Guest Blogger: Revelle & Fifi

Kandy

Guest Blogger: Revelle & Fifi

Hello Kandy Land Kurls readers!

My name is Révelle, and my little girl is nicknamed Fifi - 3 and a half years old. After reading about Teri Laflesh’s Tightly Curly Method (TCM), link below, I decided to use this summer to experiment with learning how to apply it to Fifi's curls. Annnnnnd, Kandy and I thought it would be a great idea to share my trials, errors and hopefully successes with you! So I'm guest blogging, even though I don't actually have a blog! Fun! :-)

First, here's some background on the TCM. The process is quite basic. It's nothing more than using store bought conditioners, for the most part, applying this generously to fresh/clean hair, setting your curl pattern using the abundance of conditioner in your hair, letting it dry and not washing it out until you're ready to wash your hair again. For an exact walk through of the step by step process, visit Teri's description here, and click on the "Tightly Curly Method" link. According to Teri, the TCM can be used on ALL curl types.

Our approach and hopes!

- I plan to experiment with the TCM for at least 1-2 months, or in other words all summer.

- I'll use different “combing conditioners” as recommendedby Teri, on her site, or based on ones that I think will work.

- Fifi's hair will be washed once a week - which is our normal summer wash routine, anyway.

- The plan is to let her wear her hair as freely as possible to avoid part-heavy hairstyles (her scalp is prone to sunburn)

- I aim to post once a week with our findings, product reviews, hairstyles, etc.

- Oh and consider yourself warned, posts will be picture-heavy, because, well you know, they’re supposed to be "worth a thousand words"!

Here we go!

OUR TIGHTLY CURLY EXPERIMENT -SUMMER 2012!

WEEK 1, POST 1 

1. After taking down her previous hairstyle, we washed (with medicated shampoo, she has eczema), deep conditioned and de-tangled with Curl Rehab Moisturizing Hair Treatment. Then rinsed the DC out.
2. With the hair dripping wet, and loosely following the TCM, I applied the three products you see below from left to right - Aussie Volume Conditioner, Darcy's Organic Coconut & Hibiscus Conditioning Oil and Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil
3. I didn't follow Teri's application method exactly (strand by strand doodling and/or clumping small individual sections) because we were running out of daylight - we started this much too late in the afternoon. Instead, I sectioned off parts and applied the three product items, in the above order, by raking them through the hair with my fingers and then separating the hair with a Denman brush. I promise to take some pictures of how I apply the products in a later post.
4. In the meantime, Teri's application breakdown can be found here.

OUR FINDINGS (with supporting pictures below) 

1. This process has to be done in the morning to give the hair enough time to dry
2. Using Aussie Volume Conditioner was a mistake; I meant to pick up the Aussie Moist Conditioner. BUT, it worked out. I liked the AVC. It left her hair soft, detangled with no build up and no crunchy feeling once the hair dried. I will try the AMC later on. I like the Darcy’s oil, no complaints, but probably won’t use it again, two oils are overkill, I think.
3. Before starting this experiment, I read many reviews where people chose to use oils, like I did above, to help lock in moisture. Teri doesn't do this, but I thought it sounded like a good idea, therefore I did so.
4. When Teri advises to not mess with the hair while it is drying, she is really right, we had fuzziness where I kept "fixing" the wet curls.
5. A day later, this method held up well at the beach/pool. (Once she got her hair wet, I left it open - shocking (!) I know. BUT because her hair was heavy with conditioner, it never tangled even when she went into the pool (pulled back into a ponytail) and later, shampooed - still, little to no tangles!
6. After swimming, we washed with Aubrey's Swimmer's Normalizing Shampoo, added more AVC, lots of coconut oil, blew the hair dry, on a medium setting, so that it was just damp, not dripping wet, separated it into six big twists, and off to bed. By the way, this was our first time using "heat", although the setting was more warm than hot. We were at the beach for a few days, so this 6^th step was repeated often.

NOTE: As we went straight to the beach the day after applying the TCM, we didn’t get a chance to test it over a week. We’ll do that in a subsequent post, and see how long one application of conditioner holds up over a week. The beach pictures are not meant to demonstrate curl definition, they are just to show that we experienced little to no tangling with free wet hair. Ordinarily, her hair tangles like the dickens once wet – but not this time!