I recently bit the bullet and decided to change my color up drastically. Since I was a kid, I have sworn mother nature made a mistake and I should have been born a red head. I have done a lot of things to achieve red locks and for the most part, I've been one shade of auburn or another since I was a little girl. It has never been bright enough, though. The sun can only do so much to give me the red I want. (I have natural, red highlights)
I have done sun in. I have done henna shampoos. I have done henna (love the stuff but application is a struggle and the weight sucks. That was back when my hair was shoulder length. Now that Slayer is almost long enough to sit on, the idea of hennaing makes me cringe.). I have for the last few years settled with a dyp dye where I would bleach the ends and bangs then deposit red dye like n rage or manic panic.
And while Slayer can retain red pretty damn well, perhaps more so than the average hair, the it still bleeds.
I also felt like there was something missing, the ends were just not cutting it.
So I grabbed four bottles of L'Oreal high lift red for brunettes. I always had issues with bleaching my own hair. While I was fine doing my bangs, I always panicked at doing the ends and I was NOT going to do the whole length. Nope. No sir. I didn't spend all these years growing out my mane and then lose it on a bad bleach job.
As I rinsed out the dye and looked into the mirror, I couldn't help but whisper that I was back. Hah!
I had failed to prepare properly. I had gotten color-safe shampoo from Pantene and silly me, who should really know better, didn't read the ingredients. Nope.. too many sulfates. I've already had an issue with severe bleeding due to the deposit-only colors or the red turning orange extremely fast (N'Rage does that) because of sulfates. That's not even counting the fact that the only part I tend to concentrate shampoo on has been the scalp. The length gets the excess squeegied into it then rinsed out.
I went out, bought what turned out to be fetid smelling, organic shea butter shampoo that was sulfate free. It gave me a TON of volume, but I had issues from the get go. My scalp flaked like no other, the hair felt filmy and dirty. Turns out, this 'hydrating' shampoo dryed the fuck out of my hair and the filmy feeling was not film but the cuticle of my hair wide open. No wonder it was always tangly, stringy and my scalp tried to recreate a snowglobe effect. I discovered this when I conditioned my ends in an attempt to make it not tangle so much (I stupidely had overcompensated with the shampoo and didn't use any conditioner. I figured since its shea-butter and oil infused shampoo, I shouldn't need conditioner. Right?) and I felt a difference.
Still, Slayer suffered from dryness.
Now, I have cut back on my routine a LOT. I don't deep condition as much. I pretty much have practiced 'benign neglect', i.e. style and forget it.
So I'm sitting here in the middle of the night, frustrated with the dryness, angry at the flaking and suddenly, a big chop sounds like fun.
Oh, HELL NO!
I look over and I see the green top of my vatika oil. Now, I had stopped using this a few years ago. Not because it sucked ass, but because I put it away and forgot all about it after the move. That and I was lazy.
So I grab the bottle, run it under warm water to melt it a bit (If you're new or have never used coconut oil before, the oil solidifies. It may be summer, but this is Seattle and its still cold enough to keep the oil solid). I grab it, squeeze out some and realize its having a hard tiem coming out. I inspect the bottle and notice that the nozzle is clogged. -- Note, I'm lazy-- I decide to just squeeze harder.
Big nope!
I end up squirting about half the bottle all over myself and the couch. Immediately I scoop the majority of what I can back into the oil and then start mopping up the excess with my hair. I literally soaked Slayer in coconut oil to the point where I had to squeeze out the excess and dump it into the container. What I couldn't mop up was rubbed into my skin.
When it came to taking it off, I knew it was going to be difficult. I debated grabbing the full strength shampoo when I remembered one of the LHC members explaining her method to co-washing and removing excess oil. She put it on dry, let it sit for about thirty minutes, then rinsed it off. Now, I had tried cowashing before and failed miserably.
I stared at the shampoo bottle... then the conditioner bottle, back to the shampoo bottle.
Eh, what the hell, why not?
I grabbed the conditioner bottle and poured out two palm fulls, slapped it on the scalp. Grabbed another palm full, then squeegeed that shit to the length. Then I sat and took took a bath.
After half an hour I rinsed it out....but something happened... it felt lathery, not as much as the sulfate free shampoo, and definitely not as much as regular shampoo, but it lathered. Okay, I can deal with that.
Because it was conditioner, I found it easier to dig my fingers into the mass of hair and rub my fingers along the scalp. I was able to really get in there and rub,rub, rub unlike with the special shampoo.
And when I rinsed it all out, it came out super clean but not dry feeling.
I haven't used shampoo in about three weeks. Its summer time, Its warm. I'm working out and... my hair is still clean. Granted, it gets a little dirtier that way but that's okay. I can train my scalp to handle it just how I trained it to handle washing once a week.
My scalp hasn't flaked. My color is still vibrant as fuck. Slayer doesn't tangle and it is absolutely silky. I thought he was soft before but this is amazing.
