Little Hair Style Recipient!

I had another small, sweet, curly haired visitor a few weeks ago.  We will refer to her as Little M.  She is 3 going on 4 and just a little doll!  It seems I am branching out from hair blogger to hair stylist, and it is SO much fun!  If you recall I did Little C's hair a few months ago.

Little M has big loose curls, very different from any hair I have worked on before.  So I am learning as I go here.  Little M is adopted like my girls and similarly has a white momma who had little experience with curly hair prior to becoming her mom.  The difference is that Little M's curls are pretty easy to care for even for someone with little experience.  To this point they had stuck to ponytails and french braids without a huge need for learning to cornrow or do other protective styles.  Until recently when they began to tire of the constant ponytail (M doesn't like wearing her poofy hair down, and it becomes quite messy and tangled if she does) so a mutual friend made the connection for Momma Kara and I.

After looking through my blog, Momma Kara decided she liked the versatility of box braids.  So that was the first style we would try.  I put one cornrow in the front and then Kara and I worked on the braids together.  This style is something that Kara will be able to duplicate on her own, but just needed to be pointed in the right direction.  As we worked I gave her some tips and tricks to doing protective styles and keeping M's GORGEOUS curls healthy.  I am not sure she needs help with that though, because M's hair is already long and beautiful!  I also showed her a few blogs of kids with looser curls that she could gain some inspiration from.  It is so fun for me to help inspire a mom in person and get my hands into some sweet little girl hair!

By the way, you would never know that this was the first time M had her hair done.  We worked for at least 3 hours to braid and bead her hair and she sat as still as a statue!

I learned something really interesting from this experience too.  I am not sure if this is true on all hair types but it was certainly the case with Little M's looser curls.  When I do hanging braids I braid pretty tightly, and I don't mean near the scalp - although I do make that as snug as I can, but I mean that each stitch of the braid is very close to the next, I have many many stitches per braid.  Kara was braiding a lot looser than I was, fewer stitches per braid.  On her side of the head, M's individual braids were making big loopy, curls as though they had been curled with soft spikes!  On my side, the braids pretty much just hung straight down.  They were more stiff.  Neither way was wrong, or bad, just different.  The curly braids were actually super cute!  But we ended up putting beads on the braids and that weighed them down and took a lot of the curl out.

You can see on the right some of the braids curling up a bit!

Since I am new to the loose curls I was unsure of how long these braids would hold up for Little M.  I have heard from Momma Kara, and they easily lasted a week!  The whole family was thrilled with M's new look and her little straight haired sister wanted in on the fun!  So both girls ended up with beads and new sleep caps!

What a GREAT experience!  I can't wait to do M's hair again!  Who's next????

Katie

Labor Day Giveaway! Beautiful Artwork!!!

I am quite sure you all remember the adorable Hair Time artwork that we had the pleasure of giving away last April. Well, the oh-so-talented Katie Bradley of MossyRockDesigns would again like to give one lucky Keep Me Curly reader another beautiful 5x7 print!

All of the proceeds from Katie's artwork go to help fund their adoption, so even if you don't win, check out her shop and consider purchasing one of her fabulous designs!  She has been working on more adoption themed prints recently.  These are a few of them:

Great stuff huh?!?!  Well one of these can be yours!  Just follow the directions below!

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to write a SEPARATE comment for EACH thing you do on the list.  If you put all of your entries in ONE comment you are selling yourself short!  Each comment gets a number for our random generator, so you want to get as many comments as possible.  

You have until NOON EST on Friday, September 2nd to enter the drawing.  We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!

To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:

After visiting the MossyRockDesigns Etsy shop, which was your favorite print?  

____________________________________________________________________

If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:

1)  Go to MossyRockDesigns facebook page and become a fan! Leave a comment stating you are a fan.

2) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)

3) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.

4) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)

5) Tweet any unique tweet announcing our blog or the giveaway with @keepmecurly in it! Cut and paste your tweet (not tweet id status) and post as a comment. You can get 1 entry for EVERY new and unique tweet!

6) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower. (or that you were already following)

7) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)

8) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.

9) Place an order at Snapaholics between 8/28 and 9/2 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.

10) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.

11) Advertise our site or this giveaway in a forum or other blog! We would really love it if you wrote about our site or this giveaway on your blog. If you are passionate about natural hair care, or Katie's youtube videos have been really helpful to you, or if you love cute hair things, talk it up on your blog! Earn TWO entries for doing this one! Simply post a comment saying that you are talking about us with a link to the forum or blog, then put (first entry) then comment again and write (second entry).

