Love afro puffs, but they don't love me

[Brownie]

Am I the only natural who has problems with Afro puffs? I love the way my hair looks when I wear one, but in order to get my hair in that style, I have to comb my hair a great deal (wet and dry). Not only that, but my hair has a coily pattern, so I have to comb all the curls out, and that's hard, especially when it tends to curl back up with moisture (sweating, shower, humidity).
Now I have to comb the curls out because if I don't my hair will look wavy/curly, limp, and it will not puff out. Now after I finally get my hair in a puff, some of the curls come back on the ends, and they tend to cause knots and trouble when I try to comb them out.

I also have a straighter, floppy texture at the bottom, so I have a hard time getting my puff to stand up toward the back to make it blend in with the rest. I have a different less floppy texture toward the crown, and this part tends to shrink more, so I have to comb it more to get it to look even with the rest of my hair. I love the way my hair looks in an afro puff, but it just takes too much combing and manipulation for me to get my hair like this, and I lose way too much hair, and it is too time consuming. I think I am going to save wearing puffs for a few times a year, and that's it. Am I the only natural who loves afro puffs, but has a hard time wearing them?

 

[Poohbear]

I love wearing afro puffs too!!!

In my case, I only like afro puffs on dry stretched out hair... I never try to do a stretched out afro puff on wet/damp hair. I just wear a shrunken tighly coiled puff on wet/damp hair... I never try to comb out wet hair unless it has LeKair Cholesterol in it for conditioning and detangling.

And you're right about too much manipulation and too time consuming. That's why I have opt to wear 2 strand twists now. I was wearing stretched out afro puffs on a daily basis. I just love the look. Now, I've decided to just wear stretched out afro puffs only on occassion whenever I feel like it.

To avoid breakage and knots, this is what I do:
*Wash and condition (once a week)
*Plait up wet hair in sections with grease or oil
*Airdry overnight
*Unravel plaits in the morning and gently pick out hair with a wide tooth comb or K Cutter from back to front
*Apply scarf band and go
*Each night, I would have to rebraid my hair in order for it to stay stretched out... but I've also gotten away with wearing just a satin bonnet over my afro puff and it'll still look fine in the morning
*Throughout the week, I applied Blue Magic Coconut Oil grease to my hair... I never wet it and I never use a liquid moisturizer because my hair will shrink up

HTH!

 

[Lucie]

Pick it out in the shower as you do a CO wash. DOUSE your hair with conditioner as you pick it out. It helps to get a really good shower head too, that helps detangle the coils/curls. I miss my afro puff

 

[Country gal]

I like wearing my coily puff. I just put some Scurl or Ic fantasia on my hair with a scarve and call it a day.

 

[tastesosweet]

Since going natural, I have always been a puff wearer. I, too, have several textures of hair in my head which makes a uniformed puff really difficult. However, I've found that fingercombing my hair out of two-strand twists gives me a nice, full puff. I also use Kinky-Curly's Curly Custard to get more definition with my texture. Lastly, I think the manner in which I pull my puff up gives me the ability to pat and tuck the puff until it look neat. I use a piece of fabric and wrap it around my hairline so that it looks like a headband. Then I slowly slide it back (or up) until my hair is in the position I want for the puff. Then I tie it up and tuck it under my hair and then pick my hair out around it to hide the tie. HTH! Good luck!