10 Tips for Maintaining Bleached Curls

Now, since I have bleached my hair twice, I have to handle and care for my hair differently. Here are my 10 tips on how to maintain bleached curls.

1. MOISTURIZE, I cannot stress this enough. Curly hair is already very dry and bleach will have your hair dying of thirst. Moisturize when it’s wet, moisturize when it’s dry. Whatever you do, don’t quit moisturizing.
2. Wait 5-10 days after bleaching to shampooing your hair, if you shampoo, because it can dry out your hair and your hair really needs time to rebuild its natural oils.
3. If you MUST wash your hair, try co-washing. Only use conditioner in the shower. It’ll help cleanse as well as moisturize.
4. DON’T brush your hair, especially if it’s dry. Finger comb your hair in the shower with conditioner or use a wide tooth comb. Bleach weakens your hair, so you have to very careful, to avoid breakage or shedding.
5. STAY AWAY FROM THE STRAIGHTENER. I know it’s tempting to see what your new do looks like straight, but if you know what’s good for you, refrain!!! Give your locks a break from the heat it’s already under a lot of stress, hold off on the heat for a while.
6. PROTEIN TREATMENT. Glory in a jar. This is good to use after bleaching your hair. The protein will help strengthen your hair. This is good to do anytime your hair is feeling damaged, weak or brittle. Make sure you condition well after, because protein, although it strengthens your hair, can dry it out.
   

   I’ve been using this for years and it works wonders!

7. Try a purple shampoo. This is great for blonde hair because it helps restore the vibrancy of your color as well as tone down brassiness. Try to use only once a week because it makes your hair EXTREMELY DRY.
   

   The absolute best toning shampoo and was under $10.

8. Purple moisturizer. I’ve been using this one by Loreal and I love it. It’s super moisturizing and also helps maintain your color longer.
   

   Beats brassiness and it so moisturizing compared to purple shampoo.

9. Deep condition your hair once a week or when needed. I use coconut oil, conditioner or both. Just slather your hair with it, cover it with a cap or plastic wrap and let it sit a few hours or overnight. Your hair will be soft and forever grateful.
   

   This is a curly girl’s best friend. It’s affordable and as long as its 100% pure the brand shouldn’t matter.

10. OWN IT! Whether everyone else likes it or not, as long as you love it, rock it. It’s your personal style and as long as you’re confident in it, your locks will be fierce and flawless. Nothing looks better than confidence.

Blonde Hair Update

Hey guys, so if you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I have recently transitioned to blonde. Well, I decided to do one more lightening process because I still wasn’t at my ideal blonde. This process did include bleaching my hair again, but I want to clarify that I waited an entire 3 WEEKS after my last bleaching process, in order to give my hair a break and time to strengthen. When I went in originally I just wanted to tone down the orange I had in my hair from the last time, but ultimately decided I wanted to go lighter. Therefore I had to use bleach to achieve my desired color.

Golden Blonde [curly] before second bleach process.

Golden Blonde [straight]before second beach process.

               This time around I soaked and I mean SOAKED my hair in coconut oil the night before my salon appointment. This would replenish the oils, soften and strengthen my hair before the harsh bleaching process it also helps reduce the itching and burning that occurs from bleaching. So the next day I my tolerance for the bleach was a lot higher than the first, where I literally though my scalp was going to fall off. Not kidding. Once I processed for about thirty minutes, washed and dried I came out with a highlighter yellow looking color. GROSS! But, I had a violet based hair dye applied afterwards to help tone down the yellow. Because violet is on the opposite side of the color wheel from yellow, it helps cancel it out. We didn’t know how it was going to come out but we were hoping for the best. After another wash and dry I came out with a beautiful bleach blonde color that I absolutely love! Finally, my color is where I want it to be and I couldn’t be happier.

After the second bleach process.

