The Vine: May 13, 2011
I’m hoping you and the TN readers can help me out. I’ve used curved bobby pins in my hair — Caucasian, abundant but fine, wavy, and a few inches below my shoulders — for years. Unfortunately, it seems that Scunci, Conair and Goody no longer produce these pins. Regular drug-store variety bobby pins (uncurved, with a crimped prong) simply don’t stay in my hair.
The super-strong bobby pins my hairstylist used for my wedding hairstyle do work well, but I’m out of contact with him and don’t know the brand.
I’ve jealously guarded my last three curved Scunci pins for years (seriously — more than six!) but I noticed recently that I’m down to one. I’ve trawled eBay, Amazon and Etsy — but to no avail. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance from my unsexily messy bun,
Anne
Dear Anne,
My suggestions: ask your current hairstylist, or the stylist in your salon who specializes in occasion hair/updos (“updoes”? those both look weird…anyway). If you don’t have a current stylist, go get an updo at a salon a friend recommends, and ask for/about the pins.
Or send a letter to Goody asking about the pins — a physical letter with a stamp on it. I’m an old crank with the sending complaint/suggestion letters, but I’m telling you, it gets results. Years ago I mailed a note to Goody: “Guys, I love your products, but two hairbrushes in a row have lost their teeth in a matter of days — can y’all fix the glue you’re using? Love, Hopeful Buntsy,” and within a week, they’d FedExed me a full box of my model number of brush in every color along with an apologetic card.
So, if Googling for wholesale styling supplies doesn’t get you anywhere (and it might; look up local beauty schools, salon brands, etc.), write a non-email letter to the companies and see if they can hook you up. Even if they can’t, they’ll usually send a coupon.
Or you can raid the readers’ vanities. Readers?
Tags: Ask The Readers health and beauty
Check out Sally Beauty Supply or your neighborhood braiding shop – you might be able to find what you’re looking for from a more “ethnic” a.k.a Black positioned brand.
Depending on exactly what you need to do with the pins, I’d suggest
— snap clips
— Goody’s “spin pins”
— Bunheads brand hairpins or similar (not the same as bobby pins; these look like an elongated U shape)
— a trawl through Vermont Country Store’s website–they are a repository of good, discontinued stuff.
Hope these suggestions are helpful! My hair is thick, simultaneously coarse and slippery, so I sympathize with your quandary. I am wearing a short pixie cut these days–another way around the problem, albeit an extreme one.
Are these the ones you like?
http://www.amazon.com/Scunci-Bobby-Black-Comfort-Curved/dp/B004EBE5ZC
If so, you can buy a lot of 360 for less than $10… ought to last a while.
Are these what you’re looking for? There are apparently only a few left — order fast!
http://www.amazon.com/Scunci-Bobby-Black-Comfort-Curved/dp/B004EBE5ZC
Are these not them?
http://www.amazon.com/Scunci-Bobby-Black-Comfort-Curved/dp/B004EBE5ZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305293108&sr=8-1
Although judging by the reviews and your letter, it seems like you may have already found them?
You may not want to hear about any other products, but you really ought to give Goody’s spin pins a try. They’re corkscrew bobby pins and they really do hold a bun amazingly well. Goody claims each spin pin does the work of 20 bobby pins. I don’t know how true that is, but I have really thick hair and three of those suckers held a bun for me. They come in boxes of 2 pins, which is probably all someone with normal hair would need. It’s worth thinking about.
It sounds like we have pretty similar hair. I’ve had really good luck with these plastic ones, but they don’t sound quite like what you describe. Sally has a lot of different kinds of bobbypins; I’m not sure I found them all – some seem to be categorized under Styling Tools and some are under Hair Accessories – but maybe you’ll have some luck over there?
If you are wearing your hair in a bun, I second @Laura’s recommendation of Goody’s Spin Pins:
http://www.target.com/Goody-Simple-Styles-Spin-Brunette/dp/B003FVDNO6
My hair is on the thicker side, also really abundant, and down to the bottom of my bra strap, but those two little pins the size of my pinky fingers can hold my hair up in a bun the entire day. They are AWESOME!
