2 Months of Curly Girl Method... Here's What I Learned.

Hello, welcome back. So today I am coming at you traditional YouTube style, sat on my bed, I'm just gonna talk. This is my two month curly girl hair update. So if you haven't watched my previous videos about my curly girl method journey, go watch them and then come back to this video. This is my two month update. In this video I'm gonna talk to you about the things I have stopped doing, the things I've started doing, some things I've tried and some things I'm going to try. I'm also just gonna talk about overall how my hair's doing, what worked, what didn't and if I'm going to continue with the curly girl method which I'll talk about at the end of this video. Grab a cup of tea, get cosy, maybe put this on in the background while you're doing your makeup, you're tidying, whatever because we're just gonna have a chatty one but I will be showing a few bits of footage and photos here and there. I felt like doing a simplistic video because I needed a break from editing. I also wanted to reiterate why I started the curly girl method. So I did not start the curly girl method to make my hair curlier and I didn't start the curly girl method because I felt like my hair was naturally curly. I started the curly girl method to simply improve the overall health and condition of my hair. Brief backstory, a couple years ago my hair started changing. When I would let it air dry it would poof out and there would be like strange little curls and kinks in my hair that just didn't make any sense, they'd never been there before. I went through a year of turmoil trying to figure out what was wrong with my hair and then I discovered the curly girl method, thought I'd give it a go and yes my hair has improved but I don't really know if it's truly curly hair. I wasn't born with curly hair, like obviously it's not curls, it's waves but I just don't know, my hair's confusing me. Some days it's straighter than other days, some days it's like really wants to curl and it's just confusing. I'm going to start off with some things that I have stopped doing. For the whole first month of doing the curly girl method I was spritzing and scrunching every morning which is where I would spritz in filtered water into my hair and re-scrunch the curls which really helped to bring back the curls and just sort of revive it a bit, it reactivated the gel but what I did find was it sometimes left my hair looking a little frizzy and a little messy which often happens when you add water to dry hair. One of the reasons I stopped was because my spray bottle actually broke so I need to buy a new one but also because I just wanted to see what would happen if I stopped scrunching it every day. I was just getting a bit tired of it looking so messy and frizzy all the time. So what I found from stopping that is that my curls have dropped so my hair has not had as much curl to it. Also, yeah, I'm going to use the word curls, I know my hair is wavy but I'm going to say curls so. I washed my hair last night with the curly girl method, same as always with Clem and curl jelly. This morning this is what it looks like, I haven't scrunched it. This is a good hair day though, this is a really good hair day but you can see that it's very straight, it's very straight. So I found that by like the third or fourth day it will almost be like straight, like big chunks of it will be straight and I'll still have some random curls at the back. So I don't really know if I will start doing that again, I'm still looking for something that I can do on a daily basis that will just help it a little bit more without it looking messy but to be honest it looks messy all the time anyway so I'm just learning to live with it. Another thing I've stopped is diffusing so much, mainly because the weather has gotten warmer and we're all stuck inside so I have the time to dry my hair so I may as well air dry it. So that's the only reason I've stopped diffusing. I'm not stopping altogether and I don't think diffusing is bad, I just have not diffused this month. I diffused once. Here are some things I have started. So I started researching into the capillary schedule or the capillary hair routine. A lot of you guys reached out to me about it and I actually started researching it quite a while ago but because I try so many different things I often don't have time to get to everything and I have to give everything a little bit of time to actually try it so sometimes I just don't get around to trying things as soon as they are recommended to me but a lot of you guys have been telling me about it and essentially it's figuring out what your hair needs the most and then you switch up your hair care routine or your hair products regularly so that your hair gets a little bit of everything. So your hair even needs hydration, reconstruction or nutrition or all of them. So hydration is things that have a high water content that are going to help get water and moisture into your hair. Then nourishment is like your things like oils and then reconstruction is proteins. So you can take this test online, I don't know how legitimate it is, it's kind of like very basic like pull on your hair and see what happens. I took one and lo and behold turns out my hair needs hydration above all the other things. This was no surprise to me, I've known for a while that my hair is extremely dry like if you pull on a strand of my hair it will snap. And I have been trying to implement ways to hydrate my hair, it's a lot harder than it seems. You can't just hydrate your hair from using one hydration mask, it's an ongoing thing. It takes a long time to really get that moisture back into your hair and like reconstruct it to be like hydrated and moisturised. Because I need hydration I would do like week 1 hydration mask, week 2 hydration mask, week 3 nutrition mask, week 4 hydration mask. Then like maybe a couple weeks down the line do a protein mask. For me though I'm focusing on hydration because my hair does not need any protein at the moment because it will just snap off. So I was looking around online, I found a really nice recipe for a hydration mask and so I tried it a couple times, I found a really good way to use it. So I used half a banana, a tablespoon of aloe vera and a tablespoon of really nice quality honey. If you can get a good quality honey it will be better. This one I got, it was like £5.50 and I didn't realise that when I bought it so it must be a good honey if it's £5.50 like jeez. Very