My Natural Hair Journey

When I was born I had super thick, long, black hair, that eventually turned into curly Q’s when I was a baby. When I was four my brother got gum in my hair and my mother took me to have it cut out and basically my brother and I rocked the same hair cut for a while. My hair eventually grew back, not to the soft curly Q’s they were before, but into thick, black frizz. When I was six, my Filipino mother took me to get my first relaxer. This would be the beginning to end of my healthy hair. Throughout my childhood I continued to have my hair relaxed or straightened when I got to middle school I learned how to straighten my hair and I did almost every single day. By the time I was in eighth grade my hair stopped growing and was so damaged and fried it started turning crunchy and blonde from split ends. I was a hot tool addict. My hair was barely at my armpit, I had no curls whatsoever, and when I didn’t straighten my air it was just straight and poufy when air dried. I didn’t even believe I had curls.

me at three growing my hair back

freshman year with gross fried hair

 

I loved all their products but this was my favorite, good on straight and curly/natural hair

available at beauty supply stores for under $10

Summer 2010, the summer before my freshman year of high school, my step-mom decided it was time for an intervention. She took away all access from any hot tools. I had to stick it out the whole summer. During this time I started taking biotin pills which did make my hair and nails grow, but it made hair everywhere on my body grow fast and thick, which wasn’t a good thing for me. By the time my freshman year began I decided I wanted to take better care of my hair. I started using African Pride hair products which is made specifically for ethnic hair. I also started using hair protein called HAIR by Nutress Hair Company. This helped restore strength and moisture to my damaged hair. I also made sure to deep condition my hair on weekends and use hot oil treatments about once a month. Eventually my hair got softer and stronger and slowly, it started growing after years of stunt.

 

By my sophomore year I found a curl at the nape of my neck and I was so excited I ran and showed my dad. I couldn’t remember a time where I saw my hair curl. My hair grew about mid chest length but still too short for me, I started wearing 18” extensions to pacify my frustration with my snail speed hair growth. I continued to wear extensions throughout the rest of my sophomore year.

As my hair grew out my new growth, roots, grew very curly, but the majority of my hair was still straight. My junior year was the year I went through the Ugly Transition Stage. That disgusting in between stage where your hair is kind of half and half and doesn’t know what it wants to be. At this point you have two options: 1) the big chop or 2) deal with it. Since I was NOT okay with chopping my hair off I had to suffer and deal with it. I started using actual curl enhancing shampoo and conditioner from Tresseme to promote curls and braiding my hair every night. My hair became more wavy than curly and a lot of it was still straight at the bottom. As always, I was impatient, and decided to start curling the straight pieced with a spiral curling wand. This, of course was counterproductive to promoting healthy hair.

flawless, yet damaging, wand curls

expensive ($32) but AMAZING! A little goes a long way.

December 2013, I had four inches cut off my hair, resulting in much deeper waves and even some curls. By spring 2014 I stopped using shampoo completely and switched to cleansing conditioners, like wen instead. I deep conditioned my hair every 1-2 weeks or whenever my hair felt dry. I soon had full on curls developing and my hair was much fuller and thicker. I also started using flexirods opposed to the wand to blend in the straight pieces. This is a good heatless alternative.

December 2013

March 2014, deep waves

May 2014, real loose curls!

Summer 2014, I hopped on the coconut oil bandwagon and for good reason too. I braided my hair with it, massaged my scalp with it, and deep conditioned with it too. It definitely was a key contributor to massive hair growth and curl formation. My hair continued to flourish and glow with health, growing longer and curlier. By fall it was a good six inches from my butt in the back and almost waist length in the front (I had long layers).

you can buy this at Walmart for $6 in the food isle

June 2014

November 2014

December 2014

In November, ready to chop off the damaged hair, once and for all, I had four inches cut off my hair. From then on my hair grew like wild fire. The healthier it got the curlier it became. Although my hair grew longer, I started to experience shrinkage, because it started curling so much!

It was definitely a long and vexing journey, but was totally worth all the effort. I’ve tried every quick fix I could image (and afford) and found that there are no short cuts to growing long healthy hair. The ultimate key to hair growth is tender loving care and a lot, I mean a lot, of patience.

May 2015, all natural curls

My Summer Journey to Blonde

Sorry for being gone for so long! Thanks to summer school, I had no time to really write what I wanted. Anyways, after years of debating with myself I finally decided to go BLONDE. I was so excited, but it would turn out to be an immensely long and trying journey. From red/orange frizz to flaming yellow roots, my journey to blonde would be a painstakingly tedious one. I’m still not where I want to be, but I am quite happy with where I currently am on the blonde spectrum, for now.