12) Get a friend to talk about us or our giveaway on THEIR blog, earn two MORE entries! Just leave us a comment with a link to THEIR blog and tell us that you encouraged them to participate. Then make sure they enter the giveaway for themselves too!

________________________________________________________________________

The winners will be announced on Labor Day, September 5th. It is the responsibility of the winner to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address and the 5x7 print that they would like. IF the winner does not contact us by Friday, September 9th, we will choose a new winner.

Who can participate? ANYONE!  Katie is an international girl herself and welcomes all international fans!

*** If you have any questions or if you have comments that are not related to the giveaway please feel free to email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com or leave your comment on a different post. In order for this giveaway to work we have to ask that you do not leave any other comments on this post if they do not follow the guidelines of the contest.***

Picture Day Puff!

Here in Michigan the kids haven't returned to school yet.  They go back the day after Labor Day.  But they did go in last week to get their school pics taken.  Due to some time constraints I had to take out V's current braids, wash her hair, and put in the new style all in the morning before going to school after lunch!  When I told V that we had to do something simple, she excitedly suggested a big puff!  Brilliant girl!  I hadn't even thought of that!

Of course just a puff isn't quite exciting enough for me, so we needed to jazz it up a bit.  I don't really stress about school pictures though because I don't buy them.  They just go in the year book.  I always take my own pictures of the kids every fall that I make prints of and give to family and friends.






As you can see.  I decided to add these little twirlies all the way around her hairline going up to the puff.  There is probably a better name for these like single stranded rolling twists or something, but I like twirlies.  After all, that is how I did them.  The hardest part of this style was parting out the puff.  Trying to make a nice round circle on a not so perfectly round head is tricky.  But after that, I just made triangleish parts, twirled each section, and stuck the ends up under the ponytail holder that was holding the puff.  Simple!

The next day I wanted to get all that free hair tucked into something more protective, still wanting to keep things simple though because it will be time to do Back-to-School hair soon.  I chose twists.  We have been doing a lot of braids lately.  I also didn't make these the rope style twists (you know the kind where you twirl the hair as you twist) I wanted these to be loose and fluffy.  Well, fluffy they are, and they are great!  I just reused the triangle parts that were already in and than sort of randomly made more triangleish parts all over.  This wasn't a meticulously planned out style.  And I LOVE it!

I am afraid with the twists being so loose they won't last long.  Although they have been in about 5 days now and are still holding up pretty well.  It is funny when a quick easy style turns out to be a favorite!

I am still undecided about how I am doing V's Back-to-School hair.  What are you all doing?

Katie

G Gets Her Curl On!

From porcupine.....

To flower girl!

It's G's first wedding gig, and she was SO excited. It was a small one, but she took her flower girl and ringbearer duties seriously. We decided for this occasion we needed CURLS! This is the first time we have curled all her hair using the Soft Spikes. Putting them in was incredibly easy. You might remember Katie's review of Soft Spikes, and her video. I didn't want to take hours to put them in so I put about 4 to 6 locs in each spike. I knew that they would result in a big shrinkage in hair length, so I figured we would want the curls large so we'd get some of the length back. We put them all in during one movie, and I finished the several leftover after she went to bed.

We spritzed each set of locs with Taliah Waajid's Mist Bodifier with some high quality extra virgin olive oil added, before rolling them, so they'd be rolled damp. She had no trouble at all going to sleep with these in. They really are soft! We kept them in for most of the morning, just to make SURE the dampness was dry. Then when we took them out, those suckers were CURLY!

When G initially felt them with her hands she was thrilled. When she saw how short her hair now was in the mirror, she was not so thrilled! She decided she looked like a boy. Not exactly the feeling I wanted her to have for her first wedding experience! It took me awhile to get the style just right, and I think I adjusted and re-did so much that I pulled some of the curls out a bit too much, but in order to get some length back we ended up more with the wavy and tousled look. I also had an IDEA of how I was actually going to style it, but I manipulated it a couple ways before I settled on something. Initially I was going to do an updo in the back, like a french twist, and leave the curls all spilling around the top, but she didn't want that, she wanted length. So once I undid the updo, that had stretched some of the curl out. She wound up happy with the end result though. We utilized the sparkly headbands I bought, and a couple of glittery hairpins. I knew I had to stop messing with it or we'd lose more boing in those curls!

