Work Fab: Funky Pompadour

Helloooo, beautiful people. I hope you all are having a marvelous day. I, for one, fully enjoyed this extra long holiday weekend in Lagos. And I spent my day today in the studio making new music!

I took the traditional pompadour (see the sketch below) and decided to spice up my life a little bit.

Ready? .... BAM!

 What y'all think? I'm feeling pretty fancy, if I do say so myself. This is an excellent let's-be-fashionable-yet-professional style anyone can rock to the office.

What I used:

- Cantu leave-in conditioner
- Raw Shea butter
- Bobby pins

What I did:

1. I moisturized my hair with Cantu and sealed in the moisture with a light layer of shea butter.

2. I plaited my hair into 7 big braids (3 braids on one side of my head, 4 braids on the other)

3. Starting from the back of my head, I took a small piece of hair at the nape of my neck on the right side of my head and crossed it over to the left side of my head, making sure to smooth the hair in the middle of my nape upwards towards the crown (top) of my head

4. I took a small piece of hair at my nape on the right side of left side of my head and crossed it over to the right side of my head, again smoothing down the hair in the middle of my nape to make sure it lays flat

3. I repeated step 3 then step 4 then step 3 again until I reached the crown (the top) of my head

4. I used 4 body pins to secure the place where I stopped at the crisscrossing at the crown of my head

5. What was remaining was a big puff of hair in the front of my head. Time for the pompadour! I started taking small to medium sections at a time from that puff, and and rolled, tucked, and pinned hair to my liking. Don't pin too tightly so that you can have volume in your pompadour. 

6. The rolled and pinned pompadour at this point was sitting directly at the middle of my forehead. Now here comes the funk! I smoothed my hair's right side down with my fingers, gently pushing the pompadour to towards the left side of my head. Secure it with a bobby pin.

Et voila! Funky pompadour. :-)

It took me 10 minutes.

Anyone tried this style yet?

Work Fab: Twisted Pin-Up

One of the secrets to my best twistouts and braidouts is that I leave the twists in for at least 2 days. 

The only exception is if I'm refreshing my twistout mid-week by re-twisting at night; in that case, I only keep the twists in overnight and unravel my hair in the morning to rock a refreshed twistout... I hope that makes sense? Lol

Anyway, here is how I like to wear my twists. I never actually wear them down because I want my hair to be as stretched as possible for the twistout. Here's an excellent way to stretch your twists and be effortlessly edgy at the same time!

I used a LOT of gel, which gave my hair magnificent shine and smoothed my tresses' cuticles

I was inspired by Rihanna's audacity to wear a doobie wrap with huge bobby pins out in public. 

I'm not sure what we call it in Nigeria, but the doobie is basically when we wrap our hair and pin it up after getting it washed and rolled or straightened at the salon, so that the hair can be bouncy and straight the next morning. 

Photo Source: Huffington Post

I was so shocked when I saw Rihanna on the red carpet at the 2013 American Music Awards. But of course, Rih Rih can do no wrong, because most fashion critics and fans loved it. I'm a big Rihanna fan, and the style eventually grew on me.

My scalp is shiiiiining, and it's super moisturized!

Notice how my parts aren't super straight? They don't have to be perfect. Just make sure your front part is straight (like my side part for example), make sure you twist neatly, and use gel to lay down your edges and your hair will be neat enough to wear in a professional setting. 

Team five-head with my layed egdes. Yep, I love that forehead. :-)