If you watch my Youtube videos, you’ll notice that I’ve been wearing my hair in curly updo’s a lot lately. I’m absolutely loving the versatility of my locs, and the same versatility can be achieved with relaxed and natural hair. Every week, I’ve been rodding my hair with a different setting product to find the one that gives the best hold without producing dryness or any flakiness. In my 5 week experiment, the product that has worked best is Oyin Handmade Shine & Define. Honestly, I’m shocked. I’m not saying this is the best because I work there, I didn’t know the product was that good.  I’ve used it for years, and really didn’t know it was capable of the magic that I am witnessing!!! When people ask me to describe it, I always say it’s an all natural substitute for mousse, gel and other styling creams. And because it’s all natural, it works perfectly with relaxed and natural hair.

During this rod journey, I’ve tried Mousse, and now I’m searching for a bottle of lottabody to use. I used these when I was relaxed and they worked like a charm. The problem with these is that they are so jam packed with alcohol and other damaging chemicals that I was using a bunch of oils and moisturizers to keep my hair alive. (I used to dilute the lottabody in a spray bottle using 2 parts of the setting lotion and one part water.) I don’t want dry, crunchy hair, but I think I should try all options at least once, just to be fair. I was also a bit hesitant to pack a bunch of crap into my locs, for fear that I couldn’t wash it all out and it would “embed” into my locs.  I thoroughly wash (or at least thoroughly rinse) my hair before each rod set.  I guess we’ll see in the future.

As far as loose naturals, I didn’t ever find success doing my own rod sets. I’ve seen them done successfully, but I could never do my own. I found far more success doing twist outs and pin curls! When I did my own rodsets, they were always super frizzy! That annoyed me to no end. Feel free to share any tips, if you’ve got some!

So how do curls help your hair grow? Well, they don’t. But you not manipulating your hair will keep it from breaking, thus promoting length. While I was relaxed, I lived in curls.  I am positive that setting my hair helped tremendously. The technique really isn’t any different. I started out using the same rods that were in constant rotation during my relaxed days.  Remember, the smaller the rod, the smaller the curl. Since then, I’ve purchased two more sizes of rods, just to try something new. I’ll be showing them in a later post.

As you can see, I’ve got two pictures of me.  I used the white and gray rods in both pictures, which are pretty freakin’ small.  Each image shows a fresh set.  How cool is it that the results look very, very different?   Within the next few days, I will be doing a Youtube video tutorial on how I create a rod set, and how I achieve different updo’s and styles.

In the mean time, feel free to share what products you use for your rod/rollersets!  I’d like to keep experimenting to make sure I’ve thoroughly researched most options!  Oh, the versatility!