FASHIONABLY NAPPY

I recently tried a braid out on my natural hair. I washed and conditioned with Aveda Dry Remedy and Aveda Brilliant Conditioner. I did several three strand braids on soaking wet hair and finished the ends with rollers. I mixed Cantu Shea Butter with Ecostyler Gel and raw shea butter. I then braided with that mixture. I let it dry overnight and part of the morning.

Braid Out Results

Even though I sat under the dryer a bit, the braids still weren’t dry when I took them down. But I had somewhere to go so I had to take them out. I think if it would have dried completely it would have been fantastic. I was getting a nice wave pattern and I liked how it was looking, but due to the dampness it started frizzing right away and my braid out definition went out the window. My hair takes forever to dry, so a style like this may need to be done on dry hair. I will definitely try it again, but next time I’ll let my hair dry in a low ponytail first. Practice makes perfect.

frizz...

frizz...

...and more frizz

Here’s a question from reader Chrystal…

I do like your website. I have had natural hair for about 5 years. The only thing I regret is letting this women put a “color” in my hair that turned my hair this ugly color and broke off. It has grown back tremendously. I have had a hard time trying to do natural twists in my hair. I have had the extensions. Now I am trying to do my own hair. Each time I have tried to do it in never looks good to me. I am Van Nuys and I know you are in the So Cal area. If you don’t mind could you help a sistah out here??? Like you I love changing my hair styles. I find it funny right now that I am in big afro stage right now. Normally it lasts for about 3 weeks before I change to wigs, or extensions. But I am liking the afro right now. Please write me back!!

Thanks for the question Chrystal. I am not quite sure how to help you because I don’t know what type of hair texture you have or exactly what it is about your twists that you don’t like. Do they not last long in twist or twist-out form? Do they fuzz easily? What products do you use to twist your hair? Some extra details and even pictures of your hair if you have them can be helpful. You can email me at contact@fashionablynappy.com. Perhaps then we can get some input from myself and others.

I have a friend who gets free makeup samples, so she passed these Cover Girl makeup samples on to me. I have to say, I have not been a huge fan of Cover Girl. I found their past advertisements to be very misleading. I would see ads with Alek Wek, Tyra Banks and other brown-skinned beauties, but no matter what store I went to I would only find beige, almond beige and tan beige foundation colors. I guess they are trying to resolve that disparity with the Cover Girl Queen Collection. Queen Latifah looks great in those ads!

So, with that in mind I was willing to give Cover Girl another chance. I popped the top off of the Simply Ageless foundation and blush. The sample I tried was in (gasp!) toasted almond –which matched me perfectly. The makeup is essentially a cream foundation mixed with anti-aging Olay moisturizer. This is best for someone with dry skin or perhaps someone worried about wrinkles. I have oily skin so a foundation mixed with moisturizer equals grease slick for me. It lasted about two hours before I looked like I had no makeup on. As you can see in the picture my undereye concealer lasted the whole day. Even though the foundation and concealer where perfectly blended in the morning, by the end of the day I had an unsightly line where the concealer ended and the foundation was supposed to begin. I use Dermablend concealer a shade lighter than my skintone underneath the eye. I have the darkest undereye circles no matter how much I sleep or how much water I drink so I use industrial strength concealer! That stuff doesn’t budge.

The blush was a little disappointing. It had the same moisturizer mixed in which meant the pigment was going to be even less intense and washed out on deeper skin tones. It pretty much faded away by the end of the day too. I used Smashbox silicone primer to give the products more staying power but even that didn’t help much. The product formulations just didn’t work for my skin type, but at least they have colors for a wider range of skin tones these days. I won’t write them off just yet…I will probably try products more suited for oily skin and see how that goes.

Just a quick peek at how I’ve been wearing my twists. I had them down for awhile, but didn’t care for that (What is up with my eyebrows in that photo…time for a wax, pluck, something!). I also had them pinned up and in a clip. This twist out lasted a week, and would have lasted longer had I been sleeping in a bonnet. I know, I know, I have been so bad. I have been sleeping on cotton pillowcases with nothing protecting my hair. I also have eaten an entire pint of  Thrifty’s ice cream while watching the Biggest Loser. It had strawberries in it so that’s kind of healthy right? Last night, after a particularly trying session of after school tutoring with 3rd and 4th graders, I decided to have a bit of my mom’s peach cobbler for dinner and nothing else (Again, peaches are healthy!). I guess I have been a little stressed and short on time, which might explain my tragically unkempt eyebrows and poor food choices. I will have to put eyebrow threading on the to do list along with a trip to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and finding a new foundation. One of the advantages of having a blog and taking pictures of yourself is you get to see yourself more objectively. My epiphany– my foundation is no longer matching my skin tone. It’s a little too light and it makes me look a little sallow and washed out. Time to find a new shade and time to stop using ice cream as a stress coping mechanism!

