Curl Wizard is Live!

I am happy to announce that our sister site, Curl Wizard, is now up and running :)

Curl Wizard is a product recommendation service that provides actual product recommendations, based on the hair property information you provide to us, along with information on which product ingredients are best for your particular hair type and which product ingredients to avoid. If you aren't sure about your hair properties, the new LCLF hair analysis service is also available at Curl Wizard.

I hope my friends with curls will find this service valuable and that it will help to diffuse the minefield of product selection!

You can check out the new Curl Wizard site at www.curlwizard.com.

E-mail Issues

Ackkkk...I recently found out there has been an issue with one of my e-mail addresses.

If you have sent me mail at tiffany@livecurlylivefree.com, I have in all probability gotten it. If, however, you have sent any inquiries to LCLF at info@livecurlylivefree.com within the last three months, there is a good possibility I have never received it.

Wasn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? :eyeroll:

Anyhow...if you have sent an inquiry to LCLF at the info@livecurlylivefree.com mailbox within the last three months and have NOT gotten a reply, please know we were not ignoring you and you need to resend it (the issue has been fixed).

Hair Analysis is Live :)

I am happy to report the new hair analysis service on Live Curly Live Free went live on October 29, a few days ahead of schedule.

We are truly excited to be offering this service to our curly-haired friends. Texture and porosity are so important in product determination and I believe this service will help girls with curls to avoid a lot of frustration in the future.

Curl Wizard is still scheduled to go live November 15. For those of you who are asking about pricing: the hair analysis service on Live Curly Live Free is $12.95, which includes information about product ingredients but does not recommend specific products. If you already know your hair texture and porosity, a product recommendation from Curl Wizard will be $9.95. Product recommendations with a hair analysis will be $19.95.

In other news: I was happy to have Mary Pat Mestre join Live Curly Live Free in September as a Curl Educator. She has a terrific depth of knowledge about curly hair and products for curly hair, and has already brought great things to my curly friends and clients (the hair analysis idea was all hers!). I am blessed to have her and am looking forward to some serious movin' and shakin' with her on board.

Time to get back to some Curl Wizard site development!

Peace, love and curls :)

Tiffany

Exciting Announcements

Greetings, curl friends! Yes, the Live Curly Live Free blog is still live, although I've had no time to post anything this summer. Life for the Curl Whisperer in Curly World has been extremely hectic and busy!

I have two very exciting announcements to share with you today!

Live Curly Live Free To Offer Hair Analysis Profiles

Effective November 1, Live Curly Live Free will be offering a hair analysis service! As you know, hair texture and hair porosity are the two most important hair properties to know in order to determine the products that will work best for your particular hair type. If you are not a trained cosmetologist, however, this information can sometimes be a bit difficult to figure out on your own.

With our new hair analysis service, you will be able to send us a sample of your hair (don't worry, you won't have to cut off a chunk!) and we will analyze your hair texture and hair porosity for you! The hair analysis profile we will send to you will contain your hair texture and your hair porosity characteristics, and will also include detailed information on which product ingredients are best for your particular hair type and, most importantly, which product ingredients you should avoid.

With the new Live Curly Live Free hair analysis service, you will never have to guess about your hair type again!

And Now...(drum roll, please!)...Introducing Our Sister Site, Curl Wizard!

We are over-the-moon excited to introduce our sister site, Curl Wizard, which will be making its debut effective November 15!

As you are aware, the Live Curly Live Free web site is exclusively dedicated to offering curly hair education on a product ingredient, not a product brand, level. By keeping our education at the product ingredient level, it gives our clients and curl friends complete freedom to personally choose the brands they want to use without feeling "locked into" a particular product brand or product manufacturer.

Over the past several years, however, we have received hundreds of requests for product brand recommendations because of our expertise in understanding which products may work best with certain types of hair. Due to the obvious need in the curly hair community for this information, our new sister site, Curl Wizard, will offer a service that provides you with actual product recommendations, based on the hair texture and hair porosity information you provide to us, along with information on which product ingredients are best for your particular hair type and which product ingredients to avoid. And if you aren't sure about your hair type, our new hair analysis service will also be available at Curl Wizard!

Curl Wizard will be unique and effective because we are not owned by a particular product manufacturer whose sole interest is having you purchase their product lines exclusively. Nor will our product recommendations be based on whether or not a product manufacturer has paid us to have their products appear on the new CurlGenie Profile© or because they have spent a fortune on site advertising―something you will never see on either Live Curly Live Free or Curl Wizard.

The product recommendations made in each CurlGenie Profile© will be suggested because we believe, based on objective hair science, that the products listed may deliver good results for your individual hair characteristics―not because a product manufacturer has paid us to put those products on the list or because our main objective is to increase product sales. You can purchase your CurlGenie Profile© in confidence, knowing the products recommended for you were objectively chosen to give you the best results possible!

