'Oreal Hi-Lift i use already has a lifter in it. so i just ( i say "i" but really it was my sister. she's the one who usually colors my hair! LOL) used the color over my black hair. i didn't expect it to be SOOOOO red! i actually didn't like it at all! i didn't take too many pic with it all red. i though t i looked a bit freaky. but here are a couple of pics of my hair right after i colored it. one is right after the wash, and one is after i retwisted the front.





just for comparison, i'll put in a few pics og how my hair looked before i went all red





see the difference?!?! i was a bit much to take! but i just got my new NappyLoc tools and i just recently re-latched my hair, and i have some black roots! not too much, but enough to make me feel comfortable. isn't that funny. i actually WANT roots to show in my hair! LOL!! anywho, here is the last batch of pics. this was taken two days ago, so this is how my hair is looking now. i know i have a hood on, but you get the idea!