Revisiting KMF upper management gel

I decided to break this gel out for three reasons:  1) my SO was out of town for the weekend and I was bored, 2) it gave me amazing waves/curls when the moisture content in the air wasn’t high, and 3) I’ve been on a slight experimentation kick and figured, why not?

I cowashed, rinsed out regis vivid satin, and applied two ribbons of sheam, and a blob of ky. WOW! My hair looked great! The clumps were forming in the shower as I was applying the gel and once I diffused and sprayed in some tightly wound, I was set for a fabulous hair day. Unfortunately, the 100 degree weather wasn’t much into working with me so I wouldn’t have to put my hair up. About 3 hours later I was forced to break out a hairstick and bind up my amazing waves and curls. I will definitely keep playing with this gel!!

 

GoW, KMF, and more

Updates on products I’ve been trying:

GoW skin friendly cleanser – I’m telling you, if this line wasn’t as close to all natural as possible, I’d be buying everything under the sun and stocking up. I LOVE Garden of Wisdom! My skin has changed dramatically ever since I started using Markey’s products! What I’m really liking about this cleanser is that

1. it doesn’t sting my eyes
2. it removes all traces of makeup
3. it doesn’t make my face an oil slick by midday – rather, its a healthy glow
4. it seems to be clearing my pores pretty darn well!

I’m currently using it in conjunction with GoW’s Vitamin C serum, veggie base cream as an all over moisturizer and eye cream, 5% salicylic acid at pH 1.9, marityme antioxidant serum, autumn berry hyaluronic serum, and rice bran oil. I also rotate between their AHA tonic and mandelic acid as a nighttime exfoliant and apply rosacea serum when there is the random spot. My skin is brighter, glowing, and has a nice, even tone and texture. I couldn’t be more thrilled about this skincare line!

Kiss My Face upper management gel – I think there’s still a bit of a learning curve with this one. On Tuesday, I had fabulouswaves and thought it could be duplicated on Wednesday. Much to my chagrin, this was not the case. I really believe that the ingredients are playing a major role in how my hair behaves with is. Because it contains hyaluronic acid, which helps retain water, it acts as much like glycerin by drawing moisture out of the air. However, I found that it didn’t suck the moisture out of my hair when the air was dry. Wednesday’s frizzy hair was due in part to the misty morning, drizzle in the afternoon, and high humidity. It wasn’t as godforsaken awful as Monday’s disaster but it definitely was not like Tuesday’s hair.

I do like that it rinses VERY well and doesn’t seem to be building up in my hair. It’s light (for being surprisingly thick and sticky out of the bottle) so it gives me good volume and doesn’t weigh down my hair. I want to keep working with this gel but the fact that it’s so temperamental may not warrant a repurchase. We shall see. I’d like to find a gel that works in both humid and dry conditions, but then again, I also want a million dollars. Yeah, not gonna happen.

Suave Professionals Extra Hold styling gel (a Sebastian Wet dupe) – This is an alright gel. It’s thick like the KMF, but not as sticky. Also, it distributes well and was absorbed by my hair much like angell. Ingreds: Water, proplyene glycol, VP/VA copolymer, VP/dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate copolymer, peg-12 dimethocone, isoceteth-20, carbomer, triethanolamine, polyquaternium-4, fragrance, diazolidinyl urea, tetrasodium EDTA, methylparabe, propylparaben, panthenol, hydrolyzed soy protein, hydrolyzed wheat protein, hydrolyzed wheat starch. The bolded gives me the jeebie heebies. I found out my hair DOES NOT like too much protein after my disastrous encounter with Rusk Sensories Calm Guarana & Ginger Nourishing Shampoo and the matching conditioner. Looking at the ingreds, the shampoo probably wasn’t so bad but in conjunction with the protein-laden, moisture lacking conditioner, that did not make for good hair days. Incidentally, it was my experience with the combo that led me to find NC.com. My hair was looking and feeling like a haystack and after bemoaning the loss of my waves (although they weren’t really there to being with since I shampooed with SLS), I stumbled across NC.com after googling “how to care for wavy hair.”

Back to the Suave. So far, my hair doesn’t look too bad. It was a little stringy when I took it out of the plop this morning, but it doesn’t seem to be weighing my hair down, and it doesn’t have an overpowering scent. There are couple of crispy bits but I did use about 4 quarter blobs of the gel. Also, I used my sisatas place sample of Long Lovely Locks’ Coco Light as a leave-in rather than KY, zerran, or shea m.

