Paper Bag Curls

Every woman loves her crowning glory. We curl it, straighten it and tease it in every way possible just to make it look that much more voluminous, much so sleek, much more sexy. When that’s not enough, we even instill the help of styling products (some of us with frizzy curls would call these God sent!) to get the look just right.

Yet we green girls do know how our beauty routine does run much cost at the expense of:

• The health of our precious lovely locks
• The thinning of our wallets/purses
• The detriment of the environment

So what’s a green girl to do if she wants to have beautiful hair? I suppose there are many options available in the market today from solid organic shampoos to sustainable bamboo brushes and aloe vera hair gel to olive oil as frizz tamers but what about hair styling?

How is a woman who cares about her environment, the health of her hair and her monthly budget get those lovely curls that the conventional women obtain through permanent perms, the use of hair rollers or curling irons?

Well of course there’s the widely known method of using rags to tie curls into the hair but what if I said there was another method, fairly similar yet unique all the same?

All you need is sufficient paper bags and your dedication of some time to set your hair!

Honestly it is that simple and here are the steps to getting lovely naturally looking curls all from just the use of recyclable paper bags.

Steps:

1. Get a few brown paper bags and tear them into strips of approximately 3 cm in width each. It doesn’t have to be perfectly accurate just a rough estimate will do.
2. Once done, stack the strips together and cut off at the bottom where the thick base of the paper used to be. Now you’ve got your “curling equipment” ready.
3. The next step is of course to prepare your hair. You want to work with damp hair, so don’t leave it dry and certainly don’t have it dripping wet.
4. As usual, you will want to divide your hair into sections, but if you have very thick and heavy hair like I do, I recommend you tie up half of it first into a bun then begin working on the lower untied half first.
5. Take a strip of paper and wrap it around a section of hair about ¾ down to the tips so that it forms a V shape around the strands of hair.
6. Then slide the paper further down the hair to tighten the hold before rolling it up like you would with a conventional hair roller. Once rolled all the way to the top or as high as you want your curls to reach, simple knot the two ends of the paper strip together to fasten.
7. Repeat till your entire head of hair is neatly curled away in the strips of paper.
8. Now it’s just about waiting for it to set. Here you have 3 options, either

• Wait for it to dry on its own
• Use the hair dryer on cool
• Sleep on it (I do this one and it works fabulous) 

Once your hair is dry, you can be certain you’re going to remove the strips of paper to reveal amazing curls! Now if you find that they came out tighter than you wanted, just run your hair through them to relax them a little. You can apply some eco-friendly hair products to help keep them in place but I find I don’t need to.

The curls will last and they are especially lovely the next day because the curls have mellowed into gorgeous voluminous waves/curls.

Now that’s a cool way of reusing paper bags isn’t it?