I dyed my hair for the FIRST TIME in my life on June 27, 2015. Yes, I admit it unashamedly, my hair was virgin. I had tried natural things in the past before, like lemon and honey. It gave me nice natural highlights, but still not the blonde locks I had longed for since I was sixteen. I decided this summer was my time for change. I told my grandma and she was all too quick to run to Walmart. Transitioning from dark brown, I didn’t want anything too drastic. I also wanted to make sure that while I was transitioning to blonde I did it in a manner to maintain health and moisture to my curls. I ended up going with a honey blonde color by Dark & Lovely. I followed the directions on the box and thirty-minutes later, the result was a reddish/orange, frizzy mess. As you can assume, I was NOT happy. But because I wanted a healthy transition, it would be another week before I could go back and try again.

phase 1: dyed with Dark & Lovely in “honey blonde”

For the next week I intensely hydrated my hair with deep conditioner and coconut oil. On July 4^th I attempted to fix the mess I created. Convinced that using a super platinum-blonde would lighten my hair, I dyed my hair using Dark & Lovely in platinum blonde. Like before, I followed the directions to the T. This time I came out with bright yellow hair. I was glad the brown finally lightened, but bright yellow was not working for me. Two days later, I went to my local beauty supply store to buy toner. Hair toner is meant to tone down or cancel certain colors. I bought a blue based toner by Wella in T15, which would tone down the bright yellow. I ended up using four boxes of toner and two bottles of the 4oz Wella developer. I couldn’t wait to apply it to my Pikachu-yellow mop of curls. Fifteen minutes I washed it out and my hair came out pretty good. I wound up with a toned down honey color, that I actually loved. I rocked this for a few weeks until my next phase in this journey.

phase 2:dyed with Dark & Lovely in “platinum blonde” [before toner]

after toner, curly [braid out]

               Although I liked my honey blonde hair I still was not where I intended to be. I decided I wanted to have beige-blonde hair and made a hair appointment for the end of July. I was so thrilled, this was a huge moment for me. I even filmed a video, which will be posted here on my blog. To get the color I desired I would have to undergo the dreaded bleaching process. As terrified as I was, I was ready. There was no turning back. The stylist applied the bleach to my hair and it wasn’t that bad, at first. I was told that it would kinda tingle, but to my regret I had scratched my scalp prior to bleaching it!!! BIG mistake. My head was on fire! I tried to stand it as long as I could. My grandma told me to “tough it out” and the stylist said to rinse it out if I couldn’t take it. I tried to stay strong, but on the verge of full-fledged tears, I finally relented. There was a huge sigh of relief once I was under the water. Water never felt so good, that day. Unfortunately, rinsing out early means I didn’t finish processing. The result was yellow hair resembling a golden-lion tamarin monkey. Yikes!

I hated it so much. But once it was blow dried and flat iron, it didn’t look too bad, not shabby at all. Although it wasn’t what I came here for, personal health and safety is most important, and it came out okay. In the end this whole journey proved to be a wonderful learning experience. I learned that it’s okay to experiment with my look, always go to a professional or expert first, NEVER EVER scratch my head before bleaching, and a whole lot of patience. This journey was so fun even though I messed up A LOT but what’s life without its hiccups.

Video of my latest hair color: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCKLIe9o58M

shopping for clothes to go with my hair

white is a blonde’s best friend!

 

 

 

 

 

Hello, to the blogging world!

Well, I finally did it, I gave in and started a blog. Five years ago I promised Sophia I’d start a YouTube channel, I never did, but this is a start. I want to use this platform to share my personal life with you all. I am Clay-El (yes with a hyphen) I am a 5’2, multi-racial, college girl with crazy big hair. I love talking hair, makeup, clothes, and especially helping others in anyway I can. I am a very introverted person and I think this is a good way for me to be more ambitious.

I’m looking forward to discuss a variety of topics, from hair and fashion to self-love and acceptance. I want to be able to relate to you all on different levels. My posts will mostly be about natural/curly hair. I want to post about transitioning from over processed, dead hair, to fuller, healthier locks. I will also post about my hair maintenance and as well as the products I use. Since I do get many beauty questions, I will being using this blog to answer them. There will also be fashion posts and that’s always fun! I want to be able to talk to you all on a deeper level too. I will be posting about body image, self-love, my struggles with it, and how I am overcoming it.

I hope to reach people who share the same interests and struggles with me. More than anything I hope to inspire and encourage you all. I really hope I don’t disappoint my readers! I am super excited to start this new ambitious journey.