Henna Night - a different kind of crafty.

With Eve's help, Angela and I became red-heads for the next month (give or take). She uses henna a lot on her hair and we've been planning to give it a try for a while now.

We had so much fun! The henna itself was a surprise for me since I've never seen it before. It was a green powder - I assume since it is the ground leaves, since this is where the orange-red dye is stored in the leaves of the henna plant.

So, the process is really simple - you basically boil a bit of water, stir the water into the henna in batches until you get the consistency you want - Eve was going for a slightly runny paste since she knew it would thicken up as she worked.

We used the Rainbow brand of henna and had great results. Angela's brown hair looked had a very red tint afterward in the light, but wasn't as bold as she wanted, so we will likely try some other techniques next time to make it set better. We were all a bit skeptical that my hair would take the henna very well, since I've been on a no-shampoo (only baking soda and vinegar) kick with my hair for a few months, which has made my hair extremely oily and horrible. I wasn't ready to give up my experiment yet for henna night, so we ignored the instructions to have very clean hair and went with it. It really took to my hair despite the oiliness - was very bright orange-red when we finished! The orange has faded out mostly after a few weeks, and it's not near as bold (or maybe I'm just used to it now), but is still plenty red.

As a disclaimer, I've since read that any henna that isn't red is not really pure henna. This info is from the Henna for Hair site, which says to use only "body art quality henna". I haven't done enough research to know how true this is or how worried we should be that there could be additives that aren't listed on the label, some of which could be harmful things to your hair (according to Henna for Hair) and/or agitating to the scalp. After reading this, I'm in the category of 'slightly alarmed' that the Rainbow brand comes in a wide array of colors yet claims to have "no additives, chemicals or pesticides". I may look for this so-called body art quality henna next time just out of curiosity, but have no idea whether this is mislabeled or misrepresented henna by Rainbow or not.

Ok, so back to the process. Oh, did I mention that it smells very planty - like green tea - which is a good thing to me, since that provides more confidence in the all-natural aspect. The smell remained for quite a while - a week or so. Disclaimer numero deux: this could also be due to my hair cleansing methods or lack therof, since I broke down and switched back to shampoo last weekend and don't smell the henna any longer.

My hair is dry now, but I couldn't take the oily any more and would rather work to fix the dry dilemna than the greasy, wet look I've had for several months. Ugh. That's a whole 'notha story, though.

Ok, so Eve pasted away - using a basting brush for hair to apply the henna paste to as much hair as possible - starting at the roots, then going down the length of hair. Once she was done pasting, we covered our heads with plastic shower caps and a towel, then went off to the bathroom to use low heat from a hairdryer all over our heads. This heat is to help the henna take to the hair. After about an hour, it was time to rinse out and give the new henna hair a shampoo (or whatever crazy concoction you choose to use).


Voila! Red hair. It's that easy.

I didn't get a front shot of Angela after, so you will just have to know to identify Angela's after pic by her lovely wavy locks.

There are some hints on the Rainbow site for getting the henna to take better to gray hair - like coffee and vinegar and olive oil... - I'm wondering whether that will actually help with any hair color. That leaves us room to experiment next time!