Curly Girl Method Archives - Page 13 of 18

10 mousse brands tested head-to-head on my wavy hair (with pics!)

October 30, 2020 by Emily Evert 27 Comments

There are affiliate links in this post.

I spent the first two years of the curly girl method using gel. The first gel I ever tried was LA Looks gel. It worked well and it’s super affordable. I just didn’t see a reason to try anything else for quite a while.

I don’t even remember why, but one day I decided to try mousse. I noticed that I had better root volume and my hair dried faster. I have very dense hair and was used to diffusing for over an hour. Cutting over 20 minutes off my diffusing time felt like a huge benefit.

Once again, I stuck with the same product for quite a long time. It was working well, so why change things up, I thought. Then the frugal side of me started wondering if I could get similar results from a cheaper mousse.

At first, testing different mousses on my wavy hair was just for my own experimentation. Then I realized I could make this into a resource for others. So I went back and re-used some for the sake of taking pictures and making detailed notes on the results.

Marketing does not do a very good job of letting you know what you’ll really get from a mousse, in my opinion. For example “level 3 hold” doesn’t mean much if you have never used that brand before. I thought a detailed mousse comparison could be really helpful.

To try to ensure that my results weren’t based on my routine, I used the same hair routine as closely as possible each time I tested a mousse.

What’s The Difference Between Wavy And Curly Hair

November 16, 2020 by Emily Evert 12 Comments

When I first started suspecting my hair may not be straight, I thought it might be curly. After all, people had recommended the curly girl method to me. When I followed the curly girl method, people asked me if I curled my hair. Or, they’d say they liked my hair curly.

Naturally, it would be easy to think this meant my hair was curly. Many people don’t really recognize wavy hair, so if hair is clearly not straight, they will just call it curly. Through learning a bit more, I started to realize my hair wasn’t curly, it was wavy.

I know some are confused about the differences between wavy and curly hair. I thought I would try to explain in a way that makes the most sense to me.

Wavy Hair Curl Patterns Explained | Wavy Hair Chart

November 16, 2020 by Emily Evert 13 Comments

Shortly after discovering the curly girl method and realizing my hair was wavy, I wanted to know what my curl pattern was. I don’t really even know why I wanted to know. I just did. I looked at curl pattern charts and found most of them really confusing. I thought I would make a wavy hair chart guide that would be a bit easier to make sense of!

Wavy Hair Number

Wavy hair is “type 2” hair, spanning from 2a to 2c. 2B waves are shaped like the letter S, while 2a waves are looser, and 2C waves are tighter.

2b? 3a? What do these wavy hair numbers or curly hair numbers mean? I found them really confusing at first. I would look at different curl pattern charts and feel like the images shown would vary dramatically. I think finding your curl pattern from those charts is confusing because they show you an entire head of hair, often with varying wavy hair numbers on their head.

I found the same to be true of looking up #2bhair or similar on Instagram or other places online. If you look at any given curl pattern tag, you’ll see a dramatic range of curl patterns. How confusing! It’s common for people with wavy hair to have more than 1 wavy hair category that they fit into.

It just doesn’t really make sense to me to try to give a single curl pattern to most people. It makes way more sense to give a type to individual waves/curls. So I’ve taken some photos to help show you how to find your wavy hair number for your individual waves or curls. Most likely, you have multiple.

How To Microplop Your Hair – Guide With Photos

November 24, 2020 by Emily Evert 16 Comments

Recently I covered how to plop your wavy hair. While it’s talked about slightly less often, I personally am also a fan of microplopping. I thought I’d do a guide for how to microplop your hair as well!

What Is Microplopping?

Microplopping is when you scrunch your hair using a t-shirt, to help enhance and dry your naturally wavy or curly hair. Microplopping can help remove excess water to avoid weigh down, or it can be used to help waves spring back up after applying products.

What is the purpose of microplopping?

The purpose of microplopping is to remove excess water from your hair to prevent water from flattening your hair pattern. Microplopping can help your hair stay in a tighter curl pattern while your hair dries, can help your waves to spring back up if they stretch out after adding products.

Personally, I use microplopping to correct my hair if it starts to fall before it dries. For example, if I plop, add my mousse, and then see that the top of my strands is going straight, I will microplop to help add wave back high up on my strands.

Or, if I am diffusing the left side of my head first, and see that the right side of my head has become elongated, I will microplop that side before diffusing it to help it spring back up before I diffuse it. Your hair will stay in the pattern that it dries in, so it’s important to have it in the pattern you want before diffusing.

« Previous Page