importantly I wet my hair before I put it on so I made my hair nice and wet and saturated which I feel like helps with the hydration element because you're adding more water to it so it has something to like suck in. And then I just put the mask all over my hair. Now when it came to washing it out I didn't want to use my boucleme because these are non-foaming. I don't know, I didn't feel like they would wash it out. So I went for my, just an old shampoo that I have, it's called Gromy, it doesn't have any sulphates in it. It's supposed to be a really good one, it's got like biotin and argan oil and all these kind of stuff in it. I got actually sent this like years ago and then my friend gave me one as well so. So anyway this one is foaming so I used this to get it out. Unfortunately I don't know what it was, my hair was really not in a good way after. My hair seemed like really dry. I didn't like how it turned out and I was thinking what on earth, why has it done this? Like I've just used a really nice hydrating mask on my hair and it just doesn't feel good. I have a feeling that it may be because I used a foaming cleanser after so long of using a non-foaming cleanser my hair was just surprised by like the stripping of, you know, the oils in my hair. I feel like that may have had something to do with it but I then found another way to do the mask which made it work so nicely. My second time I tried it I figured I'd add in a bit of oil but in my head I felt like adding it to the mask and then putting on my hair would somehow stop some of the other ingredients actually penetrating into my hair because oil and water repels each other so it didn't make sense in my head to mix it into the mixture. So I put on the banana, aloe and honey mask for about an hour, let it soak in and then I added castor and avocado oil. Castor oil is really good for your hair, I've had a bottle for like years just like sitting in the bathroom and I like haven't thought to use it but yes castor oil is very well known to be good for your hair. Because castor oil is so thick I thought I'd just thin it out a little bit with the avocado oil. Avocado oil is also amazing for your hair. Once it had taken all the moisture out of the hydration mask the oil just helped seal it in. I don't know scientifically if that's actually doing what I think it's doing but it makes sense in my head that that's what it's doing. And obviously because I was using oil I had to use again a foaming cleanser to get it out. My hair was sleek, glossy, there was like barely any frizz, the curls were really pretty, oh my god it was such a good hair day and I think it was just it needed that bit of oil to just help it along but I feel like putting the oil on after the mask had soaked in a little bit just gave it that little bit of extra like boost so I would recommend trying that out. I'd like to say a quick thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this season of videos on my channel. As you may know I've been working on creating my own actor website which is a really powerful tool to marketing yourself in the industry. So this is my finished website it's just gone live, I just purchased my own domain name, I've kept it nice and sleek and simple, I've got a homepage, a bio, a gallery, I've got all my social links up there, a contact me page and I've even been able to embed my show reel and CV right into my page so it's really easily accessible you just click on it and away you go. I've created mine sort of as a portfolio but they have loads of helpful features for business you can set up a shop, you can create a blog, you can schedule your entries, you can set up your own email campaigns and subscriptions and you can track your website's views and analytics over time so you can see what's working. So if you're interested in creating your own website you can start a free trial and if you choose to go ahead with it you can get 10% off your subscription with the code IsabellaDemarco. Just head to the link in the down bar to get started. Thanks for listening. Another thing that I have been adding into my routine is adding more water into my washing routine. I had a viewer saying oh when you're washing your hair like keep scrunching in more water and it didn't make sense to me because I was like but my hair's already wet what is adding more water gonna do like it didn't make sense to me but she was like I swear to you like it works you have to like scrunch in more water your hair just loves the water and I saw like quite a few YouTubers mention that when they apply their conditioner they need to add more water or when they apply any kind of product their hair needs to be like soaking wet and this never really occurred to me as something that would work or that I would have to do. In fact for years I would like squeeze all the water out of my hair before putting my conditioner on because I thought that the water would dilute the conditioner and it wouldn't work as well so in my head I thought oh the conditioner will be more concentrated if I squeeze out all the water but turns out I was wrong. A lot of people that I watch on YouTube swear by making sure your hair is like soaking wet so that is something that I've been doing. I don't know like how if it's working or if it's doing anything but I feel like it's somehow working so when I wash my hair I just make sure to make sure like it is soaked and I also when I apply my conditioner rather than just putting it all over my hair like this I will take each individual strand and make sure every little bit of my hair is covered in conditioner and then what I'll do is brush it. So this brush is like a special it looks like a paddle brush but it's actually a special flexi brush it does not pull on your hair. Like these are so soft bristles. When my hair is completely saturated then I'll brush through and I feel like this just makes sure that every single piece of your hair every strand is conditioned and I never really looked at it that way that maybe all my hair wasn't getting conditioned but I think it's been helping because I find that when I really take the time especially on my problem areas back here and here to really get the conditioner in and make sure that it's soaked and leave it for a good long while which I usually do anyway I find that my hair is a lot sleeker when it dries. The results are so much better and also when I'm rinsing out my conditioner I will like scrunch in water as I'm rinsing out so I'll gradually rinse out