Pin Curls

So I tried out curls on my hair for the first time in...a long time. I've done some curling over the years with a curling iron, sure, but the last time I remember curling my hair using an over-night technique was back in elementary school I think. I remember that it was summer and we were staying in Ohio for the funnest two weeks of the year. I guess my cousin or someone had some curlers so we popped them in over night. The next day my hair was awesome as I remember it. I felt like the queen of Bible School the next day with all of my luscious curls. And here I am again! Inspired by my beautiful friend Laurel at her Bridal Shower. She had the cutest hairdo - all ringlet curls pulled up under an adorable mad-hatter (isn't that a great theme for a party??) top hat bespeckled by feathers and sparkle. Laurel's hair is naturally pretty straight so I was curious to know how she had curled it so nicely. She said she used the pin curl technique which I had never before heard of. I looked it up and discovered it's a technique that was common back in the early 1900's and was still being used even into the 1960's. Since the onset of all our electrical gadgetry these days the pin curl has been replaced by curling irons and hot rollers and such. But since I'm to cheap and lazy to buy any of that crap I decided to give this pin curl thing a go! Here's basically how it worked: I wet my hair down (after an environmentally unfriendly shower that lasted a good 30 minutes... I'm terrible!) and started combing it all into sections. I gave up on that though, sectioning your own hair is tedious work! So I sort of wrapped what I imagined were two inch patches of hair around my thumb (I tried to avoid twisting or twirling as I wrapped) and then secured them down with masses of hair pins . The hair pins I got weren't very good at holding the hair in place because the ends were very loose and open, but since I was told that bobby pins are no good because they would leave creases I did the best I could with the hair pins. I had a crap load of them in my hair!! I must have used about 65-75 which seems like a lot of pins to me. Even then I kept having to push some back in and re pin some curls. Once I had may hair in it's oh-so-messy looking pin curls I went to bed so they could set over night. I woke up restlessly two or three times wanting to take them out so I could see if it had curled or not, but I resisted. When it was finally an appropriate hour of the morning I got up, took all the pins out and gave my hair a bit of a finger-combing. It poofed up and actually looked kind of cute! My friend Jessica (who has gorgeous curly hair, the likes of which I could never coax my hair to imitate) said she wanted to see pictures if I did indeed curl my hair. So I threw on some makeup and set my camera timer to take some photos. And here you have it - Sarah with curly hair! Please forgive the tired look in these pictures, they were taken literally about 15 minutes after I woke up... I've no idea how long they'll last today. I didn't put any mousse or anything in when I curled them up so it might uncurl by this evening. But it's fun to see one's hair done differently than normal. I'd like to one day try curling using rags, and also rollers to see if it comes out differently. Knowing me it might be a while though! So I'll enjoy the curls while I have them!

Share|