Flat Ironing Once a Month!?

Firstly, sorry for disappearing.  I honestly haven't been doing much of anything with my hair since starting to use home made products and being swamped with classes. Even over Winter break I didn't do much to my hair. :(


So you guys know how lazy I am and the fact that flat ironing simply takes me way too much time. I decided to change it up, though, because I knew I wasn't going to do anything to my hair the last month of school [loads of things, including finals] and flat iron.  I knew it would probably only last until I got home because, as you also know, my hair gets REALLY dry a few days after flat iroing and I just DC it.

It didn't! So, I DC'd per normal [which for me was shampooing with ApHogee Shampoo for Damaged Hair → I have now used all of this! It was really good but I'm going poo-less [except my clarifier for if I do something crazy, but that should be a few times a year as opposed to once every two weeks.] so I will not be repurchasing. I DC'd with Silk Elements, added a ton more as my leave in [I either do this or simply don't wash out the DC.]

I flat ironed with a medium amount of heat protectant, instead of the loads I used to use [paranoia, man!] and did it at 220°-280° in the sections my CF set came out in. All in all I probably did slightly more than those 42 sections, and my hair felt and looked amazing. It had slightly more swing than just a CF set and was much shinier. You know, normal flat ironing stuff.
At night I applied generous amounts of coconut oil before my various sets, which included headband curls and bantu knots.  As it turns out, this generous application of coconut oil really helped my hair stay moisturized.  Instead of being afraid of weighing my hair down, I allowed it to finally take in what it so desperately wanted and I ended up going the full month before washing my hair again!
This was about a week into break, when I decided, what the heck, I'll flat iron again and see if my new oils  [next post will be about these] will work even better, or if this was a fluke.  I flat ironed again, same temp but even less [still probably too much, you guys have NO IDEA how much I was using, lol] heat protectant, right after a DC with Hair One Argan Oil [I will not rebuy HO! I know, this was my only HG product, but I've realized now that my home made products are good enough that I will not need to repurchase this. It's a great feeling!]
My hair had less swing than before, and was just as shiny as when I took it out of the CF. In fact, I almost didn't flat iron because my hair already looked and felt great from the intense moisture. Once again, I didn't care about weighing down my hair [and I've learned that my hair doesn't actually get 'weighed down' in the less movement/stiffness category, but it does actually weigh more, causing it to move more and be less stiff! Amazing!] and I used my new oil mix.
Wow. Once again, this oil will be my next post because I feel like it deserves it's own topic. They're two oils you've probably [almost definitely] heard of but I only just got them.
Halfway through, my hair was great, but I thought something was missing. I realized it was protein, so I did a really ghetto version of a protein treatment and my hair literally got softer every single day until I reached this weird peak of amazingness that was so awesome I could not keep my hands out of my hair.  Unfortunately, I couldn't sustain it, but I remembered how much my hair loves the protein [this was mostly hydrolysed wheat] and I'll use it more often. I need to buy a protein treatment, since it's so difficult to naturally make products with small enough protein molecules to penetrate, but I couldn't find what I wanted [Aubrey Organics GPB].
In the end I only went two / three weeks with this hair because I just really wanted to play with my natural hair texture again, but it looked great, and I got tons of complements every time I went out.
I will not be flat ironing again any time soon, but it is great to know that I can do it without causing dryness, especially with the time it takes to flat iron my hair!
Have great hair days, guys and gals!