Review of Natural Kinks DC

Natural Kinks Hair & Braiding‎
406 8th Street SE, Washington, DC‎
(202) 543-2722‎
www.naturalkinks.com

I am pretty cautious about going to salons, unless I am simply getting extensions put in....however, I decided to brave it and go to "Natural Kinks." I did not have an appointment, but decided to see if I could be seen. Luckily for me someone has just canceled an appointment so they fit me in. (It is best to make an appointment because I was asked to come back after an hour when a woman with an appointment came in, which I thought was fair).

The atmosphere was very peaceful, it was not overcrowded and they played relaxing R&B and was very clean and nicely decorated. While waiting to get back in the chair I saw many other beautiful twist, loc and braid styles completed and I was pretty confident I would be satisfied with the style I received.

My shampoo and deep conditioning was amazing. They used all natural hair products, which I could feel opening up my scalp. My hair felt great and then my stylist sat and talked to me about what I was looking for from this appointment. Shocking! I know, a stylist who truly cares about your hair and your opinions concerning it. She asked me all the prerequisite natural hair woman questions: how long have you been natural, what products do you use, what styles do you typically wear your hair in?, etc.

She gave me some informative tips and product suggestions, which I was open to and then styled my hair into a flat twist/twist half updo.



I will say I was really happy with my experience, but after walking out I was not quite so pleased with how light my wallet felt. Great place that I would love to support...but way too expensive. For a style that really only looked great for 1 week and then looked acceptable for another week I felt slightly cheated.

Henna'd Hair for the Summer

So after reading up on Henna for months now I decided to try it out for the first time... I have always been pretty cautious about dying my hair. I don't relax my hair, so why would I want to put some other chemical into my hair. So I did a bit of research...Then I decided what concoction I was gone put together:




200 g of "Jamila 2009" a Body Art Quality Henna for Hair from Mehandi. This was the easy part. Pretty much decided that I was going to start out simple my first time and see how henna worked on my hair: in terms of color, texture and health....all qualities which I have heard henna enhances. Then I decided on what type of mixture to make.




I had to choose an acidic liquid to mix in with the henna: easy lemon juice...i sure as hell wasn't using something nasty like vinegar in my hair. Then I decided to try to see if I could get my very dark hair to even possibly show a little red. So I decided to experiment with something natural to enhance the red. I decided to boil the purple/red color out of some beets to mix in....







This is the consistency the mixture should be, kinda like yogurt...



I covered it and let it sit on the counter overnight...you don't need to let it sit that long, but because of my timing it just ended up that way. During that time I also went out and scooped some cinnamon because the smell of henna, while some people apparently love it, is not one that i wanted sticking in my hair. So I prepped my bathroom and got my plastic gloves ready...



I bet if I hadn't done this I would have messed my bathroom all up...but I didn't really end up dripping a whole lot. I had my hair sectioned off in 4 parts and starting from the root on down I covered each section with a fair amount of henna. I just finger combed it through my hair because I didn't want to add any unnecessary stress to my hair while putting this new product in. It was thick enough that i could use it to mold my hair into a wrapped type of style. Then B saran-wrapped my hair covering my whole head.



Made sure it was tight and nothing was dripping out. My ears did end up having a lot of henna behind them, but the color only lasted a few days. I had some extra henna and I stuck it in the freezer to save it for the next time. Had to sleep on a towel to make sure that I didn't mess up my pillowcase. Next day I filled my bathtub up and emerged myself to try and get the henna out as evenly as possible. I did this twice to get all the henna out and then conditioned it since I heard henna can dry your hair out.

While the color is really not as noticeable as I hoped, my hair is pretty dark, but my hair does feel strengthened and definitely glossier. Here's the before and after:

Before



After



Definitely will use the rest that I have frozen, but I think I am going to try and lighten my hair first using some lemon-juice + sun this weekend.