We hope you are just as excited about these new services as we are!

Curliciously yours,

Tiffany

Hair Routines

A lot of us have one...an established, rarely-varied, almost-religious hair care routine we use on a regular basis to maintain and style our curly locks. The question has been asked, however: is having a hair routine a must?

I don't think there is any "right" or "wrong" answer to that, frankly; I think that depends on you, your particular hair and your lifestyle. So let's look at the possible reasons to have or to not have one.

If you are like me, having an established hair routine means the difference between sanity and insanity in your daily life. Like many of you, I am a tremendously busy woman: I am a wife and a mother, I work in a salon about 30 hours a week, and I run Live Curly Live Free, which is an almost full-time business, on top of it all. There isn't a whole lot of additional time factored into my day and I don't particularly want to spend the precious few extra minutes I do have fussing with my hair. And, truth be known, as much as I love doing the hair of others, I have very little patience for doing my own. Having an established routine means I only have to spend 10-15 unthinking minutes a day, tops, on making my curls look the best they can be...and that suits me and my busy life just fine.

Also, I find my own particular hair responds best by having some sort of structure in how I wash, condition and apply my products. My curls seem to relax when I use a regular routine, almost as if they have made a silent pact to behave as long as I don't surprise them with anything new. I know how my hair will respond to each step in the process, regardless of weather or season, because I've used that same process so many times before. It's comfortable, familiar ground.

On the other hand, however, there is a lot to be said for changing it up. Some women tell me their curls look better if they don't fall into a set pattern: by switching their products and product application technique frequently, their hair keeps a fresh look they say they can't achieve by using the same routine consistently. Depending on what products you use, making a switch can also help you to avoid build-up issues or prevent your products from losing their effectiveness with long-term use.

Being more varied in your routine additionally leaves you more open to discovering new products or techniques that you might not have otherwise found had you settled into an unchangeable, unvaried routine. Although I stick to my usual routine whenever possible, I do a considerable amount of product and method testing and I can definitely vouch for the fact that I have found more than a few great products and techniques during one of my experiment phases.

Like everything else in our mad, crazy, wonderful world of curly hair, whether or not you have an established hair routine is a very personal choice and one only you can make for yourself. Let your glamorous selves shine by always doing what YOU think is best for you and your own beautiful curls!

The Curl Whisperer on Naked Hair

Relax...the article is still going to be rated 'G', so no worries about reading it in front of the kids :)

What, exactly, do I mean by 'naked hair'? When I talk about 'naked hair' to my clients, what I am referring to is hair sans any kind of product: no conditioner, no gel, no curl cream, no pomade, no oil, no nothing. Just your own glorious hair strands, as bare and pristine as the day you were born, and nothing else.

I often have the 'naked hair' conversation with my clients during the course of a client consultation for one reason in particular: there are many girls with curls who are still using products with ingredients I don't consider to be curly-friendly, such as sulfates and non-water soluble silicones. And when I mention my concerns about some of these products to a client, the reaction I sometimes get is, "But I just love how these products make my hair feel! It's so smooth and super shiny."

My next question to my client, then, is, "So how does your 'naked hair' feel? You know, your hair when you don't have any product in it?"

Without exception, the response I receive is, "Oh, it's just terrible. It feels dry and tangled and it's really bad. I can barely get a comb through it in the shower and if I let it dry without any product, it's all frizzy and it's just like straw."

I bet. And I can tell you there is a reason for that.

What we sometimes don't realize (and what product manufacturers certainly don't tell us) is that products loaded with curly-unfriendly ingredients--the products that make your hair feel so 'good'--are also the products that make it feel so 'bad.' When you put a product that is not manufactured for optimal curly hair health onto your strands, the ingredients in it are going to start causing issues like breakage, splitting and dehydration, and you are going to start feeling dry, tangled and unmanageable. The 'good' feeling you get from that product is because the product is disguising the very issues it is causing. It creates a dependency in you that leads you to believe that very product is necessary for your hair health and well-being because, well let's face it, your hair could never be that smooth, healthy and silky without it, now would it?

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

If a product is good for your hair, it will never, ever cause your 'naked hair' to feel anything but moisturized, healthy and strong. A product that is good for your hair will not cause dehydration and frizz, it will not cause you to be tangled and unmanageable, and it will certainly never contribute to hair breakage and hair loss. If your 'naked hair' can't and won't feel good on its own when you are using a particular product, then that product has absolutely no business being in your hair. My 'naked hair' is silky, shiny and strong because I use products with healthy, curly-friendly ingredients that deserve to be in my hair, not products that will destroy the foundation of hair health I have worked so hard to create over the past eight years.

Your 'naked hair' deserves no less either.