Hair Update!

I touched up today at around 15 weeks post give or take. Totally unplanned for. Blame it on my edges! I took out my Ghana braids exactly a week ago, but my edges kept misbehaving; they just wouldn’t cooperate. Soft hold gel was not good enough for them, the other option was to get one of those firm hold brown gels that I am not very keen on so I thought why not just touch up the edges for now and the rest of the head in February next year as planned.  Good idea……or so it seemed…..didn’t quite work out like that.

Lye relaxers are harsh on my scalp I have mentioned that before that’s why I am team no lye but I had a tub of TCB lye relaxer that had been collecting dust in my cabinet for a little over a year, (hadn’t expired yet) bought before I started my hair journey. Purchased for use on the leave out hair for a weave installation that never happened and I ended up keeping it just in case I got a weave later; still hasn’t happened.  Didn’t have time to go out and purchase my no lye kit after deciding to do the whole head last minute, so I figured that since I now knew that you could add conditioners and oils to weaken relaxers I could probably do the same to this tub and get away with it.  I was right.  Here’s how it went down:

·         Added coconut oil and ORS replenishing conditioner to the relaxer no measurements just eyeballed it

·         Started the application back first, edges last, went over edges twice to ensure they were tamed sorry I forgot to time myself I used my eyes to check if It was texlaxed enough

·         Rinsed relaxer out and shampooed with ORS Creamy aloe shampoo

·         Deep conditioned with ORS Replenishing conditioner

·         T-shirt blotted, used AVJ as a leave in

·         Applied avocado and coconut oil mix to seal in the moisture – water

·         Blow dried on cool and styled (was pressed for time no time to air dry)

No length checks for now until sometime next year.

 

Blow dried on cool. Will be mostly bunning/braidouts for the next week.

Am I happy with my texlaxed results? Yes very much

Would I use a lye relaxer again? Only in an emergency situation if the tub was already in the house. Team no lye it still is.

Just incase you are wondering why the lye relaxer for leave out hair…it makes more sense for me to get a premixed tub since I only use a tiny bit of relaxer for the leave out, seal and keep the rest for future use. Ain’t nobody got time to be mixing up a tablespoon or two worth of box kit relaxer for leave out hair:)

Quick Tip: always check the expiration dates on your relaxers and hair products in general. Depending on the country of manufacture or sale products will have an expiration date and may sometimes include the codes: 3M, 6M, 12M, 18M, 24M etc what this simply means is that the product is good for the number of months stated once opened. “M” denotes the months so 3M means the product is good for use within 3 months after being opened. If unopened then the product is good until its expiration date. Besides you can always do a sniff test if it smells funny or has changed colour it probably has gone bad and you shouldn’t be using it.

AVJ: Aloe Vera Juice