Those spin pins look like an engineering marvel. My hair is more or less like the OPs, except it’s pin-straight.
And, pardon the hijack: WHY are there no redhead bobby pins at the drugstores? (I have also observed from casual research that there are no auburn Bumpits, but I have learned to live with this.)
I too mourned pitifully when I could not find these curved bobby pins anymore and Scunci told me after I inquired that they had been discontinued. Regular bobby pins are just so ugly and it only make sense that a curved pin would work better since they conform to the shape of your head. I’m excited to see there are some on Amazon, omg!!
I have had good luck with these: http://www.franceluxe.com/pc/LI2843/bobbyPins/index.html
They’re not exactly the same, and they’re more expensive, but they are curved and hold my hair.
I second the search at Sally’s Beauty or similar. Or, if you have a friend who’s a hairdresser get them to let you tag along to a pro-only supply shop. You will be amazed by the wall o’ pins.
This is embarrassing, but I don’t really know how to do a bun. My hair is super thick, wavy, and pretty long right now — down to the bottom of my bra strap, as The Other Rachel says above.
I can do a fake bun thing with a ponytail holder, but it doesn’t look the nicest, very messy. My mom insisted I have boy-short hair my entire childhood, so I never really learned how to do any long-hair styles, and my current “hair guru” stylist man is an almost militant evangelist for “less is more, must be as low-maintenance as possible” non-styles. As in, he tells me to wash it once or twice a week at most, wear it down or in a low, messy-ish ponytail, don’t brush it or the wave will go away, etc. Basically just get-up-and-go. And it looks great that way, I am with him for the most part, but I love how a cute bun looks on other girls and I’d like to have a few more tricks up my sleeve, you know?
Any YouTube videos y’all can recommend, or techniques that never fail you, or websites I should visit? I didn’t even know that curved bobby pins existed or were helpful in bun-making, so clueless am I. (Thanks!)
Spin pins. Get them! I looked all over for those things for months before a store in my town finally got them and they’re awesome. I have pretty thick, straight, fine hair that won’t hold any style, but I can hold a bun with one or two spin pins. They don’t serve the exact same purpose as regular bobby pins of course, but they will hold your hair in a tight or messy bun. I unfortunately decided to cut my hair just a month or two after finally buying the pins, so I can’t use them, but I’m waiting for my hair to get long enough to try them again.
My hair is similar to how yours sounds, and I am growing out bangs (…ugh) so I’m in pins every day. I just two of use the regular kind and make an X–the crimps lock together and nothing can move.
The easiest way I know to do a bun (that’s not a messy failed-ponytail bun, which is in fact my go-to bun) for the hair novice is to take your hair, pull it back into a ponytail, and make a ponytail with an elastic that matches your hair as closely as possible. (Easiest place on your head: about even with eye-level, but on the back of your head.)
Next, get some bobby pins out and put them where you can get at them easily.
Then you take the ponytail and just twist it. (This is so it stays together when you wind it around–next step.)
Then you take the twist/pony and start circling it around the ponytail holder, like you’re coiling a cinnamon bun from the inside of the spiral outward. I’m right handed, so I tend to start my circle at around 10-11 o clock, and then bringing it clockwise around itself. It should lie flat against the hair that’s on your scalp. At some point you’ll run out of hair. (The longer the hair, the more coils you’ll make.)
When you run out of hair, grab a bobby pin. What you’re doing next is what takes the most trial and error, but basically, you are trying to pin the cinnamon bun to the hair on your scalp. You want any bobby pin to cross your individual hairs perpendicularly so that the pin doesn’t slide out(think of a pin going vertically onto a lock of hair–it won’t catch anything so there’s no reason to have it there at all)–more important on the bun hairs than the scalp hairs. The pins get placed all around the bun, pointing inward toward the center, and pinning together the bottom-most layer of bun hair and the hair on your scalp. Make sure you tuck in the tail of the ponytail (under the second-most-outer coil of the cinnamon bun) and pin that so the ends don’t flop around.
