It’s hot out there, y’all. No matter whether you’re in New York, Vegas, or Kuwait City, temps are hovering near the triple digits today, which makes curling your hair with a hot-ass wand almost ludicrous. Luckily, one Instagrammer has a no-heat hack that keeps us away from irons (stay cool and cut down on damage!) — and isn't too tricky to master. The technique uses dish sponges and hair elastics, both of which you likely already have on hand, to create gorgeous, flowing waves.
Beauty guru Charmie Jane shows us how it’s done in this quick video, in which she wraps her hair around the rectangular sponges, folds them in half, and then secures them with elastics. Easy, right? Taking kitchen tools to your head may seem out there, but when you think about it, sponge material isn’t all that different from the foam rollers many of our grandmas used back in the day. Not to mention, they're a lot cheaper.
Even Charmie Jane admits in her post that she was skeptical about their curling power at first: “Heatless waves with dish sponges?? Say what? ??? I searched around and saw if it would actually work (and to confirm that I'm not going crazy).” But after finding a YouTube tutorial from BeautyKLove using larger, car wash-style sponges, she applied her own twist. “I noticed the thicker the hair, the bigger the sponge you need to use,” she writes, “but my hair is thin so I used the small ones.” As the video shows, the results are strikingly similar to what you'd get with a curling iron.
Charmie Jane has also posted a video on how to curl hair with duct tape, so she's one to follow if you want to get really creative with your styling game.
Tell us in the comments if you've ever used an out-of-the-box item in place of a traditional tool — and how it worked out.