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.

Wash & Go Trials On Afro Coily Kinky Hair 10: Garnier Fructis Survivor Gel & Castor/AVG/Curl activator mix

I applied this to my wet hair with a LI mix of a dab of curl activator, Aloe vera gel & castor oil. My definition was on point with application. I even saw some grouped coils on my crown region which almost never coils/clumps for anything!
But man! When it dried, I was not ready for the CRUNCH!! My hair was HARD! 
In the mornings I would spray a glycerin/oil/water mix to re-shape my hair and it always suprisingly moulded back into place easily. I easily got 5day hair with this and could have easily kept going. The only thing is that my hair just didn't feel nice to touch initially. It felt hard to touch and would not scrunch out easily with just any oil. (After a few days it naturally relented it's hold). After this trial I resigned this gel for use only with very heavy leave-in conditioners or as a finisher.

The Drying Series 1: How To Diffuse Afro Coily Kinky Hair.

Or rather, How I diffuse my hair.
One of the most common complaints of ladies trying to wash, style and go is how long the hair takes to dry. With popular products such as KCCC, Ecostyler gel drying times can take a day and a half to dry.
That need not be the case, unless you prefer to stay away from heat entirely.
I tend to diffuse if I need to be somewhere ASAP or sometimes if I just don't want to be stuck with a damp/wet heat for the most part of the day. In this pic tutorial I was using Queen Helen Curl Shaping Creme, a product heavily composed with humectants. For this reason, I decided to diffuse because I just didn't want to be stuck with a wet-head for most of the day, as experienced with humectant heavy stylers in the past.
I use a simple blow-dryer. The particular brand is Kokou. I picked this up from the local hair shop priced around £20 or so.

It's a hair-dryer, it's supposed to have grease marks!

The diffuser attachment I got from a local Sally's. Priced around £10.
I got a large cup, because I liked the idea of covering a larger surface area, as I felt that would take less time.

Attachment orifice

Separate components

Combined components

There really isn't an exact science but more of a strategy in how I choose to dry.
I dry on the warm setting in each section for about 20 seconds. I start with the crown area and work my way round in a spiral fashion around my head leaving my extremities last.

Warm setting control. Black = Cool, Red = Hot

I start and focus mainly at the crown because that usually takes the longest to dry. I don't linger so much around the extremities/edges, because they usually air-dry the quickest.

Diffuser cup further away on warm

Head bent upside down to show starting area.

Direction I diffuse around my head

Why tip your head upside-down? To create more volume on the top and prevent the flat-head-helmet head look. (No offense if that is what you go for.)
Then I use the cool setting to help close the cuticles and encourage better definition. I bring the cup much closer to my hair mimicking a scrunching method.

Diffuser much closer to 'scrunch' on cool.

               

                                                       Results...

Before diffusing (flash)

        Immediately after diffusing (flash)

  In sunlight afterwards (no flash)

                                              

Staple Hair Products For My Coily, Kinky Type 4 Hair Easily Bought On The Ground (UK)

I was thinking of following up my initial post March favourites, but thought that maybe redundant because most of the products in my March favourites are also in my April Favourites and will most likely be around for the following months. I have a few new additions, so let me know if you would like a more in-depth review if  there isn’t one already on my blog.

 It’s fun to try new products, but it’s important to have those staples you can fall back on when you can’t be bothered to experiment/just don’t have the time, suffered adverse reactions from past product experiments, are just done with product experimenting (a phase I go through from time to time) or simply broke! Lol.

For new naturals, I understand how expensive it can be to find moderately priced products that are easy to get and effective, I've been there. So for that reason, I would like to share my staples that have been chosen for being: 

1. Effective on my hair. (You know the saying, “What works for me and so on”)
2. Possessing moderate - cheap prices.
3. Easy to pick up on the ground. (Yup no shipping, online transactions. Attainable same day!)

So from L-R; 

Schwarzkopf Gliss Oil Nutritive Shampoo Cleans effectively without stripping. Costs £1 and can be found at Poundshop/99p stores.

Tresseme Naturals Silicone Free Conditioner: Crazy Slip, conditions wonderfully leaves my hair soft during and after rinsing. Between £2.50-£5.00. Lowest during BOGOF sales at Superdrug, Boots, ASDA, Sainburys, Tescos.