Then you move your head a little and see if anything feels loose. If it does, add another pin.
Then you grab a hand mirror and check out the back of your head. Make sure the bobby pins aren’t too apparent and that your ponytail holder is covered by the cinnamon bun.
That’s basically it–alternatives basically center on not using a ponytail holder (which makes it harder to coil your bun in the right place because you’re sort of doing it all in one step), using something other than bobby pins (like the goody spin pins, which I LOVE and which are very very key to the very neat ballerina bun, in my experience, and then you’re not picking bobby pins out of your hair for five minutes before bed), or varying the placement of the bun on your head (higher means that your hair needs to be longer to keep everything in the ponytail; lower means it’s harder to pin the bun to your scalp hair).
I LOVE my spin pins. OP, you might try Goody’s BobbySlides~they’re a little bigger than traditional bobbies, but the are curved and very comfortable. This is a link to the blonde ones, but they have brunette ones too.
http://www.amazon.com/Goody-Blonde-Bobby-Slide-Barrettes/dp/B0040LGFW2
I think my hair is similar to yours, thick but fine and slightly wavy. Most things just slide out of my hair, but I have found the greatest clip for putting my hair up, Goody’s comfort-flex updo barrette. They come in at least two sizes and they keep my hair up all day.
http://www.amazon.com/Goody-Comfort-Flex-Updo-Barrette/dp/B003XS25JA/ref=sr_1_24?s=beauty&ie=UTF8&qid=1305345599&sr=1-24
I also love these heavy duty bobby pins that are almost more like barrettes from Goody. http://www.amazon.com/Goody-Metallic-Round-Bobby-Slide/dp/B004RRGS4Y/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=beauty&qid=1305345804&sr=1-13
For Susie — while for years I’ve done my buns the way that Sarah describes (occasionally braiding the ponytail for interest, and often leaving out the rubber band since my hair is thin enough I can just start twisting and it’ll stay), recently I’ve started doing my buns a little differently. I also think it might work better for your very thick hair.
Divide your hair in half, and then tie the hanks into a knot, like tying your shoe. Double the knot if you can. Then stick bobby pins into the knotted part, coming at it from the top and bottom, and pin the loose ends (which should be about 3-5 inches at most) sort of scrunched up on either side of the knot. Since your hair is wavy (mine’s curly), the loose ends will naturally have some body and look romantic and styled. You can put a flower pin or fancy clip tucked in above the knot too — I put one on the top right to hide where my part is really visible.
Susie: a bun with twisted hair (like Sarah describes – called a cinnamon bun in some circles), with or without ponytail elastics, holds really well for thick hair, especially wavy hair. You can do it low on your head or higher – the key thing is to twist the hair as you coil it.
Googling ‘cinnamon bun’ gets you a lot of people with really long hair, like this tutorial, but the general principle is the same.
Bobby pins work well, or notice what the woman in the video does with her straight hairpins – she sort of pushes them perpendicular to her head and a little bit outwards, then reverses direction to push them inwards and through the bun, flat to her head to catch some of the scalp hair. It’s hard to describe, but it holds well because it uses the spring of your hair to stop the bun unwinding.
Vermont Country Store’s website was already mentioned above; they almost make a business out of carrying things that have been around your whole life– that suddenly aren’t for sale anymore: particular lipstick colors, perfect bedroom shoes, hairbrushes. Lots of other wonderful things, just looking through the catalog is fun. For all the TN, except for old and beloved books, check the VCS website. And they respond very well to Sars original idea of writing. It seems they are willing to put in the work to find the old, familiar, but now rare things.
No Relation
I had trouble finding them too, but I finally found them at Duane Reade.
Oh my god, you guys. On the basis of all the testimonials here, I decided to give the Spin Pins a try. They are amazing! I have thick, coarse, long hair, and I have never managed to wear it up without using a whole box of bobby pins and a handful of Aleve to ward off the inevitable headache. The Spin Pins, on the other hand, work great. I use four instead of two (seriously: thick hair), but it stays up all day with no headache (since the weight is more evenly distributed). Nation, you have changed my life!