Monday, May 24, 2010

Roller clips vs. Roller Pins

I recently received a set of hot rollers. It makes me feel a little like a granny owning a set of these, but with long hair and little time to get ready for work in the morning, they really do wondrous things. When I had shorter hair, rollers were not my friends. They left it looking poodley at best, and frizzy at worst. However, now that my hair is longer, they give it a nice curl on the ends, while keeping it smooth and shiny on the top. It essentially looks like I spent some serious time with a curling iron coiling all the ends, but with way less effort.


Granted, there is a special technique to acheive long lasting curl from rollers. You must roll a strip of hair down the center of your head from front to back in 4 rollers then roll the sides in about 2 for each side. You have to wait until they are almost burn your fingers hot, and let them set with the clips in until they cool. Then unroll, replace in their container, flip head over, shake, and you're done. Voila! Natural, bouncy curls that stay longer than with a curling iron (for me at least) and with only one final coat of hair spray at the end rather than spritzing each section before twirling it around an iron.


This is the first set of curlers I've owned since just stealing them from my mom or my sister, and there have been some changes since their sets were made. First of all, there are different clips. The clips mine came with (shown above) are plastic little claws that claim to hold tight without crimping hair. YES, it even said that on the box. Which is one of the reasons I thoguht this was the right set of curlers for me.


Now let's rewind to about 5 minutes before I'm supposed to run out the door this morning. I'm all dressed, teeth brushed, and I start to unroll my hair, ready to shake, spray and run out the door looking fab. I take out 1, 2, 3, ALL of the rollers and my head is peppered with crimps every single place the clip touched my hair. HORROR! DISMAY! I'm going to be late!


After a quick rummage around the apartment for a hair straigtener, and finding none, I had no choice but to pull my ruined hair into a pony tail and dash out the door. I was NOT happy to hide my bouncing curls with a rubberband, but the whole head kinks did not leave me much choice.
I don't know why they don't make curlers anymore that come with the wires shown below. Not only do they pin the curler to your head more securely (so you don't risk hot rollers falling out and flying across the living room while you're ironing your outfit....not that that happened this morning or anything), but they DO NOT and HAVE NOT ever left a kink in my hair.
I know I plan to order some roller wires online to go with my set to avoid this catastrophe in the future. But don't be fooled like me! The box lies, and the clips will crimp your hair.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that you say you prefer pins over the clips, since I think most people prefer the clips, but this is my theory as to why ... I just recently saw a picture with the pins going from back to front (that is, with the ends of the pins sticking forward, close to the root of the hair/through the front, and the u-side in "back"). I always used to stick the u-side in so it was at the front (by the root), with the ends sticking out the back, which creates a kink at the front. So, I was on the hunt for roller clips b/c I hated the pins. After I saw that picture and read your post, I put two and two together and tried sticking the pins in from the back, and for the first time, I didn't get any kinks! I'm guessing this is probably what you are doing if you don't get kinks from rollers. Now that I figured this out, I'm hoping they don't stop making the pins altogether!

I learned something else from your post - to put rollers in down the center from your forehead to the nape of your neck. I often sectioned it there and then would try to get rid of the part afterwards ... doesn't work! :-D

Anonymous said...

... meant don't get kinks from pins!

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