3 Months on The Curly Girl Method.

Hello everyone, welcome back to my curly girl hair series. This is the three month mark. In this video I'll be covering all the things I've tried out this month, what I've changed, what worked and what didn't work. I'll also be showing you some comparisons of what my hair looks like now compared to one month ago, two months ago, three months ago. Don't forget to follow my hair Instagram for updates and if you're new, check out my other hair videos, I have a ton. There's loads in this series, it might give you a better idea of what I'm talking about today. So first of all, here's a little recap of what I've been doing this month. So I've been doing the curly girl method every wash day, so that's about every three to four days I wash my hair. I've been using curly girl approved products, so that means no sulfates and no silicones and I've been using curly girl approved care techniques and styling techniques. I've also been experimenting with natural hair care methods which I do about once a month and I share here on YouTube. And I've been doing some kind of hair mask or hair treatment about once every one to two weeks because my hair is dry. So the first thing I tried this month was flaxseed gel. I made a video all about this, it was really fun to film. I will leave a little card and just watch it after this video if you want. I was so pleased with the results, I'm definitely going to use that again, but check out the video if you want to see more on that. Another thing I have tried this month, which I actually did today, was washing my hair upside down. Only because a lot of curly girl YouTubers I've watched swear by washing their hair and styling their hair upside down. So I washed my hair upside down today. I enjoyed doing it, but I found that when it came to styling it and flipping it back over, it was just a whole big hot mess. I could not get it to sit right and I ended up having to re-detangle it and re-define the curls and re-scrunch it right way round again. I don't believe that that kind of upside down washing works for all hair types. I wanted to make sure it looked good for this video so I didn't want to take the risk by styling it upside down. So far I can only style it right way up, that's the only way my hair will behave. As for my hair masks, I've been trying to incorporate hydration into my hair care routine. I did talk a little bit about the capillary schedule in my last update. In that video I spoke about how I've been using a banana, honey and aloe vera mask. I have continued to use this kind of mask but I don't use banana anymore just because it was a pain to get it through the strainer. It kind of ruined my strainer, it left all the seeds in there and yeah, anyway, if you have a blender it will be better but yeah. I've actually just been reaching for honey because it's just a bit easier. What I've been doing about once every one or two weeks is I will wet all my hair. I put quite a fair amount of honey on, like a big old palmful and I just keep scrunching it into my hair and I leave that for about an hour wet. And then I add on castor oil. This has been my oil of choice this month just because castor oil is said to be so good for your hair in so many different ways, especially for growth. And yeah, I've had this for ages, I forgot about it, it was sitting in my bathroom so I figured I should use this. So if I'm going to use something like aloe vera or honey, which are humectants for hydrating your hair, I will use these, let them soak in for an hour and then I'll use the castor oil. Again, I spoke about that in my last video about how I feel like it just kind of works better because it lets the ingredients kind of do their thing before applying the oil. Now when I use an oil, I do find that my Boo Klam products are not strong enough to get the oil out because these are non-foaming. So this month I've been switching up between Boo Klam and Function of Beauty. I have used Function of Beauty in the past and I'm so thankful that they are sponsoring this video today. The problem was because my old Function of Beauty products had silicone in them, I could no longer use them since I started the Curly Girl method. But Function of Beauty do offer Curly Girl approved options so I knew I had to try it out. So this is a completely new formula that they've sent me that I chose on their website and I really enjoy this formula and I know that it's Curly Girl approved so I'm happy with these. What's different about this formula is I selected no silicone. So it's really nice that they give you that option. They're also very upfront and honest. When you click no silicone, it will tell you a little bit of information underneath saying, you know, sometimes it can take a little while for your to adjust to no silicone. I have not been using silicone for quite a while now. So as you know, when you go on the Function of Beauty website, you take a little hair quiz, you input your information about your hair, if it's dry, if it's wavy, and then you put in your hair goals. So on my first batch, I really liked the formula. I just needed to change a few things around. So instead of