ME, MYSELF AND MY FRO: HOT OIL TREATMENT AND DEEP CONDITIONING

In this post I will let you in on how I do hot oil and deep conditioning treatments on my hair. I did this last weekend and I felt I should share the process here with you guys. Since I did my big chop, I decided to do these treatments once a month, considering my schedule and the length of my hair. However, lately I have been dealing with excessive dryness with my fro, so I plan to change things up a little bit. I plan to do these treatments more often, maybe once in two weeks or so, but we'll see.

To do the treatments, I used the following :

1. The Knot Out Conditioner from the new Dark and Lovely Au Natural Line (Full review in future)

2. Ouchless hair bands (hair band without the metallic joints)

3. Clamps

4. My Oil Blend (this has all sorts of oils that I can't even remember, but it has all the good stuff, trust me ;) )

5. A face towel

6. The Rapid Repair Deep Conditioner by Beautiful Textures

7. A plastic cap

8. And of course my fro, lol!!

Some clamps and ouchless bands for sectioning hair

1. Detangling

I started off with extremely dry tangled, knotted hair, phewww, it wasn't funny. For this reason, I decided to finger detangle before I even think of doing anything to it. Finger detangling simply means to use your fingers to remove the knots and tangles in your hair. To do this, I worked in sections using the Knot Out Conditioner, the clamps (for sectioning) and some ouchless bands (to get detangled hair out of the way). So after the detangling process, I had about ten little puffs in my hair.

Detangled hair sections are in small puffs. The clamps help to section off hair during the process

Puffs after the detangling process :)

Side view of puffs after detangling

2. Hot Oil Treatment

The next thing was to do the hot oil treatment. I basically poured a mixture of oils in the applicator bottle and dipped it in hot water for about twenty minutes. Then I applied the hot oil in my hair, working one section at a time. After working through all the puff sections, I covered my hair with a plastic cap and let the oil sit in my hair for about thirty minutes before washing it off with a shampoo ( I shampoo my hair once a month). The hot oil treatment help to infuse these natural oils into the hair strands thereby adding strength and shine to the strands.

3. Deep Conditioning Treatment

For the deep conditioning treatment, I mixed some oils with the Rapid Repair Deep Conditioner by Beautiful Textures. Next time, I will do this without mixing it with the oils because I didn't quite get the result I was looking for. Anyway, again I applied the mixture in the puffs, one section of puff at a time. Once I was done applying, I put a wet face towel in the micro wave for about twenty seconds. I then placed the hot towel directly on my hair before covering with a plastic cap. I used this hot towel method because I don't have a dryer but I plan to by The Hair Therapy Wrap for more effective deep conditioning treatment. I left the mixture in my hair for about thirty minutes and rinsed it off with cold water. 

The mixture of oils and Rapid Repair Deep Conditioner

Hot towel as a source of heat for deep penetration of needed hair nutrients :)

So that's it folks. Still learning how to pamper my fro, I know there's still room for improvement. Please put your suggestions or questions in the comment box below. Till next time, God bless.

ME, MYSELF AND MY FRO: HOW I CO-WASH MY HAIR (My Version of the Curly Girl Method)

Happy Monday everyone! Hope we all had a great weekend like I did :)  This post forms the fourth postpisode of my series on ME, MYSELF AND MY FRO and I will just show you the steps I take when I co-wash my hair. So HAIR we go, lol!

I start off by rinsing my hair with warm water. The idea is for the warm water to loosen the dirt from my hair strands. This is a very important step if you use the curly girl method. The reason is that the cleansing agent in the Tresemme Nourishing Moisture Conditioner (Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine)  is a light one unlike the common stronger Sodium Laureth Sulfate in regular shampoos. Therefore it is important to rinse hair thoroughly with warm water to loosen the dirt thereby making it easier for the light cleansing agent remove the dirt from the hair strands.

I start off by rinsing my hair with warm water to loosen the dirt, making it easier to cleanse

After rinsing my hair thoroughly warm water, I take a generous amount of conditioner and apply to my hair. I make sure my hair is saturated with conditioner and then I massage it through with my hands. While washing, I don't just focus on massaging the scalp, I also (sort of) pick and wash the hair strands as I go along. I lather up two or more times depending on how dirty my hair feels.

I apply a generous amount of conditioner throughout my entire head of hair

I don't just focus on my scalp, I also wash the hair strands :)

The next thing I do is to detangle my hair. I do this when I lather up the second time. So I basically comb through my hair using a wide tooth comb making sure I get rid of as many tangles as I can with the comb. The reason I use the wide to comb is for ease of glide through the hair strands and also to avoid loss of hair. When I am done detangling my hair, I rinse out some of the conditioner, leaving some of it in my hair. This ensures that some moisture from the conditioner is left in my hair. We all know our natural kinks love moisture ;)

Using my wide tooth comb in hair which is fully saturated with water and conditioner :)

This is how much hair (little to nothing) that get's caught in the comb after gliding through a couple of times. 

This is how much hair I loose after detangling. I lost twice this much throughout the entire wash routine.

Finally I wrap my hair with my T-shirt for about five minutes and then my fro is ready to be moisturized.

Finally, I wrap my hair for about five minutes before I apply my moisturizing products

So these are the simple steps I follow to co-wash my hair. I know they're are a lot of different ways to co-wash your hair. Do you implement the CURLY GIRL method? What steps do you follow to co-wash your hair? Feel free to put your opinion/suggestions in the comment box below.

My Naturals In The City 6 (NITC 6) experience

Hello beautiful people, hope you've all been doing great? So sorry I've been a bit off the radar but I'm back now and I'm going to be making some posts this weekend. Thanks a lot to everyone who has been commenting and asking questions. Please keep them coming no question is stupid, ask anything, lol.

I just wanted to quickly let you know how it all went down at NITC 6 hosted by Natural Nigerian (NN). Let me just take a few lines to appreciate this lady NN. She has really done well with getting the Nigerian Natural Hair Community together. One thing I really like about her is that she is so down to earth and warm despite all she has accomplished. She is really great and I admire her a lot.

Back to my experience, I really had a lot of fun this time. I met a lot of naturals in the city, really. I even met a couple of other bloggers like Ifeyinwa of loveifeyinwa.com and Ekene of African Butterfly. One other significant thing was the interview I had with a local TV station, so you'd probably be seeing me on TV soon, lol. I was also selected to participate in a focus group trying out the new Au Natural line by Dark and Lovely (review in future post). It was really a nice time out on a Saturday for me. If you want to see pictures from this event click here, here and here.

That's all ladies, keep it real till next time.

Cheers,

Acharacha