I had just finished tightening her locs the night before, and since I swept some of her locs up to put in the circular crystal pins you can see on top, it caused some of her parts to show. I think the flash made it more noticeable than it really was.

All in all, she was adored at the wedding and everyone loved her dress and her hair. I have to give a shout out to this seller on Amazon.com for the dress, because we looked at about 6 stores to find just a simple but dressy lavender or light blue dress to use (this was a simple wedding as you can see from the bride's dress above) and could find NOTHING. Pastels are not in right now and we couldn't even find anything in a dressy style. This dress was very simple, was not too satiny, just polyester, but for the price, I was very pleased. It fit perfectly. The edges were not turned under to be finished, as you can see when you zoom in on the photo at Amazon, but for basically a single-occasion dress, for getting the exact right color, degree of dressiness, and flair, I couldn't have been happier.

So, the Soft Spikes worked GREAT to curl her locs. I think once her locs are longer and curling them won't result in them being "boy-length" then we could just curl, finger comb them out, and go. We highly recommend the Soft Spikes!

Peace out!

Winner Winner!!! Flexi-Clip Giveaway

I am So very sorry to those of you who entered the contest and were eagerly waiting to find out if you were the lucky winner!  We had a serious medical emergency with my Father-In-Law and we ended up spending the weekend at the hospital on the other side of the state.  I totally forgot about this giveaway!  The GREAT news is my FIL is doing so much better now and we are praising the Lord for a much better than expected outcome!  God is GOOD!

So on to the giveaway!  I have used our random number generator 

and the lucky winner is:

Ginger said... [Reply to comment]

My favorite product is the flexi-8 multicolored clip.

August 8, 2011 6:31 AM 

Thanks everyone for playing!  Ginger if you would please email Paula directly at LillaRose@rammnation.com and let her know that you have won the Keep Me Curly giveaway, she will get your $15 gift card to you!!! (be sure to do so by Friday or we will choose another winner!)

And don't forget to let us know what beautiful accessory you choose and send us some pics after you receive it!

Everyone please keep watching our blog as we have two more giveaways coming right up!

Lilla Rose - Flexi Clip GIVEAWAY!!!!

Hello Keep Me Curly Friends!  Today is the day we kick off the giveaway for a $15 coupon for Lilla Rose!!!!  Steph and Katie both highly recommend the gorgeous and sturdy Flexi Clip, but if you are our lucky winner, you may spend your $15 on any Lilla Rose hair accessory or jewelry of your choosing!!!!!

If you were wondering about all of the ways you can wear a Flexi Clip please follow this link to their Style Video.  Also, the size of clip you choose is very important, so be sure to watch the Sizing Video before making your purchase!  

We would like to give a big thank you to Paula Ramm, our Lilla Rose consultant, for offering this giveaway!

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to write a SEPARATE comment for EACH thing you do on the list.  If you put all of your entries in ONE comment you are selling yourself short!  Each comment gets a number for our random generator, so you want to get as many comments as possible.  

You have until NOON EST on Friday, August 12th to enter the drawing.  We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!

To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:

After watching the style video, which style did you like best? 

____________________________________________________________________

If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:

1)  Go to the Lilla Rose products page and tell us which is your FAVORITE product they sell?  

2) Go to Paula Ramm's Facebook page and become fan.  Leave a comment stating that you are a fan.

3) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)

4) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.

5) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)

6) Tweet any unique tweet announcing our blog or the giveaway with @keepmecurly in it! Cut and paste your tweet (not tweet id status) and post as a comment. You can get 1 entry for EVERY new and unique tweet!

7) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower. (or that you were already following)

8) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)

9) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.

10) Go to Steph's Snapaholics website and leave a note in her guestbook. Come back and leave a comment HERE letting us know that you signed the guestbook.

11) Place an order at Snapaholics between 8/7 and 8/11 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.

12) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.

13) Advertise our site or this giveaway in a forum or other blog! We would really love it if you wrote about our site or this giveaway on your blog. If you are passionate about natural hair care, or Katie's youtube videos have been really helpful to you, or if you love cute hair things, talk it up on your blog! Earn TWO entries for doing this one! Simply post a comment saying that you are talking about us with a link to the forum or blog, then put (first entry) then comment again and write (second entry).

