HOW TO FINGER DETANGLE: FINGER DETANGLING 101 FOR AFRO COILY KINKY HAIR

I've been finger-detangling my hair almost exclusively for almost 2 years now. Matted roots? No. Time-consuming, I think not.  I do it regularly and love it.

How I finger detangle:

1.) I part my hair into 4/6 sections.

2.) Dampen or wet my hair with water and soak it in conditioner/oil/both. (Recently I've also taken to adding a tblspn of ACV to approximately 250ml of conditioner to calm down frayed cuticles)

3.) Then I position my head under the shower stream. The shower does a wonderful job of helping me push/flush most of the shed hair out. I don’t have a problem with matting, because I work my way upwards from ends to roots. Below is a pictorial of what I simply do. 

                                                      FINGER DETANGLING 101.

The Clap: Self-explanatory. This is a great smoothing method and also a quick means of gently pulling out shed hairs freely hanging within the other strands. I gently pull on the ends between my palms and work my way up. During lazy mid-week co-rinses I simply use this method, working with the gravitational push of the shower stream

The Separate: I believe is more popular and common. Better on dry/damp hair hair than wet hair. Here you piece apart the hair strands until you come across knots in between. When a knot is spotted you focus on the gently untangling that knot with some extra oil/detangler/slippy conditioner. Personally I don't do this too often as it really does take the longest time for me.

Here is another Type 4 Coily head finger-detangling with a virtually identical method and very similar hair texture to mine. - Earthy Delight.
                             


The Half-Rake: termed half by myself because I don't rake entirely through a section. I use my other hand to provide some tensile strength to my fragile strands and use the other to gently rake through starting from the bottom and working my way up, then switch to work on the other unraked side (Does that make sense). Obviously the other hand proves to be redundant as soon as I get closer to my scalp.

The Claw: I use this to gently pull out shed hair from the ends. Holding onto a section with my other hand for additional tensile strength and less strain on my fragile hair strands. I also use a similar method to fluff out my hair, with the exception of the other gripping hand when re-shaping 2nd day hair.

                     

After all that. Below is the end-result. 

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'Minging' looking shed hair.

The benefits for me and finger-detangling have been:

• A reduction in frayed ends, my ends looked thicker.
• A reduction in the number of  broken shorter strands I would see after each detangling session. 
• A much  better realization and understanding of her fragility and reactions to products. (
I can easily 'feel' how Dafro reacts to certain products as I use them). 
• General ease and simplicity in this method. It’s tremendously much easier to handle my hair, I don’t dread washing it - infact I look forward to it. It's another major reason why I am able to rock the wng style with ease.

So I guess finger-detangling/finger-combing works for me ; /

If you finger-detangle what technique works for you?

Product Review: Komaza Califia Styling Pudding, 1st Impression.

This pudding promises to define curls and eliminate shrinkage with dryness so I was intrigued, as I noticed that quite a few reviews by type 4 coily-heads only had good things to say about this product.I bagged this through a cross-Atlantic swap on a hair forum at a good price. Yes! :D

Price: £27.95 for 16oz/ £16.50 for 8oz at British Curlies.
Ingredients: Distilled Water, Shea Butter, Aloe Butter, Cocoa Butter, Sunflower Oil Dipalmitoylethyldimonium Chloride (A derivitive of Palm Oil) aloe vera, hydrolyzed collagen, acrylates, alkyl acrylates, Sodium Benzoate,Vegetarian Fragrance, Potassium Sorbate, Polysorbate 20, Cinnamom Cassia, vegetarian fragrance.

Smell: reminds me of Toffee.

Texture: definitely like pudding that one would eat. Or a lighter "nutella" It took a lot of resolve not to take a tiny bit and taste it! Smooth and very creamy.

On my hair: I think this product delivered. I used a light leave -in conditioner (TIGI love, peace etc) initially as I wanted to see what the pudding would mostly do by itself. Application was very smooth. Dafro seemed to gobble it right up. I smoothed it on from the roots onwards sparingly. Taking about an index fingers worth of product each time and applying to 0.5 inch thick sections.I say it absorbed very readily because by the time I applied the product from my roots to about half my length the product was gone. So I would scoop out more product and apply to the remaining half down to my ends. I wasn't too crazy about seeing brown marks on my towel. Where I had wiped my hands during application.

Pros: It elongated my coils and they almost dried looking the same way they did when wet.My "bangs" were not stiff but compliant and fluffy without being too frizzy?  I had a lot of volume on day 1 hair?! Smells really nice and seems to apply sooo smoothly!

Cons:  Towards the end of the day I still noticed, lighter brown patches on my hair. Maybe I hadn't applied it sparingly enough or the product just didn't dissolve as readily as I initially thought. Delivers no manner of shine/sheen/glint/sparkle. Nothing.

