Style

New do's

So, today is the 22^nd February 2012. In 2 days it’ll be exactly 8 months since my Big Chop. My hair has grown at a pretty awesome rate. To be honest I’m surprised. I think protective styling really is the way forwards. The kinky twists worked wonders. When I took them out and realised how long my hair is now, I thought I’d start experimenting with the style I can do now. The products shown and listed below are the ones I use for MY hair. If you have products that work for you, stick with them. Our hair is different, so these are just suggestions and can be substituted with whatever you have at home!

Puff

Now when my hair is blown out it’s just about long enough to go up into a ponytail. But when it’s curly, it doesn’t quite get there. So I thought I’d try the puff. A puff is basically a cheat-pony tail. I will make some video tutorials, still trying to work out how to manage editing. But a basic how-to:

(If your hair is already de-tangled this style should take no more than 5-10 minutes)

Put a stretchy band around your neck and leave it there for later.
Spray hair with water. It makes it easier to de-tangle.
Section hair into 4 or 6 depending on how long or short it is.
De-tangle the hair section by section with your fingers, comb, brush... whatever. (If you braid or twist your hair at night, you may not need to bother with the long de-tangling process)Grab some cream/leave in/moisturiser, rub some over your ends, and then around the edges of your hair as if you’re trying to push it into a pony tail or bun.
Grab a soft brush and brush your hair into place. It probably isn’t going to rest in the ponytail/bun position, but it does help to flatten the sides and back a little (if you prefer it, you can just use your hands to smooth the edges and push your hair).
Grab a little gel (optional) rub into your hands and gloss over the hair that you’re trying to flatten and push upwards towards the centre of where the bun will be.
Grab a stretchy band. Preferably an ‘ouch-less’ one with a lot of give.
Begin to push the band up over your head and over your hair until it sits where you want your ‘puff’ to rest. Now that my hair is longer, the puff rests a lot higher on my head.I double mine over to make sure that it's tight enough to hold my hair in place, but if you have very tight ones, then pulling them over your head once should be enough.
Voila! Puff done!

The peacock puff and fringe (bangs)

This style looks better when your hair is stretched. So I did it when I'd rocked a braid out for a few days. It's basically the same thing as the puff. The same steps anyway. All I did was part a little section of hair that I wanted to keep out at the front, and use 3 hair pins to keep it in place. I also use my hands to spread the puff out so it looked a little more like a peacock tail.

have a few more style and things that I've tried out that I'd like to share with you, so there will be a part 2 to this. All of these styles are VERY simple and most people probably already know how to do them but I thought I'd share just in case.