beach waves

the most popular question i’ve received since starting this blog has been about my hair. i love finding a good beauty tutorial online so i thought i would try to do one myself. let me know what you think and if there’s anything else you’d like to see!

after washing my hair, i use a dime size amount of this. i’ve been using it for a few months and i really like it to protect and smooth. 

i do a rough blow dry. it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it needs to be smooth and mostly straight. i’ve had this blow-dryer forever {7 years!} and it’s still going strong. i’m using this brush.

i have a confession. i don’t have an actual curling wand. a few years ago i wanted to try the whole wand thing but didn’t think i’d like it so i had ken take the clamp off of one of my curling irons. i know it’s easy to do {you just unscrew the clamp from the wand} but i had him do it for me anyway. so that’s what i use. a one-inch converted clamp-to-wand curling iron! it’s this one, if you’re interested.

to start, i section my hair in half and put the top half up so it’s out of the way. if i’m starting with clean hair i’ll usually spray some hairspray so my hair isn’t so soft, but typically i’ll curl my hair the day after i wash it so in that case i’d skip this step.

next grab a one-inch piece of hair and holding your curling wand pointing down, start wrapping your hair around the wand away from your face.

and now to blow your mind, a gif!

the next step is pretty important if you want your waves to look slightly messy. make sure you’re leaving at least an inch at the bottom so you’re not curling the entire piece of hair. that gives it the “beachy” look plus it will help you avoid burning your fingers! when i unwrap the hair from the wand i like to hold it for a couple seconds to let it “set.” i don’t know if it actually works but it doesn’t hurt!

here’s a few more angles. hopefully this helps you visualize how the process works. if you have thicker hair you’ll probably need more sections but again it’s not supposed to be perfect so feel free to use larger chunks – it will be faster that way too!

another thing to point out is that i curl all of my hair the same way, away from my face. i’ve seen a few tutorials that recommend alternating directions but that ends up looking really weird for me.

once all of my hair is curled i’ll go through and touch up any spots that i’ve missed, let it cool {sometimes i’ll brush my teeth at this point to let it cool for a good two minutes} and then run my fingers through it to break up the curls.

and that’s it! beachy waves the easiest way i know how.