"Permanently" straightened my hair!!

Hey y'all!! So obviously you know my hair is naturally curly- and of course, because it's curly, I want it straight, as the sentiment goes.

I can straighten my dry hair in about 15 minutes minimum, if I am not trying to be to precise; 20 minutes if I wanted to look polished and professional. So I had options.

But if I didn't do anything to it, this is what it looked like:

 (no product or blow drying)

(with product, and blown dry for at least ten minutes)

And that wasn't terrible. But I also have really dry hair, so I wash it only about twice a week unless I want it to start drying out and breaking. So while it looks passable on day one, here's what day two and three look like:

(hair is up)

 (Hair is up!)

 (HAIR IS UP!!!)

(Here's my personal favorite-

GAH!)

And that's how it'd be for the next couple days until I washed it again. As I was looking for photos of my yucky hair to post, it hit me anew how much I was putting my hair up in a ponytail- and that really looks terrible in photos!

About every other time I wash it, I would dry it and then straighten it, which got me to here:

But if any wind, water or even humidity touched it, I'd be here:

I could get it super glossy and perfect, but only after 45 minutes of blowing dry, straightening, and teasing:

Ain't no momma got dat kinda time!  But even after all that, the next morning after sleeping on it, I'd need to re-straighten it for 5-10 minutes, and I'd be here:

Not terrible, but it definitely looks like I just rolled out of bed.

So- after researching the HECK out of DIY permanent straightening systems, I settled on this one:

It only cost $27 on Amazon- compared to the five to seven HUNDRED dollars it costs to have a hair-dresser use this exact same product in a salon. 

After sweating the possibility of burning off my hair for a few days, I finally took the plunge. I had my trusty assistant apply it for me after washing it with a clarifying shampoo:

(Bye bye curls! hopefully!)

There are two products to put on- one you let set for 25-45 minutes- I left it for 40 once Seth was finished applying it:

(It was super thick. My hair would have stood up perfectly straight)

Then you wash it out. Looks pretty straight here:

Then you blow it dry:

(This was the really scary part- it was frizzier than ever here!)

And then straighten the living daylights out of it.

(Whew!)

The you apply cream #2 for 5-7 minutes. Then you can't wash it, sweat on it, put clips, hairbands, or anything in it or even put it behind your ears for 72 hours.

Then you can wash it, and hopefully it dries straight!  Here's how it looked after the first washing while still wet:

And here's once it dried- DRUMROLL!!

So it's not perfectly straight- but it's so much better and 10X more manageable. In fact, it doesn't look that different that the photo of when it was the second day after straightening it. And it feels SO. MUCH. SILKIER!  And it's crazy- I can just put it up in a clip and it looks like this:

(VOILA!)

It would probably take less than a minute of straightening to perfect this- so not exactly the wash-and-go hair I was hoping for, but I'll take it over messy curly hair that looks dirty because it's so messy, even when it's not.

(Turns out it took 2 minutes by the stopwatch. That's 1/10th of how long it used to take to get it this straight!)

I had read reviews about people who left it on too long and it fried their hair, so after 40 minutes of application I started worrying that the sections I had done first were going to process too long so I washed it out. Those sections are considerably straighter than the second half- so my advice is if you have thick or long hair that would indicate a long application time, plan on doing your hair in two parts so you can control how long each part processes better. I'm sure a professional would have known that, and funnily enough, though there were about a hundred (not even kidding) reviews I read about this product on amazon.com, no one thought to do it in two parts. 

Also, if you have "virgin hair" like mine, meaning you've done no chemical processes to it like coloring or other straighteners or relaxers or blow outs, then your processing time will be much longer. The box says the max time is 45 minutes, so I stopped after 40 thinking I couldn't have what they called "resistant hair". But I realized that course, virgin hair is exactly what they were talking about, and based on the success of the first half of my hair that got 20-30 minutes longer than the second, I'd say that a processing time of 60 minutes is going to work better (but only if you have virgin, super healthy hair- otherwise you really could damage it.)

Now, I'm excited to try out hair-styles I never could before like this: and this 

which I never could before because it would take 15 minimum to straighten my hair, just to put it up anyway, which didn't seem worth it. Yay! I'll need to learn to french-braid my own hair- yikes!

This may sound like an excuse, but the truth is- I didn't exercise like I should have and wanted to because I knew that even if I had an hour to do it, I didn't have the second hour it would take to wash the sweat out of my hair and re-do it (which would be necessary, because sweat would curl up the roots of my hair) or if it was already curly, now it would look even dirtier and messier. So now I have the freedom to rinse the sweat out of my hair witho

ut having to carve out the time to re-do the whole thing, complete with blow-drying for 15 minutes, and straightening for at least another 15. Yippee! And it'll last forever- until it grows out, and usually you don't have to touch it up for up to a year because the weight of it keeps the roots straight.

Well anyway, that's the hair-logue! It feels strange to have polished looking hair after almost no effort, (almost as if I were naturally a Roberts girl) but it feels great!!