This year I celebrated my ten year natural hair anniversary. That’s right, I’ve been natural for ten whole years so you can only imagine how many products I’ve tried. After all of the trial and error, I can finally say that I have a pretty good idea of what works for my hair and what doesn’t. I may try a new product here and there but I’ve been using my daily products for a while now.
This month I was excited to receive another beauty box from We Are Onyx. The monthly Onyx Box subscription service caters to women of color and is always a treat.
The theme for February is, of course, love but more like pampering yourself. Items like these are a nice reminder that it’s okay to stop and make time to take care of your hair and body.
A beauty box service is a fun way to find out about new products. This month, I am delighted to find shampoo and conditioner from a brand called Acure. Both are made with all natural ingredients including Moroccan Argan oil. I recently switched back to using ammonia free hair dye so it’s nice to find a shampoo and conditioner that are color safe.
I’ve always wondered how my curls would react to using flax seed gel for styling. Now I can finally put it to the test with Carmella Marie’s My Gel. The product also contains jojoba oil which I understand is good for the hair and scalp. I can’t wait to try it!
Speaking of scalp health, there is also a So Posh Beauty Herbal Hair Tea in this month’s Onyx Box. It has a blend of natural herbs for a tea that conditions the hair and treats the scalp. With peppermint and rosemary in the ingredients list you know it smells delish. Another product that smells good enough to eat is the Coquito Bubble Stuff shower gel by Honeycat Cosmetics. This is what pampering is all about! With ingredients like coconut, honey and rum you can’t go wrong.
To round out the offerings in this month’s box of goodies we have hair products from Creme of Nature. There are two samples from the new Straight from Eden line as well as a full size container of the New Butter-Licious Curls Styling product. All three products are made with natural ingredients and are mineral oil, petrolatum and paraben free.
The February Onyx Box will be available through the end of the month so head on over to weareonyx.com to find out how to get started. You can also find full size versions of these and many other products at weareonyx.com/shop
NOTE: This month’s box was sent to me courtesy of We Are Onyx. I am not affiliated with any of the products and/or brands mentioned in this post. Please visit weareonyx.com for more information.
Recently I was sent the Onyxbox for the month of January. What’s this you ask? It’s a monthly beauty subscription service that is geared towards women of color. Previously, the box has featured items from Shea Moisture, Cargo and OPI nails and a host of other beauty brands. So naturally I was excited to see what was in this month’s box and I was definitely not disappointed.
There are so many natural hair brands out there who offer hair products for our textured tresses. A service like the Onyxbox allows you to try before you buy. Inside this month’s box were items from Woman to Woman Naturals, Anu Essentials and Beija Flor. This is my first time trying products from these brands and I am interested to see how they work on my hair.
I already tested out the Creme Brulee Moisturizer from Beija Flor on my hair which is currently straight. It did not cause my hair to revert but left me with soft hair that smelled like cinnamon. The Anu Essentials line is one I’ve heard of on Instagram. There appears to be a small sample packet of nearly every product they offer in this month’s box. Then there is the leave-in conditioner by Woman to Woman Naturals. It has a citrus scent which will make for a nice mid-winter pick me up.
But wait, there’s more! The wintery dry climate of Colorado has left me with dry skin. I was glad to find the Cracked Heel Stick Soap by Luxuriant in this month’s offerings. It says that it cleans and exfoliates so there may be hope for me yet! Lastly is the Golden Ticket Nail Sugar by Cinapro. To date, I have never seen a nail polish product with a light up cap. Where have I been?
One of the best features about the Onyxbox service is that you can head over to www.weareonyx.com and shop the collection of goodies offered. There you can also sign up to receive your own monthly beauty box. See website for details.
Note: This box was sent to me courtesy of WeAreOnyx for the purpose of this review. I am not affiliated with www.weareonyx.com and/or any of the brands mentioned above.
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| Camille Rose Naturals Curl Love Moisture Milk |
Earlier this year I celebrated 5 years on my natural hair journey and realized that I’ve pretty much stuck with the same products. I am usually one of those gals who like to use affordable products that can be found locally in stores. Once I figured out what worked for me, I stopped looking. Still, I couldn’t ignore all of the rave reviews that circulate in the natural hair world. For this reason, I decided maybe I could tweak my routine here and there. Who knows? Maybe I’m missing out.