straightening, this time I chose curl definition and this time I went for deep condition. I still stuck with anti-frizz, fix, split ends and hydrate though. And this time I chose the scent Eucalyptus Mint, which is a really nice, fresh, kind of natural smell. My favorite, however, of their scents is the Rose, Striker Rose. I think it's rose and raspberry. It smells really nice. It literally smells like roses. I find their scents are quite strong anyway. So I only ever go with a light or a medium. I really like that they give you a little leaflet that contains all of the information that you input. So make sure you keep that. And if you're not sure which hair goals you should pick, if you go to their ingredients list on their website, it gives you a little bit more detail as to what kind of ingredients you can expect to find depending on what hair goals you choose. So if you are interested in trying Function of Beauty, you can get 20% off using the link in the downbar. I hope you enjoy that. Another thing I've started trying this month is applying my gels in the shower. Also, just based off of what I've seen other curly girl YouTubers do, a lot of them swear by putting your gel in while your hair is soaking wet, which means sometimes whilst you're still in the shower. So I have tried that a couple times. I didn't notice much difference in the way my hair came out. If anything, I think I preferred getting out of the shower and applying it to each section like I have done in previous videos. I just found that for my hair, that worked better because my hair is just very unusual. So I find that by sectioning my hair and applying the gel to smaller sections and like twiddling each strand is what works for me. But you know, I'm trying it. I have also now got a new spray bottle for my hair refreshes. This took ages to come. I got it on Amazon. I'll leave a link below. But yes, I've wanted this one because it's like a continuous spray and I broke my last one. As I mentioned in my last update, I stopped doing my spritz and re-scrunch every morning sort of refresh thing just because it was making my hair really frizzy and messy, even though it did bring the curls back. So I kind of stopped doing it. I did lose definition, but I just, I don't know. And a lot of you commented saying I should try like putting leave-in conditioner in it. I also read in the curly girl method book to put like stuff like lavender oil in your hair water that you spritz in your hair. You can see it's a bit cloudy. I did try putting some leave-in conditioner in here. It did not make any difference. Putting a little bit of leave-in conditioner or a little bit of oil in your water that you're spraying on your hair is not going to fix your problems. It's not going to fix your frizz. I did not find that it made a tremendous difference. I will try putting some lavender oil in here next though. So far, I'm not enjoying refreshing my hair because it just never looks good. This is my hair on wash day. This is straight after a wash. This is as good as it's going to get. After this, it's all downhill. So don't feel like you're alone on that. 80% of the time I'm having a bad hair day. I just film when my hair's looking nice. Okay. Now this month, I knew I wanted to try a curl cream because loads of you guys were saying that rather than using a gel, I should be using a cream for my hair type. So I started looking around. I did a lot of research. It was really confusing. I couldn't seem to find just like a curl cream. They all seem to be like some kind of leave-in or it didn't like specifically say what it was. Like I didn't understand what I was buying. I did a lot of research and I found this one, Shea Moisture Curl Enhancing Smoothie. It had loads of good reviews. So I just bought it. I think it was between 12 and 15 pounds. However, it did not work on my hair type. I failed to read that this is for thick curly hair, which my hair is not thick and curly. It's a mixture of thick and fine and it's wavy. I think I used a bit too much. I just found it to be too thick for my hair. It just, my hair just did not react well to this, but I know that this works for lots of people. It had so many good reviews and I have this whole tub that I'm not going to use. It's pretty much full. So I figured if anybody wants this, I know I've used some of it, but it's literally full. If anyone wants this, I will send it to you. Just make sure you live in the UK. I will pay postage. I will just send it to you completely free of charge. I just don't want to waste it. So I figure I may as well give it to someone who will use it and it will save you like 12 or 15 pounds. A lot of people were telling me to try hair subliminals, which correct me if I'm wrong, I believe this is something similar to the law of attraction, but for your hair. So, um, like positively thinking about your hair, telling yourself that your hair is beautiful and that it's growing and just the power of positive thoughts that will manifest into beautiful hair that you desire. What I can say is that I am starting to accept my hair a little bit more. Maybe it's just because it's getting longer and it is starting to look nicer. Very