Before and After

In the beginning when I started researching SLs, I couldn't get enough of before and after pics. I wanted to have some idea what mine would look like. I know that no two heads or hair textures are the same, so you can never be 100% sure what you'll get, and many people have said that lurking leads to lock envy and lock confusion, but I have to say it really helped me a lot. I did see several women whose hair looked like mine in before pics; and that helped serve as a pretty accurate predictor of what my locks would look like.
So, I thought it would be helpful to sisters who are on the fence for me to include a few before and after pictures.

I've mentioned before that my haircut was very layered. These pictures were taken about three months before I started my locks. When you compare these to the pics I posted on May 14, you get a good idea of how much length I lost.

These pics were taken the day my locks were finished.

I feel obligated to add that I have been wearing my hair natural and/or lightly texturized for 15 years, so I was pretty in touch with my hair's texture before I made the decision to lock. If you are starting from hair that has always been chemically processed there is no way to imagine or predict what it will do in its natural state - locked or otherwise. I was able to hazard a guess because I have worn my hair in so many different natural hairstyles. I have especially experimented with different sizes and methods of twisting and coiling it - styles which are inherently similar to methods used to lock. And I was still very uncertain about how my hair would look and behave in SLs. And I was still surprised by what I ended up with - albeit pleasantly.