Now on day 2, I became really disappointed with this product. One, my hair felt soooo dry!! Two, All manner of little definition I got on day 1 was gone. My hair was a straight up Fro. (I don't have a problem with afros for aesthetic reasons but have a problem with them more for maintenance reasons. Frizzy coils = more tangles.)
                                                                                           



The bottom line for this product on my hair is that it didn't really define my coils, but almost eliminated shrinkage and kept the moisture in for a day only.


I think this is one product I would reserve for days when I want my wash & go to look very controlled but not too obvious. At least I know I would get a consistent result by the end of the day with this. i.e. leave it to dry with the assurance that Dafro would stay mostly controlled through the course of the day.With that said, I would not expect it to last past day 1 on it's own.
I am in the middle of the road with this product and nearly gave it away,but have decided to try it with AVG/castor oil mix and my beloved curl activator at a later date. So stay tuned... 
If you have any tips for making this pudding work, do drop them in the comments box.

Product Review & Rave: Umberto Giannini Flirty Curls Scrunching Jelly

What? Umberto Giannini Flirty Curls Scrunching Jelly Works on Coily Type 4 Hair?! No way!

Man.. I dunno why I'm even sharing this. As I'm at risk of having entire shelves cleared out completely.  Please ladies, if this works for you as it has for me, do leave some for me. Pretty please.

                                         If those puss in boots eyes don't work. Nothing will!

What brought this to my attention was how revered this jelly was by quite a number of looser curlies. You only had to go on Boots website to see the vast number of reviews to understand that this had cult classic status. Curiosity got the best of me, as I started to notice that I shared a mutual love for certain conditioners with some of these looser curlies on a hair forum I frequent :p. So I felt, why the heck not. This just goes to show that hair type alone is really not a sole indicator of how efficient a product may be on your hair.
When I used to see this jelly on the shelf I would dismiss it for several reasons:
 1.) I didn't think it was thick enough for my hair.
 2.) The puny 200ml pink tube looked like something that would only be enough for half of my head and 3.) Priced at almost £5, for just 200ml, there was no way I was even going to go there.
That was until I meandered into Boots one day, while the 3 for 2 on hair care offer was on. That was it. I had quite a few quid on my advantage card so I was ready for a gamble. That blasted cute bright pink tube had me finally.

Marketing speech
"Long Lasting curl creator for defined sassy smooth curls. Still our favourite look for curls. This long-lasting curl definer will de-frizz, shine and create sexy romantic curls."

Ingredients for Umberto Giannini Flirty Curls  Scrunching Jelly
Aqua, xanthan gum, glycerin, propylene glycol, phenoxyethanol, acylates/palmeth-25 acylate copolymer, polyquaternium-11, peg-40 hydrogenated castor oil, sodium benzoate, dipropylene glycol, aminomethyl propanol, sodium methyparaben, parfum, benzophenone-4, coumarin, butylphenyl methypropional, alpha-isomethyl ionone, linalool, CI 17200

The 1st four ingredients work on my hair.  I must add that Phenoxyethanol the antimicrobial preservative is subject to controversial debates regarding it's toxcity.  I thought I should include this note as it's quite high up in the ingredients list.  (Dastychova, 2008). It was recently followed up on as an alternative to parabens when the parabens scare was at it's peak. So if you prefer natural ingredients, this may not be the one for you. As for me, I am used to debates in scientific circles.  Until evidence is conclusive, then I shall continue to use this. As for polyquaternium build up. I don't experience that with this product. It rinses out quite well & washes out easily for me.


Packaging
Bright pink tube.  I find this quite annoying, I wish it came in a jar or with a pump. Since I tend to apply the product in several sections, I need to return back to the tube each and every time I need some more. This texture is quite slimy so I get it everywhere on the tube each time I reach for it. This bugs me.

Texture
Definitely jelly-like, translucent with a pink overtone. Can be quite sticky, not surprising as xanthum gum & glycerin are two major ingredients so that was expected. Goes on slippery on my hair and gives me enough slip to ensure at least one quick rake before it starts to stiffen my hair. It even foams, but watch out for that. I notice I get foamy bits if I use too much and this may leave a slight grey spot. So use sparingly. You can tell the texture is quite resilient and concentrated, because I really wanted to rinse my hands afterwards because they felt coated. (Though that's how I am with most products.)

Smell
I have a love and hate relationship. On some days, I can't get enough of the scent. On others, I wish they could have gone a bit easy on the scent. It's sweet, maybe like bubble-gum? ( I'll be quick to state that this association could simply be made because of the pink tube. Argh! The power of branding!), then it's slightly reminiscent of vaguely androgynous  musky cologne. Sorry. I tried.

