How to Curl Your Hair: Wavy Curls
Wavy hair makes me happy. It means less blow drying, less brushing, less straightening, and more volume.
Many of you have emailed me wondering how I get the lose wavy curls in my hair.
And honestly, I can’t take the credit.
Seriously, any tutorial that cuts the time it takes me to do my hair in HALF, is life altering. Watch Sydney’s tutorial, it will change you life too.
However, we all have different hair, and therefore need different techniques to make certain styles work for us. So I do a few things different than The Daybook, to make the look work for me.
And here’s what I do to create my messy wavy curls:
My products:
Big Sexy Hair Spray
Garnier Fructis Wonder Waves
1.5 inch barrel curling iron
Straightener {optional}Â
First I take a shower at night.
I brush through my hair, then spray about 4 pumps of the Wonder Waves. I part my hair the way I wear it normally. Then I scrunch my hair lightly, and wait for it to air dry. Sometimes, I blow dry my bangs so they don’t get to crazy. Once my hair is air dry {damp} I pull it back in a lose braid, and tuck my bangs behind my ears.
Then I go to bed.
When I wake up I look like this:
A lot of my hair has fallen out of the braid, but that’s ok.
Also note that I don’t braid my hair all the way to the bottom. I leave about 3.5 inches because I don’t like when the bottom of my hair gets all kinked.
Then I un-braid my hair. And it is in ULTRA messy/stringy waves.Â
And I have cowlicks on my bangs.
So I take my straightener to my bangs. I pull down all the front pieces and I straighten them together, curling the straightener under at the ends, so that the ends of my hair curl around my face just a bit.
Note: you must roll your eyes to the back of your head for this straightening technique to really work, see photo for reference.
I also straighten out any other weird kinked parts of my hair. I tend to like the soft straight look on top, and the curled look on the bottom–so I often straighten the top of my hair about 3 inches down, all the way around my head.
Now I am ready to start curling. I put half my hair up in a pony tail.
What’s that? You’re noticing that my hair looks a bit weird like this…
That’s because this is where you can see my hair extensions. They make up about 25% of my hair. They don’t add any length, but they add volume. Read this, if you’re new here and wondering why I need extensions.
I take the first chunk of hair, about this much…
And then I start curling from the MIDDLE first.
This is the MOST important trick I learned from Sydney. I always wondered why my curls would fall out so quickly in the past–then I learned, that if you start your curl half way up the strand, it lasts waaaayyy longer.
Leave the curling iron there for about 10 seconds. Then loosen the grip and pull the curling iron down to the end of your hair.
Then re-roll it all the way up to the top.
Wait another 5-10 seconds and then slowly release the hair.
Then I use my fingers to lightly separate the curls.
Continue this step with the remaining hair.
Then take your hair out of the pony tail, and follow the same steps on the top. I like to curl the strands in front AWAY from my face–that way they have more of a “Charlie’s Angels” look.
Then spray once over with your hair spray.
And that’s it.
I can usually get this to last 2 days before washing again {or putting it up in a baseball cap}.
A bit messy, a bit curly–that’s the way I like it.
