Back to basics with hair!

Just wanted to post an update about my hair care routine and some important developments including getting “back to basics”.

Not too long ago on Redken’s website I used their Hair Diagnostic Tool and it recommended to me several times based on the questions their All Soft conditioner. Today at Ulta there was a buy 2 get 1 free sale on the little sample sizes which I love of Redken products. They had the All Soft conditioner and tonight I used it after my usual wash with Curvaceous Lo Foam shampoo. It really seems nice.

As I’ve written before my go-to conditioner for a while has consistently been Acure’s Ultra Hydrating Conditoner which has argan oil in it. So far the Redken All Soft conditioner (the sample I got was the non-argan one) seems really great. It applied very nicely to my wet hair and is extremely moisturizing which my hair loves.

For styling I chose to forego using Curvaceous Curl Refiner and just went with a small amount of AG’s Recoil which I still really love. One thing I’ve realized over time is how powerful Recoil is. It only takes a small amount to work in the hair. Overuse will cause buildup and the hair will be tacky and stiff.

Now here’s the get back to basics thing. Last night I broke out some of my DevaCurl products and used Mist-R Right and Spray Gel. Today I didn’t use Mist-R Right, only sprayed some Spray Gel on my hair one it was clipped up and set to dry.

Before taking out the clips, when the hair was almost dry, I sprayed a little bit of DevaCurl’s Set It Free on my hair, focusing mainly on the top where I require more hold and lift.

Another thing I did – this is kind of a new innovation – after taking the clips out and my hair was finished, I usually want to kind of fluff it up a little bit. Because my hair is thinning a bit mostly on top if I don’t fluff the hair a little bit you can see my scalp. I’m not entirely sure if this is due to thinning or simply to the fact that my hair is much, much ligher in color now and hence does not mask the scalp as well.

Normally I would tend to run my fingers through my hair to try to fluff it up a little bit, to spread out the locked-in curls, in order to get a little more volume. But this process messes with the curls, usually too much. If you use gel or other styling products intended to induce and lock in curls you will know how the locked-in curls can get messed up.

So my new technique tonight was to dampen my hands first and, instead of just running my fingers through the hair and ruining the curls, I used scrunching motions to kind of work with the curl formations. This had the effect of loosening the curls a bit, but also keeping the overall curl definition locked in. It worked! I worked really well! This is a huge breakthrough for me.

In the past I ended up staying away from the use of gels mostly because of this reason. They would lock in the curl but then I always want to fluff the hair a little bit, but that would always break down the curls and then I would just have geled hair without the curls.

I learned the standard things about how you’re supposed to scrunch the hair when you first apply the gel. My new innovation is to skip that – I’ve already scrunched in Recoil creme into my hair and have it set up and clipped – so I just spray a little bit of gel while its like that. Then, when the hair is dry or mostly dry – either with the clips still in or out – wet the hands and spray in a little more spray gel into the palms and scruch away.

Now the test will be to see how this actually holds up over the next day. But so far this evening after my routine my hair is already far ahead in terms of being styled the way I want it.

So I’m getting back to basics and re-learning using some of my DevaCurl products which are powerful tools to have in my arsenal.

One of the other travel-size Redken products I got today was Frizz Dismiss spray. My hair was actually a bit frizzy earlier today when I tested it. I just sprayed a little bit and bang! The frizz completely disappeared. Great little product to keep in my purse. Thank you Redken!

The other product I got was One United spray.