These Products From The Ulta Beauty Gorgeous Hair Event Will Give You The Perfect Blowout
This article is in partnership with Ulta Beauty.
When it comes to blowing out natural hair, it can be tricky. Naturally, our hair thrives with less manipulation, but that doesn't mean you can't blow it out from time to time. Depending on your hair, it could cause damage depending on how often you blow out your hair and how much heat you add to it. It's no doubt that blow-drying your hair is less damaging than flat ironing it, but if not done correctly and too often you may sacrifice your curl pattern.
This week's Ulta Beauty Gorgeous Hair Event has a lot of great sales on products and tools that will make blowing out your hair healthier and easier. One of the best dryers to use on natural hair is the Deva Curl Devadryer and Devafuser, which is 50% off this week. It's a two-in-one dryer that you can use for drying your curls or blowing it out without too much heat.
Here's a step-by-step tutorial of how to get the perfect blowout without ruining your curls and what the best products to use are.
Step 1:
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Start with your hair washed and conditioned.
Step 2:
Ulta Beauty
Deep condition your hair with the It's A 10 Miracle Hair Mask and apply a medium palm-sized amount all over your hair. This hair mask helps strengthen and protect hair while softening it. Deep conditioning is important, especially when preparing for your blow out. The It's A 10 Miracle Hair Mask is on sale for 24 hours only today Oct. 10 for 24 hours only at 50% off.
Step 3:
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Comb through hair to remove any knots with the Tangle Teezer Mint & Lilac Ultimate Detangler and wrap your hair with a plastic cap for 10 minutes.
Step 4:
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Rinse thoroughly with cool-water rinse (if desired).
Step 5:
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Apply a leave-in conditioner and heat protectant.
Step 6:
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Apply the Butter Cream Daily Moisturizer by tgin, a Black-owned brand that promises to add additional moisture, shine, and seal moisture.
Step 7:
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Create small sections and blow-dry your hair with the DevaCurl Deva Dryer & DevaFuser.
Step 8:
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Add more of the Butter Cream Daily Moisturizer by Black-owned brand, tgin as needed and style as desired in a stretched twist or braid out, a flexi/perm rod set, or prep for a protective style.
The Final Look:
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Lastly don't forget that you can get each of these products 50% off this week only during Ulta's Gorgeous Hair Event. Click below to shop!
It's A 10 Miracle Hair Mask (Saturday, Oct. 10 - 50% Off)
Ulta Beauty
Regular Price: $52.99
Sale Price:
Tangle Teezer Mint & Lilac Ultimate Detangler (Thursday, Oct. 15 - 50% Off)
Ulta Beauty
Regular Price: $14
Sale Price:
tgin Butter Cream Daily Moisturizer (Sunday Oct. 18 - Entire Brand 50% Off)
Ulta Beauty
Regular Price: $6-9
Sale Price: $11-17
Deva Curl Devadryer and Devafuser (Thursday, Oct. 15 - 50% Off)
Ulta Beauty
Regular Price: $159
Sale Price:
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Featured image by Krissy Lewis for xoNecole.com.
Freelance writer, content creator, and traveler. She enjoys the beauty of simplicity, a peaceful life, and a big curly fro. Connect with Krissy on social media @iamkrissylewis or check out her blog at www.krissylewis.com.
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
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“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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How Wearing My Natural Hair In Europe Taught Me Radical Self-Acceptance
My hair has always been the focus point of my presence, and as a child, it was always the topic of conversation for adults before I even got to know who I was. Being raised in a predominantly Puerto Rican culture, “pelo malo” or “bad hair,” was a term I frequently heard adults categorize my crown as. This was when natural hair wasn’t celebrated but was viewed as a sign of not being "well-groomed."
As a little girl, I was conditioned to believe my hair—my identity—wasn’t up to the standard of what good hair looks like. I then spent my formative years wearing predominantly straight, relaxed hairstyles, covering my true identity with beauty standards.
My natural hair was complimented for the first time when I was 22. I had skipped a relaxer appointment, and my roots had begun to show. After decades of being told my hair wasn’t good enough, the compliment felt strange. I instantly became shy and almost ashamed. However, as my roots began to grow, so did my confidence. The relaxer movement began transitioning into a natural hair empowerment movement.
American society had finally celebrated my curls in a way I hadn’t experienced. I felt proud to wear my natural hair out, and the bigger it got, the more I felt rooted in my identity.
However, there was a shift in acceptance when I began wearing my natural hair in Europe. Everything I had worked so hard to accept about myself felt challenged again.
Wearing my big hair in spaces that were predominantly white became the focal point of my existence. I was faced with looks and questions about why my hair was a particular texture or style. At the same time, I was also witnessing white women wearing hairstyles like box braids, cornrows, and faux locs—the same styles I was labeled as “ghetto” at one point for rocking. I felt like our identity and culture were being judged and mocked at the same time.
Old wounds began to arise, “It’s always okay for them, but never for us,” I thought to myself.
Hair products are crucial for Black and Brown women, and when we travel, the first thought that comes to many of our minds is our hair. Thankfully, one beauty store in Basel, Switzerland, Tropical Zone, carried natural hair products, and it became my safe space when my hair needed self-care.
I restocked on a few products and immediately went home to put my hair in twists. Later that night, I was out at a bar with friends when someone asked me what happened to my hair. I was immediately confused by what the person meant. They then explained that my hair was big, and now it’s not, alluding that something must have gone wrong. The little girl in me began to feel small again.
Unfortunately, these are the norms women of color face when traveling to predominately white countries. Our skin, hair, and essence of who we are are constantly observed and challenged. We find ourselves having to over-explain our features that wouldn’t be questioned if we were white facing. These moments can feel frustrating. We travel to liberate our lives in ways our ancestors could not, yet we can feel trapped by the ignorance of those around us. We are then faced with the choice to rise above adversity.
I decided the little girl in me wouldn’t shrink this time. Radical acceptance is living fully even in parts of the world where Black and Brown culture isn’t fully understood or accepted.
As a woman of color, there will always be someone confused or uncomfortable about parts of my identity. There’s peace in knowing that it’s their problem and not mine. It’s also my responsibility to become entirely comfortable with myself and realize that my triggers are a signal of healing I must do.
Despite where we are in the world, the journey to living as our most authentic selves is the hardest and most radical form of freedom that starts with healing.
There are parts of Switzerland that require a lot of education and awareness, and this excites me because learning is the road to evolution. I hope that this essay will spark a healing conversation on how we can work together to bridge the gap and make women of color feel seen for who they are and not only for their hair texture or skin tone. Black and Brown women are beautiful, joyful, complex, and simple all at the same time. We deserve a space in the world to just be us, for us.
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