Hairstyle #1: Curlformers

Hi Friends! I hope everyone is well.

The last time we spoke, I professed that my next hair journey goal was to wear my hair out for the entire summer (i.e. until my next relaxer at the end of August) and to experiment with different styles. Well I've been eyeing curlformers since seeing gorgeous heads of curls on youtube such as Naptural85. I waited until Sally's had a 25% off sale and ordered two packs of extra long, extra wide. I planned to try them while my relaxer was still relatively fresh so that I wouldn't have to battle with getting my thicker, harder to manager hair through the tubes. Welp, I loved the results (and still do), but DOUBT I will be trying these again.

Since I rarely wear my hair out and don't really do anything to it from a styling perspective, I felt the curlformers were much too taxing on my hair. I was pretty good with putting them in since I had watched so many youtube videos on the technique beforehand, but there were a few times when my hair got stuck going through the tube and I had to yank it out, as well as a time or two when I felt like I was ripping my hair out (even though there were no signs that I actually was). When I took the curlformers out, I lost quite a bit of hair (in my opinion, even though it may not seem like much) and that didn't make happy. I used ~72 because I had to put them in small sections in order to prevent trauma to my hair. It took me 2 hours to put them in, I "slept" in them to ensure my hair was dry when I took them out, and it took me about 30 minutes to remove them.

All in all, I'm proud of myself for sticking to my plan of "enjoying" my hair and experimenting with new styles, but I'm traumatized by curlformers. Next, I may try a bantu knot, or go back to my very first style when I first started my hair journey, a twist n curl. Below are a few pics:

Bottom middle: hair lost during take-out