I wasn’t too impressed with the coco light. It’s pretty runny and didn’t seem to add much in the way of moisture. The ingredients sound like something I could make if I wanted to (virgin coconut oil, purified water, glycerin, aloe vera, proprietary essential oil blend that contains lavender, fragrance) and for less than 1/2 the price, I’m sure. I don’t have much frizz, so that’s where it may have come into today’s hair equation, but I’m not sure I’d want to spring $20 plus shipping on something when target brand KY jelly works just as well for controlling frizz. Plus it has more than one use!

 

Holy good hair day Batman!

So I gave KMF upper management gel another chance; I cowashed and rinsed out as usual but instead of using my zerran leave-in, I combed in KY jelly. I scrunched in about 2 1/2 gumball sized blobs of KMF and was surprised at the clumping I was starting to see. Not one to put things on a pedestal just because of immediate clumping, I plopped for 10 minutes and started to diffuse pixiecurl style with my Conair ionic shine dryer. Usually, no matter what the product, my bottom canopy will not hold a wavy clump for very long. Even if I diffuse to high heaven, that portion of my hair refuses to keep a wave. Imagine my surprise when I turned off the dryer and noticed that not only is the clump still wavy, but it had shrunk about 1/2 inch!

What I liked about this combo is that it sped up the diffusing process like LUSH’s the big tease gel, but it also promoted shrinkage = wavier/curlier than normal hair for me. I was so impressed that even before I finished diffusing, I showed off my hair to my SO. His response? “What did you use this time? It looks a lot better and really curly.”

My hair is still in clips and drying but I will definitely update once it’s dry and the crunch is scrunched out.

ETA: My hair is 95% dry so I used a bit of JCS Nourish and Shine to scrunch out the crunch. Except for that crappy clump of hair to the back right that looks like its sorely lacking gel, this is a pretty dang good hair day!! Nice clumpy, boosted waves that are frizz free and soft! Except for that darn clump!!

 

Horrible horrible hair day

It’s just 3 hours after I fixed my hair at home and my “waves” are already back in a ponytail. Not only can you not call my hair wavy today, but to call it frizz-free is a cruel joke. I used Kiss My Face Upper Management gel today and let me tell you, this gel can kiss something else. Sure the ingredients look and sound all organic and good for the hair [Ingreds: Certified Organic Aqua of Urtica dioica, Calendula officinalis & Anthemis nobilis, Hyaluronic Acid, Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate (Amino Acid derived), Faex, Panthenol, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Citrus grandis] but I found it to have the opposite effect.

I cowashed and used a rinseout as usual (Freeman and yes to carrots) and combed my zerran leave-in. For having had a mere 3 hours of sleep thanks to the wonderfully long line at the Mexico/CA border, I was still lucid enough to know that the clumps looked quite nice so I was rather excited to use the new gel. First off, the gel was thick and sticky. That’s ok, I’ve used thick gels before. Scrunching it into my hair, it seemed to disappear like Angell but it left some sort of dry, plasticky feel like when you apply a cream or lotion that turns into a powder (sans the plasticky part). Can’t be too bad, I thought. My hair soaked up Angell, right? I scrunched a bit more water out and plopped for 15 min. When I took out the towel to diffuse, the clumps were still there but they were mixed in with some stringy, almost straight clumps. I still had hope at that point. Well, that evaporated the minute I turned on the hairdryer; there was practically instantaneous frizz and although I did my usual pixiecurl method, the straighter clumps refused to wave. I gave up and clipped hoping that it wouldn’t turn out as bad as it was starting to look like. A bowl of cereal later, and my hair resembled something like this with some wonky curly parts:

Not very attractive. Even my SO commented on how bad my hair looked and this is a guy who doesn’t see frizz when I’d swear that I’m walking around like a bad ad for Frizz Ease. With that, my hair is up in a bun to save my workers (and my dignity) from gazing upon the awfulness that is today’s hair.

I thought I had bad hair days before, but this one definitely takes the cake. It’s almost as though I didn’t put anything in my hair and decided to brush it out like my hair is straight. I’m going to give the gel one more shot and then it’s back to the cupboard to try in the winter.