Hi people, what's been on?

So, last year on the 20th of December to be exact, I silk pressed my hair. This was part of my healthy hair goals to prepare my hair for a new year.

 It's strange isn't it, how straightening my hair with heat (using a flat iron even) is deemed a healthy decision for my fine textured, high porosity, medium density type 4 hair?

I shared in detail my reasons in this post but in summary, I find that it's the best route for my hair during the dry season. My hair does not fare well with protective styles involving extensions. It also has the tendency to form knots and splits due to the lack of moisture. Moisturising my hair daily doesn't help. The constant wetting and drying from spray bottles and washing my hair leads to hygral fatigue and let's not talk of the constant manipulation which my fine strands is in no mood for during this season. The best thing finally is keeping it stretched.

We learn everyday and for me, my favorite thing to do when it comes to my hair is learn how to be lazy with my hair and still have healthy hair. Taking care of fine natural hair can be a lot of work if you let it but I've learnt how to make it easy. I shared a lot of my cheats in this post.

Back to my silk press....

I usually straighten my hair with a keratin straightening kit. This kit not only helps my curls stay straight for longer but also provides an intensive protein treatment for my hair since it contains hydrolysed keratin (protein hair is made of).
 I do this only once a year preferably during the dry season since for best results, you need to use direct heat.
In the rainy season, I stick to henna treatment and using products with hydrolysed protein which usually do not require heat except I decide to use a portable deep conditioning heat cap to speed up the process.

My keratin treatment of choice is Beautiful Textures Texture Manageability System but this time I used Shea Moisture Tahitian Noni and Monoi Straightening System for comparison.
My straightening process is outlined in this post (don't worry,  the links opens in a new page so you won't leave this page. I know how annoying it is to lose track of a post).


I had the silk press in for a total of 24 days before missing my curls enough to wash it off. A lot of people thought I had decided to relax my hair permanently especially when my hair was still straight in the 3rd week.
A concerned follower on my instagram page @nappilynigeriangirl was scared that my hair wouldn't revert. I assured her that it would and it did.😀
(I will outline my washday process in the next post).

While my hair was straight, I had it in a ponytail most of the time to avoid breakage from the constant friction between my clothes and my fine hair. This friction would cause it to break more.

This was in the second week.

My other reason for not letting down my hair was that the harmattan wind blowing through messed it up in such a way that I would have to detangle properly before bed ..... which is the manipulation I was trying to avoid by straightening my hair in the first place!😔
I have played with idea of cutting my straight hair into a bob like CurlyNikki's but since I have my hair curly for the most of the year, it would drastically change the shape of my hair.

That being said, I did leave my hair down but protected it by keeping it in waves and curls. This was to take advantage of the protection these styles give my hair when it's clumped together.


To achieve the waves, I would make just one bantu knot on top of my head with a scarf to smooth my edges and then finger comb lightly on taking it down the next day.



To achieve the curls, I would make between 6-8 bantu knots and finger comb them the following morning to achieve bouncy hair.





To maintain my hair, I would religiously  oil my dry hair at night with NappyGirl Growth Enhancing Oil to keep my strands supple and strong. I am proud to say I never missed a night of oiling and I still didn't have greasy hair!




I thoroughly enjoyed this silk press and I had very little breakage. Towards the end when it started becoming puffy at the roots, I started doing some updos. My favorite no frills updo was a flat twisted crown braid.




In my next post, I will share my process for reverting back to coily without much drama.
Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss out on any posts.  The subscribe button is on the top left portion of this blog.

Hope this post helped a naturalista!