                  Umberto Giannini Scrunching Jelly  Review On my hair

I have been sleeping on this. BIG TIME. Sleep no more I shall!  Why am I crazy about this jelly? Like I said on nc earlier.  To me, It's a posher better marketed curl activator with HOLD. Yes it clumps my coils like a curl activator during application and eventually holds them in place when dried. I love my curl activators, but those babies have virtually no hold alone, So when faced with some shower steam the next morning, it's POOF like that creepy cat from Alice in Wonderland.  Though curl activators go wonderfully with Ecostyler Gel on Type 4 hair especially, I'll save that for another post.
What is the hold like? It's not helmet head mad stiff. But it's stiff and very firm, and has the potential to be crispy if applied too heavy handedly. It definitely leaves some crunch hence the scrunching in the name! Lol! It elongates my coils a lot before drying. I have never tried anything that made my hair  look like this. Ever. It's like it clumps my coils into much smaller groups, more representative of my actual texture. Get it?
Ok, think of what twist out's do. They clump hair into big groups right? Think Chunky Kitkat for twists/twist outs (I dunno why that's the 1st thing that popped into my head, blame Easter Eggs), while this jelly groups my hair into much smaller groups like Twiglets (again blame Easter. And no I do not advocate having chocolate and twiglets together.)
Since it clumps my coils in such smaller groups I know that I need to let this stuff really dry before trying to SOTC, otherwise it's instant coil-orgy = tangles. It gives great shine. I can easily get 3days with this jelly and by the 2nd day any hint of crunch is gone leaving the glycerin to take over resulting in extra soft still defined hair!  Again when it's time to get it out of my hair, I find that it washes out very easily.
Anyways apart from making you peckish or hungry. I hope you get the picture. . It just goes to show again that there are great products on the high street. Not everything has to be brought over from the States or even ordered online! This jelly is joining my Staples Group to be stocked up on during 3 for 2 offers! More pics here 

Reference:
Dastychova et. al. (2008) - Contact hypersensitivity to selected excipients of dermatological topical preparations and cosmetics in patients with chronic eczema. Acta Dermatovenerologica Alpina, Panonica, et Adriatica [17(2):61-8]

Wash & Go Trials on Coily Hair 4: Keracare Defining Custard & HSCurlActivator

1ST PART OF REVIEW
Update 2: HAWAIIAN SILKY CURL ACTIVATOR & KERACARE DEFINING CUSTARD

With a heavier leave-in like the curl activator. My hair swelled up by the end of the day, but still had good definition, it was not overly frizzy. The *shine* was AMAZING and the scent of the custard still marginally present by the end of the day. When it came to bed-time my hair was still damp around the roots as I put my hair in my nightly 3 scrunchies.

The next morning my hair still felt quite damp, so I just rubbed a pea-sized amount of castor oil between my palms and used that to fluff my hair back into shape. My hair still had alot of body,definition and control. By control, I mean that my hair stayed where I wanted it to when I fluffed it back into shape by pulling under the roots.

First day hair was very defined, had hold and great shine. The smell lasted with me most of the day, and my partner kept complimenting me on the way my hair smelt.

To conclude: The custard and curl activator combination was successful on my coily hair and I would definitely purchase this again. I wouldn't recommend this with a light leave-in conditioner on Coily type 4ab hair, but with a much heavier moisturising leave-in conditioner, as the custard can be quite drying.

DAMP 1ST DAY

DRY

FIN

Wash & Go Trials on Coily Hair 3: Conditioner Only Method On Type 4 Hair

Teri's conditioner only method has been tried by many and praised for its effectiveness. I was drawn to this lady's success with this method on YouTube and decided to try it again.

Earlier on in my journey I had tried the conditioner only method with Tressemme conditioner (this is before they brought out the no-silicone versions) but didn't like :
* The way the conditioner irritated my scalp.
*The crisp way my hair felt after it dried,
*And the grey caste it left.
I decided to try it again with Kenzia conditioner mainly because this conditioner never left a grey cast with other wash & go's I had done with gel and had not irritated my scalp to date.
I applied this to wet hair in about six sections and layered some castor oil on top.
When it dried my hair felt quite soft to touch, quite shiny but greasy to touch!
I think I shall leave out the castor oil next time when using this particular conditioner as it seems like the Kenzia conditioner is quite oily by itself.

Wet with conditioner and castor oil layered ontop. (Sorry about the steamed up mirror!)

Just diffused, about 80% dry. A lot of shrinking observed, But lots of sheen.

First day was great, but I was not prepared for what was to come afterwards. The aftermath was not good I tell you. Click here.