slow process, but if I am totally and utterly honest with myself, I know that my hair is not the way I want it to look. It's not my ideal hair situation, but I just live with it. I just, I just accept it every day. I try not to let it get me down as much as it used to. Every now and again, I do get down about it. If I'm having a really bad hair day, we all do. Here are some things I have changed. I've been trying to change my sleeping style. So up until now, I've been using the curly girl approved pineapple, which is you wear your hair in a ponytail loose on top of your head, which preserves your curls. Um, I find that even my ponytail is too loose that it comes out or it's too tight that it hurts in the morning. I can't seem to get it right. And so I've been trying to experiment with like clipping it up in certain ways, sort of like gently clipping it. I also have obviously my silk cap that I sometimes use. I have my silk pillowcases, my satin pillowcases. It's a little harder when your hair's short to put it up because the end bits just fall out anyway. I've also noticed from doing the pineapple, I don't know if it's the pineapple or if it's a combination of the way I sleep, but this is so bad guys. I've noticed my hair has started thinning at the crown and it's starting to worry me. I've noticed it for the past two months. Hasn't really paid too much attention to it. I don't know if it's because I'm a back sleeper, I sleep on my back or if it's the way I've been wearing my hair to bed. There's this strange like parting at the crown of my head that shouldn't be there that I have to keep brushing out every morning because when I wake up it just looks so strange. You can just see my scalp and it, it doesn't make me self-conscious. It's just something I'm aware of that I'm trying to keep my eye on. So every morning I kind of like brush it, like comb it over like this so that it's, my back hair is kind of laying where it should be. So what I started doing was using castor oil on the crown of my head before every wash day. So the night before I'd be washing my hair, I'd put this on my hair, sort of massage it in, which is really good for hair growth, and leave it overnight and then wash it. But what I will be trying next is Jamaican black castor oil, which I've, woo, I've known about this for a long time. A lot of people swear by this, a lot of people have commented about it. So I will be trying this on my little scalp issue that I have back here and I'm thinking of making a video of like 30 days. We're gonna look at my hair follicles close up, see if there's any growth after 30 days of using this Jamaican black castor oil. Let me know if any of you have had the same problem but it's just kind of worrying me a little bit. I'm only 24, I don't really want to start going bald but that is a common area where you start to lose hair. So anyway, I'm just kind of dealing with it as I can. I also trimmed my bangs a little more, you probably can't even notice but they were just kind of badly cut before so I just cut a few more in just to make it a little bit more cohesive. So I just like having these little wispy bits at the side of my face and of course I did that with a professional pair of very sharp hair scissors. How much has my hair grown? It has grown half an inch again this month. I measure my hair on the 16th of every month and it's grown half an inch so I'm happy with that. As you can see it's really like grown. If you compare this to like March or February when I started, it has grown like it's good. So what will I be trying next? I really really really want to try Olaplex next month. Obviously I've known about Olaplex for years. I've been researching hair care for about seven years. I just never took the plunge just because it's a little bit expensive and I never knew that it was specifically for my hair problem and also I just wanted to stick to sort of more natural methods but I've decided, you know, I've gone this long, I want to try Olaplex. So I'm going to buy, I think I'm going to buy Olaplex 3 and we are going to see what it looks like next month. Loads of you guys have been commenting about it and asking me to try it so let's do it. I also want to try the Shea Moisture Line shampoo and conditioner. I'm just not sure which one to try. Obviously this didn't work for me but I do know the brand is very good and I've been wanting to try it. Loads of you guys talked to me about it as well. If you have any good recommendations of like the Shea Moisture Line let me know and then of course I'll be trying the Jamaican Black Castor Oil on my crown to see if any extra hair follicles will sprout. Remember to follow my hair Instagram Demarco Hair if you want just hair updates. I also have a personal Instagram Isabella Demarco. I have Snapchat, I have Facebook, I even have TikTok. I made one video that did really well and I need to make some more but yeah. I joined the TikTok trend. I also have a vlog channel, I don't upload on there very often but a few of you really enjoy my vlogs. If you liked the video please like it and leave a comment, it really helps me out. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. Bye!