I'll add a bit more water scrunch in more water add a bit more water scrunch in more water I feel like that's just helping hydrate my hair a little bit more. I never ever would have thought to do that but it seems to be what people are doing on the internet so we'll see we'll see I'll continue doing it we'll see if it works. So some things I have tried this month obviously I tried the Aretha powder the natural shampoo loved it I made a video on it I will leave a little card up here it worked really well on my hair I was very pleasantly surprised and it is something I'll probably do like maybe once every month or every two months. I also tried drying my hair with a hair net on it basically this I didn't have a hair net so I just used this is one of those ones that when you buy a wig they usually come in a net like this and whilst my hair was drying I literally I put it all up in the net so that your curls theoretically your curls theoretically it will like hold up your curls as they're drying but I did not like the results I don't know if it's because I didn't set my curls in there properly but it made my curls come out really wacky and like they weren't in their correct like curl patterns so that didn't work maybe try it maybe I'm doing it wrong. I also tried out this month the robe curl method this is like going viral this this method actually this method I've been doing something similar to this like since I was about 17 but I would use like a scarf there's loads of videos of people doing this so I don't need to show you but these are my results you can see that the curls were like really defined I basically just dampened my hair before doing it and then I slept with it wasn't so comfortable to sleep with I did find that my hair was quite frizzy I think because you have to apply water to your hair and like water makes your hair frizz and obviously sleeping on it rolling around even with a silk pillowcase I didn't like how the back looked like it kind of just looked really flat like I don't know I feel like there's probably a good few ways you could try the robe routine different ways of like curling your hair here's some things I'm going to try next so I have been dying to try making flaxseed gel I bought some flaxseeds they're also known as linseed that really confused me when I was in the shop because I didn't know that and I was like they look like flaxseeds but they're called linseed had to google it anyway yeah linseed flaxseed both same thing I'll probably upload a video in a couple weeks time of how this goes a lot of people have also been recommending this I've also been considering getting a layered haircut and a lot of you guys have been suggesting possibly getting a curly girl layered haircut to sort of help liven up my hair a bit because my hair is at such an awkward stage it's like this kind of length and it's all one length the curls just look a bit heavy they're not as bouncy as they could be so I have been considering once we're all allowed outside again to go and get a proper somebody who knows how to cut you know curly hair and just get a few layers put in in the hopes that it will I don't know give my hair a little bit of life because it just seems a bit like bogged down at the moment but here's my problem when I was about 13 I got layers and I hated them I thought that I was gonna have like one of them popular girl haircuts and like I thought that my hair would just look nice every day but because I wasn't one of those girls that used heat on the hair like straightened the hair every day I just let my hair be natural every day it just didn't look good the layers just didn't ever look put together or polished oh just breathed in some dust and I spent years trying to grow them out and then obviously I went through my whole hair journey trying to grow my hair long I wanted my hair like long all the way down to my waist didn't happen but I feel like if I just wait it out like another maybe two or three months my hair will obviously be longer I feel like I only want to get layers because it's at this awkward stage but also another reason why I'm not sure about getting layers is because I'm not sure if I'm going to continue having my hair curly I don't think layers will look good on my normal straight hair because I just don't know let me know what you guys think or if you've got layers and if it worked for you I just feel like it might end up making my hair look more messy rather than better you know because I can't style my hair I only use this method anyway also a lot of you wanted to know how much my hair has grown my hair grew half an inch this month which is on track that is how much normal hair is meant to grow on average a month so yeah so I measure from my earlobe what I do is I just pull my hair down and last month it measured 10 inches from earlobe to tip and this month it measured ten and a half inches so will I continue feel like I've come this far I've got to stick to it so I think I am gonna continue it for maybe I'll definitely continue it for a month maybe another month after that see how it's going but I think what I'll do after another month or two I want to try to stop scrunching my hair and see what happens because I have a feeling that my hair is only curling like it is because it's so dry and I feel like once it's healthier and it's more hydrated it might just relax a bit and go back to how it was before I don't think my hair is naturally curly maybe I honestly don't know so what I would love to do is after another maybe one or two months is continue with all the methods I've learned for care like using really nourishing products using the masks every week continuing to not use sulfates and not use silicones but just stop scrunching my hair and see what happens if I don't encourage the curl will it go back straight again and it if it's more healthy which it will be in a couple of months maybe it won't curl maybe my hair is only like shriveling up and curling because it's dry so I guess we'll find out in my next hair update yeah please share your own experience and any like where you are in your journey in the comments I think a lot of us use the comment section to learn stuff and like a lot of people give really helpful advice so remember to check out the comments and like start conversation make sure to follow me everywhere I have like most of the things I have Colin down here hello subscribe if you want to see more please like the video if you liked it and I will see you in the next one bye