This week i began my onion juice treatments along with my attempts at using the Curl Harmony products.
I’ll start with the onion juice treatment first.
Onion Juice Treatment
I used a medium sized onion, like that pictured above and juiced it with my Champion Juicer. I got a decent amount of juice out of it. I was quite surprised. Then i had to really think about how i was going to apply it. I know the instructions say apply it neat before washing or mix juice with conditioner and then rinse but none of these would do for me (you must know by now that i don’t follow straight instructions, lol). Applying it neat was too fiddly for me and very wasteful, i thought. I want to get it ALL on my scalp. Not some in my hair, on my shoulders and on the floor. The second method was no good to me either as onion’s don’t exactly smell great and applying it at the last stage and only rinsing it off to finish would leave a really unpleasant oniony scent in my hair. Not good. I wanted to do it as a pre-poo treatment and then follow on by shampooing and conditioning. That way i get the two washes to rid the smell.
Ah, I have it. I decided to add a small amount of bentonite clay to the onion juice to make it pasty enough to apply it directly to the scalp. Good idea no?
I took half a teaspoon at a time and whisked it into the onion juice until it was a thick enough paste to scoop up with my finger. I used two teaspoons in all. Next time i will take some pictures to post.
I applied it to my scalp in sections, re-twisting each section as i went, then tied a plastic bag around my head. I had oiled my hair thoroughly the night before, like i normally do before i shampoo. I had the intention of leaving it on for 30 mins but ended up leaving it on for more like nearly an hour, Oops. No harm done. My scalp wasn’t irritated or anything and the bentonite clay had a nice cooling effect on my scalp. I did notice though that my head emitted a lot of heat. The plastic bag was very hot when i touched it. I think that’s a good thing. It shows a lot of blood circulating around that area so it seemed to have been working.
I then proceeded to wash my hair
Curl Harmony Review
I went a section at a time. I started by taking down the twist and rinsing it thoroughly to remove all the bentonite clay and onion juice. I then took a few pumps of the Creamy Shampoo and rubbed that through my hair. The shampoo itself is VERY WATERY. I lost a bit at first as it took me by surprise. I expected it to be slightly thicker (it does say ‘creamy’ on the bottle) and so it ran through my fingers. Once i rubbed it in my hair it lathered pretty well which again surprised me because of the consistency of it. The smell is very subtle. It smells like… shampoo. What else can i say. lol. I scrubbed my scalp using the balls of fingers whilst holding onto the ends of my hair with my other hand so as not to tangle the hair whilst washing. I squeezed off the excess and applied a tiny dab of the Hydrating Conditioner and rubbed that through before rinsing.
My coils felt really soft once i rinsed. It was unusually bouncy (strange isn’t it?). Hmmm, so far so good. I applied a dab more of the hydrating conditioner to the section and retwisted it before moving on to the next and repeating the process. I would normally detangle here but as i wanted conserve the Hydrating Conditioner i omitted this step and detangled after DC’ing instead. I’ll review the Hydrating Conditioner in greater detail on Wednesday when i use it to co-wash.
Once i had washed and twisted all the sections i did one last all-over rinse to remove the rest of the conditioner from my hair, towel dried and then deep conditioned.
Using a teaspoon i scooped out two heaped scoops (economy is key here ya know!) of the Intensive Repair Deep Conditioner into a bowl along with a few squirts of honey and some olive oil. The consistency of the conditioner is SUPER THICK. It reminds me of the Jason’s Aloe Conditioner. Even when mixed in with the honey and oil it maintained a beautifully thick and creamy consistency. It has a pleasant smell which is not strong at all and it doesn’t really linger much once rinsed out which is a shame, i like nice smelling conditioners.
I applied the DC to my hair one section at a time, untwisting, applying, re-twisting and then covered my hair with a plastic bag (Tesco to be precise, lol). I left it on for about 45 mins and then jumped back in the shower to detangle. The conditioner is really thick and as a result would not be great as is for detangling so what i did was undo the twist, wet my hand and scrunch the water through the section to dilute the DC a bit and make it detangler friendly. This definitely did the trick. It was quite easy to detangle my hair which i am super pleased about. I detangled using a wide tooth comb first followed on by the Denman brush to remove the shed hair. Once detangled, i twisted the section again, still with the conditioner in. Repeated that for all the sections, then I finally rinsed it out without taking the twists down under cool running water.
I towel dried, added leave-in conditioner and my Shea butter mix to my hair and scalp and cornrowed my hair into 4 large cornrows to air-dry.
I noticed that my hair was really soft but without feeling coated or filmy. I think all this time i’ve been mistaking coated hair with conditioned hair and maybe that’s why i haven’t been satisfied with other cone-free conditioners. Even so this DC left my hair touchebly soft and ‘cottony’ (in a good way).
I really like the products so far (minus the consistency of the shampoo, but i can live with it). I will have to use it for the rest of the month to make sure it really does my hair well but it’s a great start.