Andrew Barton SOS Help Me Twice a Week Conditioning Mask: crazy slip. Effective for Dafro as a co-rinse, leave-in (combined with castor oil) and deep-conditioner. Smells like cookies/gingerbread. Found only at ASDA to my current knowledge and some smaller pharmacies with a much smaller range. Buy mine priced 2 for £6/£8 during ASDA offers

Vatika Egg Protein Hair Mask: Does a good job of strengthening my hair, without giving me hard hair. Ok slip. Suds easily so I use as a co-wash and rinse out. Buy from black hair care shops and even spotted at Superdrug. Costs between £3.50 - £4.99.

Ecostyler Pink Gel: Cheap effective styling gel. Clumps, defines, weighs down & holds my coils in place keeping tangles away during WNG styling. Smells like tea-tree oil. Gives me multiple day hair. Gives firm hold, not too hard hold like Olive/Krystal/Argan versions. Can pull back a decent bun with this unlike the Blue Ecostyler. 946ml massive tub costs £2.99 from my local black hair care shop.

Aloe vera Gel: smooths down my cuticles like no other, especially when they are quite bushy. Gives very light soft hold for WNG. Great base staple leave-in when mixed with castor oil. £4.99 from Holland & Barratt. I bag these and stock up during the BOGOF/ Penny sales.

Hawaiian Silky Curl Activator “Dry Look”: always layered with castor oil, makes my coils clump like crazy and keeps my hair moisturised for at least 2 days. Smells like candy. Costs between £3-4 for a 454g tub. Also available at my local black beauty hair shop.

Castor Oil: All round staple for it's Conditioning/Detangling/Sealing properties. I can buy this stuff from the local shop, but since the dude and myself use this from head to toe, I buy it in litres. Can be found at my local hair product shop in 250ml bottles priced at £2.99. Even spotted at some branches of Tescos in Asian food aisle. (I buy my litres off Ebay/Amazon)

Umberto Giannini Scrunching Jelly:  Lovely styling gel for my WNG. Great effective coil clumper. Gives me multiple day hair. Available from boots just under £5 for 200ml tub. A bit pricey so I stock up during 2for1 offers.

Recent additions not in pic: 1/05/2012
*Sally's Salon Services Herbal Complex Conditioner.
*Taliah Waajid's Mist Bodifier Spray as a refresher.

Review: Beautiful Textures Curl Control Defining Pudding

Price: £3.99 at Local BSS

Availability: Online and local shops including Paks.

Packaging: happy bright orange psychedelic looking design which is definitely attention grabbing and Funky! Kudos to the design team!

Marketing speech: For mixed textures, curly wavy, kinky-coily, Frizzy. 
The kinky coily & frizzy part definitely sounded like it was for me.
Ingredients:Aqua, Glycine Soja Oil/Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Argania Spinosa Nut Oil/Argan Oil, Cocos Nucifera Oil/Coconut Oil, Olea Europaea Fruit Oil/Olive Oil, Butyrospermum Parkii Fruit/Shea Butter, Mangifera Indica Seed Butter/Mango Butter, Rosmarinus Officinalis Leaf Extract/Rosemary Extract, Dimethicone, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract/Aloe Vera, Phenyl Trimethicone, Panax Ginseng Root Extract/Ginseng Extract, Glycerin, Polyquaternium 11, Steareth 2, Steareth 20, DMDM Hydantoin, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Sodium Carbomer, PEG 150 Distearate, PEG 12 Dimethicone, CI 15985/Yellow 6, Parfum/Fragrance, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Salicylate, Coumarin, d-Limonene, Hexyl Cinnamal, Lyral, Methyl Ionone Gamma.


Scent: this smells amazing! I don't mind smelling like this all day. That mango, tropical scent just makes me happy. It's for this reason that I have tried to make this work.
Texture: creamy, deceptively seems quite heavy.
On my hair: With all those ingredients, you would wonder how this could possibly go wrong? But it did!As a definer for my Coily hair? This stuff is deficient. It didn't make my coils pop. Infact it was more like a coil wrecker! Because I tried this on wet hair straight after a co-wash when my coils were still popping and BAM Beautiful Textures came and bamboozled them out of the way as soon I smoothed it on. For a wash n go on Coily hair. I wouldn't recommend this. Maybe I will re-visit this in the future for twist or twist-outs. I really really wanted to love this product, but it just wouldn't work for me. Has it worked for you?