Review: Darcy's Botanicals Natural Coils Curling Jelly

I got this as swap from a forum member on British Curlies. She was offering it at a discounted price so I moved in for the kill.  Was it worth it? Read on…

Regular Price: £10.95 for 8oz.

Availability: British curlies and Etsy. Only available online in the UK.

Ingredients shown in picture below: 

Packaging: It comes in a simple white jar with a white screw top. I personally think the packaging was inadequate. Which brings me to my next point.

The Texture: Very liquidy snotty texture, infact so liquidy that I ended up pouring out the jelly into my hands everytime I need some. Otherwise dipping my hands into the jar would have been as useful as dipping my hands into a jar full of water. On that note I must say this. Do not let the watery texture of this jelly fool you. With this stuff a little went a long way for me.

Scent: I didn’t feel like mine smelled of anything. I think I must have got the unscented version. Despite this  I believe I  still got a faint whiff of something that reminded me of paper glue. The faintness I actually liked because it gave my leave-in conditioner olfactory dominance.

Darcy's Botanicals Natural Coils Curly Jelly On my hair..

Pros: 

On applying this to my hair with my leave-in i.e. Hawaiian silky gel activator +castor oil + aloe vera gel mix, it seemed to get absorbed into my hair almost immediately. I liked that it gave a tiny bit of slip. It dried fairly quickly around my ends, but about 3-4hours later it was mostly 80% dry. It did not give me a flash dry effect. There was no crunch, but there was a light hold. I got second day hair with this. On the second day, my hair had about ½ its definition and some hold.

In terms of elongation, it did not offer any of that. My hair shrunk, but stayed in place.

Cons:

Flaking - I noticed some flakiness whiteness around my part section where I may have possibly being a bit heavy handed.

Price - I wish this was £10.99 for 16oz rather than 8oz. If it was I would put this in my staples list.

Repurchasing probability - I liked the light hold and effectiveness of this jelly. But I shall only re-purchase this if it is on sale at a cheaper price. Because I have other stylers which are just as effective and cheaper.

If you are looking for a  styling product with stellar natural ingredients or a stickler for natural ingredients in your hair products .Then I would recommend this product to you.

Style & Go! - The Start of A Damp/Dry Styling Routine??

So I've been feeling a bit under as I've been having some bad bouts of hayfever and not been to the gym this week. I usually go 2-3 times a week and coincide those days with wash and re-styling. Since I usually want to rinse/wash all the sweat off my scalp.
Today I didn't go to the gym and did not feel like washing my 3rd day hair but my hair was frizzing up all over - I guess "medium- hold" Kiss My Face Upper Management Gel can only last so long (review coming by the way).
I suppose another propeller for this action was Taliah, she had convinced me at the Afro Hair & Beauty Show that styled, defined coils were best achievable on dry Type 4 hair.

So I decided to try a quick re-style on damp hair 1st. Why damp and not dry? I simply like to moisturise my hair with water every day. I used this as an opportunity to lightly hydrate Dafro, but not saturate her .

I also wanted to spot test a couple of curl cremes - Trevor Sorbie's original curl cream and Boots pink curl creme. I used a light gel in this case the Aldi Carino purple gel.  I used a light gel because I was basically refreshing over pre-styled hair that still had some gel left over and did not want to over do the gel situation.

Results of styling on damp nearly dry hair.
To date this method of applying gel onto 2nd/3rd nearly dry hair has been great at producing longer lasting excellent definition.  I'm also the type whom likes twists/twist outs on damp/ semi-dry hair because of better elongation.
So the same principle could be applied here.
A winning method for even more defined coils especially in areas usually hard to define. More elongation on day 1 hair. Basically the kind of elongated and bigger hair you get on day 2 is the type you could get on day 1 with this method.
As for the curl cremes.. they didn't do much for me. The Aldi carino purple gel gave a soft hold.

Have you damp or dry styled? What have been your results?
This method is a Keeper. Currently I've taking to re-styling on 2nd day hair for better definition and elongation which lasts the rest of the week for me.