14) Get a friend to talk about us or our giveaway on THEIR blog, earn two MORE entries! Just leave us a comment with a link to THEIR blog and tell us that you encouraged them to participate. Then make sure they enter the giveaway for themselves too!

________________________________________________________________________

The winner will be announced on Saturday, August 13th. It is the responsibility of the winner to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address. IF the winner does not contact us by Friday, August 19th, we will choose a new winner.

Who can participate? This contest is open to any friends in the US, Canada or Mexico.

*** If you have any questions or if you have comments that are not related to the giveaway please feel free to email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com or leave your comment on a different post. In order for this giveaway to work we have to ask that you do not leave any other comments on this post if they do not follow the guidelines of the contest.***

The Fabulous Flexi-Clip!

This is exciting everyone!

Remember a few months ago when I posted about these awesome hair things I would LOVE to get my hands on - if only we had the spare cash for a frivolous purchase?

Well, I had written to one of the Lilla Rose distributors, the lovely Paula Ramm, to get permission to use their pictures on our blog.  Not only did she gladly grant that permission, but she asked if we could work together on a review and giveaway!  EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!  That is my happy squeal!

It was a REALLY hard decision to pick out which Flexi-clip to get first, because they have a huge selection in each size.  I decided to go with an all silver one because even though the colorful ones are cute, I thought silver would be more versatile.  Than I watched the sizing video and I had a tough decision to make on size.  I was hoping to get one that Miss B and I could share.  So I chose a MEDIUM clip.

When our clip came in the mail I was SO excited!  I put it in B's hair right away!  A Medium is a great size for doing half up type of styles on her.  Her locs have gotten so beautifully thick that I can't quite get a whole half of them into the clip, but we can still do some really pretty, simple styles like this:

Oh my gosh!  Don't her locs just look gorgeous!  This would probably look a bit more elegant without the floss hair wraps, but it still looks very pretty.

I am very pleased with the quality of the clip.  It is super sturdy, easy to use, and fun!  

For my hair the medium is a bit too big.  Next time I might have to get myself a small.  The only way I can make it work in my hair is to pile all of my hair into a bun - as condensed as possible - and fix the clip over top.  Anything else I have tried to do, my hair is just not thick enough to hold the clip in.  But, when I do it this one way, the clip holds all day long, really well!

Hi, Steph here!! We also decided get a medium, but we went with the multi-colored one

(same as I used to do beaded styles on G...usually very colorful. G picks her own clothes and I gave up matching clothes to beads years ago LOL. I would be happy to see shirt match to pants most of the time!). G's locs are not as dense as B's, so we were able to get all her locs in a medium clip. It is super secure and SOOO pretty. I wore the same clip to work and got lots of compliments. On me, the medium fit all my hair but seemed a tiny bit loose. I think the small holds all my hair much tighter.

Paula recently had a free shipping sale so I ordered a small

and an extra small

after I had tried the medium. The extra small was great for a partial ponytail on G, and it stayed tight and secure over a few days without removing it....she even swam in it and it didn't budge an inch.

Here are all three in her hair so you can see the sizes. I think it's a bit of an optical illusion that the gold one (the small) looks the same as the multicolored one (the medium). I think it's due to my tall camera angle:

Notice in the second photo, the top clip - look how flexible it is! G was already wearing a partial ponytail in an elastic, and I put the extra small clip right over the elastic, so it had to really bend into a semicircle. It did this perfectly!

I have to mention one of the best features about these clips is that, unlike its predecessor, you remember, the leather patch with the holes in it and the stick that poked through (remember the 60's and 70's?), with the flexi-clip, the stick is ATTACHED to the clip. It CANNOT get lost. I didn't realize this until I got mine in the mail and I thought it was ingenious.

You will notice that Paula has also chosen to advertise on our blog!

If you love these clips as much as we do, we would love for you to show some love to Paula, click on her ad and order through her.  She has been great to work with, and in a few days we will be posting a giveaway that she has offered to sponsor. Hooray!

To check out Paula's Lilla Rose Website click here, or find her on facebook, or twitter.

I can't wait to get some more Flexi Clips!  I am going to get a small for me and someday a mini to do half up stuff on my hair.  I also want to get a large or extra large for B to try and hold up all of her locs!  I will post links to the sizing info with the giveaway so that you can get an idea on what you and your daughters might need!  They also have other really beautiful hair accessories that I would love to try out.  Check out the rest of the Lilla Rose products here.