Here’s a confession: I’ve had Curlformers for two and a half years now and have used them a total of three (documented) times – probably about eight times total. First try was around this time two years ago and in what is the worst quality video that I’ve seen on YouTube… honestly, how did I ever have any subscribers?? Y’all are loyal for a flat twist updo. It came out pretty cute in the front, but the middle was ROUGH. In documented effort #2, I had the brilliant idea to see how Curlformers would work on pressed natural hair. Short version: they don’t – my hair ended up in an updo. Third time was for my birthday last year, where I essentially recreated my flat twist updo look but with cornrows done at the African braiding place that tried to take my edges along with my money. All three of those times, I wore my hair in a half updo, so I’ve never successfully installed and worn a full Curlformers set. Until now!
The Prep
I first had to detangle my hair from my mini twist out. Now detangling mini twists is an art, so I just sucked it up and took my sweet time – precisely four hours of my sweet time – to carefully dry detangle my hair just using my fingers. It was well worth it, because my wash process was super smooth and I needed fully detangled hair to get a smooth Curlformer set. I used the new Clairol Hair Food Moisturizing Hair Mask
The Process
Products/Tools Used:
Lottabody Coconut & Shea Oils Moisturize Me Curl & Style Milk
Lottabody Style Me Texturizing Setting Lotion
53 Curlformers Long & Wide
Wide toothed comb, modified denman brush, section clips
Post-Video
When I took the Curlformers out on Sunday, my hair was soft, shiny, and pretty well defined. Not gonna lie though, based on my past experiences with Curlformers I expected to look like a lion lost in the wild by the time I got home. Surprisingly, the curls remained in place and didn’t poof up. Testing my luck, I decided to just sleep with a bonnet and not do anything special to prepare my curls for bed. And then on Monday morning I put the curls to the ULTIMATE test – the workout test. I did a 25 minute HIIT workout that consisted of sets of burpees, squats, lunges, and what are apparently called diver’s pushups. I definitely built up a sweat underneath my bonnet but I simply wiped my forehead and took as cool a shower as I could tolerate. Post shower, I had a bit more hangtime but my curls were still mostly intact, despite increasingly frizzy ends. There were two in the back, which were larger sections than the others, that were threatening to lose their curl, but I cleverly bobby pinned their roots to help them keep it together. I lightly ran some oil and tugged on my curls, encouraging them to drop even more slightly. Again, I assumed my hair would poof by the time I got home, and again, I was pleasantly surprised when I still looked cute at the end of the day. Repeated everything Monday night and threw on a hat on Tuesday just cause I wanted another excuse to wear a hat, and I wanted to see if the curls would smush. 12 hours later, curls were still fly!
This morning, I plan to finally pull apart my curls which I foolishly started last night because I have sticky fingers and impatient eyes, and my fingers are crossed that they’ll give me a soft and romantic curly fro. Big dreams, especially because New York’s atypical nice weather for the past four days of course goes back to normal the day I want to wear my hair out big. I’ll come back and upload the picture of the result as soon as I have it!
There are know curl former for the short hair cut