My Hair cleaning Journey: Natual shampoo

The truth is I hate the name for natural shampoo "no-pooing". Why is it called nopooing. It sounds gross, I don't want to associate my hair with poop! It actually makes me think of rubbing dog poop in my hair.

I used to have dreads(I'm the one with dreads in the picture), and though they were just as clean as most people hair, I washed them once a week, I heard horror stories. I heard of people who actually put poop in their hair to make their dreads. Thats nasty!

I have always been a more shaping hair washer. I have always cringed if I had to wash my hair two days in a row, but I only recently discovered the natural shampoo.

What I did:

What is natural shampoo? Simply a mixture of baking soda and water.
What is natural conditioner? Simply a mixture of vinegar (apple cider is recommended) and water.
Thats it!
This is the blog that got me started

I first started with natural shampoo and kept to my normal conditioner. I have such thin brittle hair that I often leave the hair dresser with split ends. I have heard lots of blogs where people want you to cold turkey just go for a week with no shampoo and things will get better, but I work in an office, and that just not professional! I star by mixing 50% of my current shampoo with 50% of my natural shampoo. Every time I got half empty on the bottle I topped it up with natural shampoo. I guess I now still have microscopic remains of chemical shampoo, but I think I can live with that. I also slowly added more days to my wash-free routine.

I find its helpful when you go camping. I didn't wash my hair for a few days before the camping trip. Then, I wear lots of bandanas headbands, and keep my hair in french braids the rest of the time. If I go swimming the harder water often pulls some of the grease out. If you do want to go cold turkey, camping would be the best time. I know you cant see my hair too well, but this is probably day 6 of no shampoo on a camping trip.

After I got my courage up I started to do the same with my conditioner. I added a bit of vinegar and water to my current conditioner bottle, and slowly as I used it up I made it more and more natural. I now am finally at pure vinegar and water.

The results

In the end I am quite happy with my hair. I find there are days when my hair actually seems to have some volume! I still use dry shampoo (its actually just baby powder) around day 3 or 4, and have to keep my hair up on days 4-7, which is how I prefer it anyhow. My hair smells normal, and looks normal. It feels healthy and I love it!

Whalecome: How to paint perfect letters

I have always thought that Whalecome is the funniest word ever. Since the first time I heard it that is (yes I realize its not a real word). It would not be funny for everyone I guess, just nautical lovers probably. I have wanted to make a pillow that says Whalecome for a long time now and I finally did! In fact. I made 2. One for Joss (the sailboat in other posts) and one for Ca-Sea-Ta (my in-laws other boat).

 You can't deny that is the cutest thing ever!

Materials:

Pillowcase or other surface

Paint

Print-out of picture/writing on any type of printer paper

Sharp Ballpoint Pen

Paintbrush

Sponge

Scissors

What I did:

I chose to put this stencil onto a pillow case, I have also done a similar project on a piece of fabric to make a type of flag. This can also be done on wood, or many other options. 

First cut out the large area with the scissors. The whale in this picture was easy to cut with scissors, but once I got to the letters is when I had to get creative. They were too skinny for my scissors, and my exacto knife ripped the paper so there was not a straight edge. 

Tape the word onto the fabric where you would like it to be so that it does not move. You might need to cut down the paper to include only the letters.

Use your pen to puncture holes in the paper. Once you are done the full word it should look something like this. 

Take the paper off and underneath should look something like this. The second time I did this project I used way less dots because I realized I did not need so many. Less dots = faster.

Consider taking the tape off slowly incase your pen died or a letter was missed for some reason.

Paint inside the dots. 

Finally use the sponge to paint inside the whale stencil. (I painted the whale first, order does not matter) A sponge will give the best results with the paper because you will be only dabbing the fabric. There is almost no chance that the stencil will run on the edges. 

Finished!