Okay, I'm going to try to post a pic or two later (if it comes out halfway decent; if not, I'll just PM a few of you).
Soooooooooo... I'm wearing my FreeTress today, for the first time. And... here's what I did, along with some of the lessons I learned (which weren't taught on the videos).
1. I washed my hair last night, blow-dried the front part and air dried the rest. I try to avoid direct heat, so I thought it would be unnecessary to blow dry the whole head.
2. I parted the front - about the size of a large bang (eyebrow to eyebrow, which I learned from a video), and back about 2.5 or 3 inches or so. I put that in a clip to keep it out of the way, then proceeded to cornrow the rest of my hair. Oh, I moisturized very well before braiding. I wrapped my hair up and went to bed.
3. This morning, I pinned up the braids so that they wouldn't hang down below the wig, of course. None of them overlapped. I just grabbed each braid from the bottom and pulled it up flat against a space on my scalp and applied hairpins.
4. Then, I applied a heat protectant serum and flat-ironed the bang part. It was silky straight... just as silky as the wig. I was quite pleased.
5. Then, I applied the wig just as I had seen them do it on the videos. That's when I realized that one of my braids wasn't pinned down as well as I thought. I actually had an entire braid sticking straight up through my wig. THAT was hilarious!
I took it off and fixed the braid, then tried again.
Lesson #1 - I have way too much hair to wear it cornrowed under the wig. It's quite lumpy. I'm not sure if it's noticeable to others, or just to me... but I'm not comfortable with that. I can touch my head and feel every single braid.
Lesson #2 - The ladies in the videos I watched didn't use wig caps. They each said they didn't like them. I don't think I have a choice because I really have a lot of hair. I didn't have one so I didn't use one today. I improvised with a hair net.
6. I curled the bang part and styled it nicely. I did such a good job flat-ironing and blending that at one point, I really couldn't tell which part was my hair and which part was the wig.
Lesson #3 - Once you put the wig on, don't use any heating tools. Unless you're a pro. I'm not a pro. I burned the wig.
What happened was, I saw a piece that appeared kinda frizzy... so without even thinking, I picked it up to curl it. Really should've known it wasn't my hair because it was back a little further than my hair should've been. As soon as I put the curling iron on it, I could tell it was wig hair, but it was too late. It burned. So I had to cut that whole chunk out. (I later figured out that how it got frizzy in the first place was from me curling my own hair on top of it, and the heat was too much for the wig).
Lesson #4 - Either I'm going to have to use more of my own hair in the front or I'm going to have to comb all the bang hair backward (and not have any in my face)... I'm just too conscious about the wig line showing. And my hair is really silky (when it's straightened) so it flies away on its own... one minute, it'll be covering the wig line, next minute, it's laying down. I guess I could try holding spray... But I'd really rather not. I don't like that kinda stuff.
Lesson #5 - I may have to do the natural wigs after all... after taking Savannah out (which took about 5 minutes), I came back in and there were a few parts of my bang that were frizzy... so my wig is silky, part of my hair is silky and part of it is frizzy... which makes me look kinda suspect. LOL. My hair always does that anyway, without the wig, but at least in that case I can prove it's my own hair.
With the natural wig, I can just wet-and-wavy my hair and not have to worry about the frizzies.
