I was intimidated when I first picked up the Goody Heat Wave Creator Styling Iron to use it. I didn’t think I’d be able to figure it out. I do have to say that my preferred curling iron, though, is a Marcel one. That’s the kind without the clamp on it. The "professional" one. But since my last one broke, I haven’t been able to find a decent replacement so I’ve been using a flat iron.

What I do is flat iron my hair first. Maybe you can skip this step, but since I’m African-American, and I wash, wrap, and air dry my own hair, it needs more straightening first. After I flat iron it, I’ve figured out that the easiest way to use this is to hold the hair I want curled with hard on that side of my head. So if I’m working on the left side of my head, then I hold my parted hair in my left hand, grab the curling iron with my right hand, turn it upside down, and the twirl my hair around the barrel using my left hand. The one thing you’ll want to do is leave about 1/2 to 1 inch of hair NOT curled at the very end of your hair. That avoids burns on your fingers. Ask me how I know this.

What I’ve discovered – this is probably meant for longer hair than mine. My hair is shoulder length, maybe an inch past my shoulders. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to get the waves – but it works. I don’t see in the product description that it’s meant for longer hair, but the model does have longer hair. Smaller parts makes curlier curls. To avoid standing in front of the bathroom sink for hours, I only curled the "top" part, or crown, part with a few other curls surrounding those. Larger (wider) parts make wavier curls. To get this look it takes much less time. The problem for me with shoulder-length is that the wavier curls don’t make much curl at all. They’re there, just not a lot.

I like this curling iron. It works very well. You might burn your finger as you get used to it, but if you’re a quick reactor, it won’t be bad. For the length of my hair, a shorter barrel would be perfect!

Now Coco says I need to work on my gray hair. But I probably won’t. The cycle of relaxer then hair color every 3 weeks is horrible. Plus about a week after I color my hair, the gray is back. I’m too frustrated to continue that.