I received this question from a reader the other day, maybe you guys can help her out…

Hi there, Miss Fashionably Nappy —

I just found your blog tonight via Black Girl With Long Hair. Love it and the Beneatha Younger post. I respect you for trying to better yourself while holding down the mommy duties (I’m doing the same and it is the hardest task of my life!). I cut my shoulder-length relaxed hair back in 2001. I was living in NYC and just could not afford to maintain all that hair anymore! You mentioned that you live in Southern California. For the past year and half, I’ve been (begrudgingly) living in Orange County. I’m considering growing out my barely-there close crop. Do you have a natural salon in LA that you could recommend? I’ll ask an even more daring question: Do you know of one in OC??? I’m still in the “what-if” stages, so I’m looking for someone who could give me a consultation of sorts. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time. Hope to hear from you soon.

Best,

Leigh-Ann Jackson

Swirl Syndicate — For Multi-Culti Cuties

www.swirlsyndicate.com

My response:

Hi Leigh-Ann. Thanks for contacting me. I haven’t spent much time out in the OC. I only know of one salon that specializes in natural hair and that’s “Oh My Nappy Hair” in downtown Los Angeles off of LaBrea and Wilshire, I think. They have a website, but they can be pretty pricey though depending on what you want done. I had two strand twist extensions a few years back and they ran me $300. They were beautifully done though, I have to admit. My personal feeling is they kind of up the price just because a lot of celebrities go there. I guess if you want someone to point you in the right direction it could be a good option for you. I don’t really like salons all that much so I haven’t really thought about finding one, so I will try to do some research and post what I find on my blog.

Do any of you know any good natural hair salons, not just in Southern California but wherever it is that you reside? It could be of help to some other natural ladies out there. Let us know!

Wow, this has been the most hectic month I’ve experienced in awhile. Sorry my posts have been so sporadic, it’s been crazy around here. Anyway, I wanted to share my experience with twisting on hair that is already dry.

I usually always twist my hair when it is wet. Well, this last time I twisted I got a little lazy. It was kind of already late at night and I did not feel like spending hours twisting my hair, so I put it off until the morning. I gathered my hair into a low ponytail and it dried overnight. In the morning I mixed my usual Ecostyler gel and shea butter and began twisting. I noticed that the dry twists are not as “juicy” as when I start from wet hair, meaning they are not quite as moist and not quite as shiny. As I mentioned in my post about hats, my hair still felt pretty moisturized though even in the cold weather. Since my hair dried partially stretched, these twists did not shrink up as much as usual. I wonder if my hair dried completely stretched out with a binding or banding technique, would they have even less shrinkage? Hmmm… I think I will have to experiment with that in the near future. As you can see from the pics, the twists still have a good luster to them, and they are very fluffy. These twists are going on week two but I’m already getting bored with them. I think I’m ready for a twist out. I don’t know why I get bored with styles so easily, I guess I have major attention deficit when it comes to hairstyles. But that’s one of the reasons I hated my relaxed hair so much. It was just limp, dull and boring. I have really been wanting to loc my hair because I think locs look so regal… but I don’t think I could ever do it because I like to change my hair up too often and I love a good round afro!

It’s been raining cats and dogs here in California. I decided to go into protective styling mode and put my hair into small two strand twists. I used a mix of ecostyler gel and shea butter to twist. I put a little Vaseline on the ends of my twists…I know it’s synthetic, but it works for me!  I’ve been wearing crocheted berets all week but the yarns tend to either snag my hair or soak up all the moisture. So to combat that I just wear my black bonnet underneath, the same one that I sleep in. The black color just looks like my hair if it accidently slips out or peaks through. My hair feels moist and soft even in all of this cold weather. I haven’t had to put any more moisture on my hair since I twisted it about a week ago, which is major for me!

This season of Project Runway has some great models, but the curly fro of Monique Darton really makes her stand out in a crowd. She has such an adorable head of ringlets and great sandy brown color. Loving it! Whoever said fros weren’t sexy? I especially like the makeup in the last picture.

Shala Monroque is the editor-at-large for POP Magazine. She wears her hair in a variety of hairstyles  from straight to curly, but I wanted to showcase her curly looks. Her TWA really suits her face well and I’m loving the warm reddish color of her hair.

I’ve already posted about my never-ending quest for lush eyelashes, and here I am again. When I saw the Double Extend L’Oreal Beauty Tubes Mascara (these product names get longer and longer) My inner product junkie came to life and I had to try it. The product uses lengthening mascara tubes to make lashes look longer, up to 80% longer according to the package. The tubes come off easily with water. When you wash your face it will look like you lost a lot of eyelashes but it’s just the mascara tubes. The two-step product involves placing the primer on the lashes first then the black top coat, which is where the tubes are. The primer has panthenol and ceramide so it really softens the lashes and makes them look thicker. The only problem is the lash primer is bright white. You have to use a lot of mascara to cover all the bits of white. With this mascara, applying more than a few coats will give you clumps galore but you need several coats to cover the fluorescent primer! It’s a Catch-22. I think maybe using as little primer as possible would be the best choice. It definitely takes some practice to get this stuff on right. Overall I would give it a ‘B’ grade. It does lengthen and thicken, just tricky to apply. I think I’ll just stick to false lashes.

no mascara

L'oreal Double Extend Mascara Primer

L'oreal Double Extend Mascara, notice white spots peeking through

L'oreal Double Extend Mascara without primer underneath

Lashes with regular mascara, not L'oreal Double Extend Mascara