Coloring, Repairing and What-not



Slippage (hole) in permed end of loc



Holes, Slippage &Repairs:  Shortly after starting my Sisterlock journey, I took the course and learned to do them myself.   Yay for me!!!    After that class I also took the time to interlock the permed length of my hair.    It is in this area that I have experienced the most slippage.   A little before starting the blog I started slowly repairing slippage in my locs. 



"Say hello to my little friend"...um... new tool



   My favorite tool is a beveled tip upholstery needle (see pic).   The beveled tip is THE BOMB, and it glides easily into the locs with minimal force or damage.  Because of this, it can also be used to tighten up the holes in locs that result from incorrect rotations.   The eye of the needle can be enlarged by using a reamer for beads.       I started at the nape doing a combo of repairs and retightening.     Before I knew it I was using this new tool for the whole repair/re-ti/compacting locks process. 

Before this repair session many of my locs essentially looked like this

<<Professionally SL install **    Permed hair that I interlocked with (==slippage or loose hairs)

Scalp[<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<** ========<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<============

Trims:   About every 2 weeks I like to flatiron my hair.  Every couple of months I’d pull my newly straightened locks under my chin and trim .5 to 1 inch off.   Of, course this has led to a lot of slippage on the clipped locks (I’ve just come to realize this).    Now that I’ve retightend these, I will refrain from trimming for quite some time, the permed hair is not “locking”, and I don’t want it to unravel any more.   

Spray on Tem’pry hair colors:    This week, I also decided to check out a new hair color, “Black”.  The color looks both natural and good on me.  I used a spray on hair color by Jerome Russell (available at local BSS).   Careful though because I found that the color rubs off easily.  I also have a blonde color that I’m toying with. 

Pros:   Can’t damage hair; allows you to change up the colors as often as you’d like; allows for creativity with color applications;  very cost effective means of coloring at $4. per can.

Cons:  The Jerome Russell brand rubs off.  Careful application requires or you’ll look “spray painted”.  (hold head upside down and keep the can at least 10 inches away….then run your fingers through the hair to help distribute the color)

Brown hair

Black Hair, instantly!

Bling, Nape, & Repairs

The title of these 1^st few entries will be very “random” since I’m trying to recap my 1^st year with SLs.  

Bling: I’ve enclosed a closeup shot of my “nourished” locs just to show a lil’ bling that my otherwise, thirsty-dirty-dishwater-brown hair is currently rocking.    I believe this bling is credited to my glycerin water mix and the Honey/Vitamin E Oil rinse I did a 2 days ago.



Nape loc'd at 10 months



Loose haired Nape.  Longest length

Nape:  The point of this is to show that “retention” is very important to seeing length and determining growth results.  I’ve always hated my nape.  It looks like a Z drawn by a blind 4year-old (not neat at all).  The 1^st nape shot is from my nape when my hair was “loose” and about 2yrs into my babying this area by applying the perm last, and texlaxing(underprocessing) all at the same time, this was about as much length as I ever held on to.    The 2nd nape shot is of the same area with a 10month old Sisterlock install. 





Repairs:  I’m slowly interlocking the back of hair from the nape up.   My “endstate” should be locs that are tighter and less frizzy. 

Mentioned earlier: I started twisting (instead of latching) sometime in October.    

Perhaps I should also mention that:  At some time during my journey  (April-June) I began interlocking the relaxed portion of my SLs, this was a very-very-very- tedious process but I wanted all of my hair done, so I started this DIY project.   The process was never completely finished because I had a lot going on during this timeframe. 

With that said starting from the nape up, I’m now going through loc – by – loc and repairing.  Tip-to-Middle and Root-to-Middle as needed.  The picture here shows the newgrowth & the repaired “compacted” area of the loc.   I hope to be done with this phase before spring .  (I’m in no rushing)  

Repair for: unraveling
 permed ends & flyaways

I HOPE TO GET BETTER WITH PICTURE PLACEMENT, LOL