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| My Curls after using the Curl Love Moisture Milk and Eco Styler gel |
I was eyeing the Camille Rose products at my local Target store for some time and decided to try something from the line. I needed a moisturizer for when I do my wash n’ go so I grabbed the Curl Love Moisture Milk. You get 8 ounces for about $15 dollars USD which seemed reasonable considering it contains all natural ingredients. The product claims to,”nurture your tresses and aid in preventing breakage, shedding and styling damage.” The label also states that it, “…will provide shine, protective anti-oxidants and long-lasting moisture to enhance the driest hair.” This sounded like something that would certainly provide my hair with the moisture it needed under a heavy styler like Eco Styler gel. I love how gel makes my curls pop but I’m sometimes left with dry hair a few days later.
I first tried it on wet hair after cleansing and conditioning. Then I decided to use a little grapeseed oil to seal in the moisture. Lastly, I sprayed each section of my hair with water before applying Eco gel. I was very surprised to see how much my curls clumped together. My hair also appeared to hang more than my usual wash n’ go. I let it airdry and realized that maybe adding the grapeseed oil was making my hair a bit too heavy. The next trial I decided to skip the oil and use the Curl Love as my sealer because it contains Castor oil. In this case I used Aussie Moist as my leave-in conditioner and then followed the same steps as before. The result was okay but my curls weren’t as juicy. The combo that worked best was when I used a leave-in conditioner, grapeseed oil to seal then the Curl Love all before applying the gel. This basically meant I was using the L.O.C. method (leave-in, oil, cream).
Overall, I found that the product does what it claims by allowing my curls to hang more when I use it to do a wash n’ go style. It definitely feels moisturizing and leaves me with much softer hair after using the hair gel. I did notice however that if I stuck with sulfate free products to cleanse my hair, the product would build up. I am back to using a sulfate shampoo for when I need to clarify so this is no longer an issue
for me.
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| Moisturizes and gives my curls hang time! |
I agree with the price point considering I am still on the same bottle a couple of months later. I realized early on that you don’t really need to use very much of the product in order to moisturize your hair. I even use it on my kid’s hair and feel like we’ve gotten a lot of use out of it. I would definitely purchase this product again in the future.
HAVE YOU TRIED THE CAMILLE ROSE NATURALS LINE?
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| My braid out results using conditioner and coconut oil |
I recently picked up one of my favorite hair products, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil. I probably haven’t had any on hand in a little over a year. This went from being my staple to being something that was just okay. Somehow I stopped wanting to buy multiple bottles of oils and decided my Grapeseed and Castor oils were all I needed. Lately though I started to consider the fact that something seemed very different about my hair. This made me think back to some of the things I did or used at the start of my journey. That’s when I realized that it had been ages since I used coconut oil on my hair.
Coconut oil can have many benefits for the hair. The one that I was most concerned about was the oil’s ability to moisturize the hair. This is because it’s made up of tiny molecules that are small enough to penetrate through the cuticle layer. I picked some up at my local natural grocery store, Sprouts, without another thought. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that, in the past, I tried to stay away from coconut oil during the colder months. Why? Well, it was because of the fact that the oil had a tendency to solidify at lower temperatures which could lead to hard hair. This happened to me the first week I started using it again. I tried it as a sealant after spritzing my hair with leave-in conditioner diluted with plain water. I did this for a few days in a row before braiding my hair up into two french braids. When I took my hair down on wash day I noticed that weird, hard feeling. My ends felt like straw.
After that I figured maybe I would just use it for deep conditioning or hot oil treatments. Until one night when I decided to use it with my Aussie Moist conditioner for a braid out. I applied the conditioner to my freshly washed and conditioned hair and then sealed with the coconut oil. I then took medium sized sections and spritzed with water before smoothing the hair with my denman brush and braided it into plaits. Let me tell you, my hair was so soft and defined even I couldn’t believe the results! Just two products and I ended up with a braid out that was photoshoot worthy. That’s when I realized that the coconut oil worked for me as long as I used it on wet hair without too much product buildup. Now my hair is back in love with my old bestie and I plan on keeping up with it during the rest of my No Heat Challenge. Hopefully this will give me an extra moisture boost during these harsh winter months.