Henna Hair Dye

Originally had 6 blocks in each but I used 4

             Alright. it's time for another post. Sorry about being soooo delayed but I'm taking 20 credits this semester at college while working at least 25 hours a week at two different jobs, so as you can probably infer, I'm sort of a busy lady :) I've dyed my hair with henna and I DEFIANTLY want to share this experience with you! I started out my journey at Lush at Mall of America. It was about time for me to dye my hair again because my roots were showing and truth be told, I'm addicted. I walked in with my friend Derek and bought two different types of henna for hair dying, one that is for dark black and one for a dark brown with a hint of red. I was told for the color I wanted to mix the two colors.

My set up

          The first step in this process is to grate or crush the henna blocks. My attempt at this was putting the blocks in a bag and hammering them. It was a lot of fun. The next step is to melt the henna and add water to make a paste like typical hair dye. Online I discovered that for deeper color you could add coffee to the mixture and that would help dye your hair to a dark brown color. Since I've tried the coffee hair dye in the past, I was sure it wasn't going to harm my hair at all so instead of water, I made coffee and made my mixture with that instead.






              I brought a small pot of water to boil on my stove and placed a jar with the henna in it. The goal of the paste is for it to be the consistency of pudding, too thick and it can dry out during the process and too thin and it won't stay on very well.

           My hair has faded since the last time I have dyed it (using a drug store box dye) as you can see from this before shot. So once the mixture is ready, its time to get a little messy. Now usually, a box hair dye comes with gloves and lots of warnings about not getting it on your skin or on anything else or else it will dye that as well. So the awesome thing about henna is that it is all natural and it won't hurt your skin. It will dye it obviously if you leave it on long enough but not at all like the chemical version of hair dye.




         You will need a pair of rubber gloves though for the application process. I went into my bathroom and started to apply the henna all over my hair. I think the pictures are pretty self-explanatory, so I'll leave it up to them for a while.

            Alright, so by this time, I've covered my hair with the stuff. Another thing I want to mention is the smell of henna. IT IS NOT AT ALL LIKE TRADITIONAL HAIR DYE! It smells like grass actually. Out-of-the-box hair dye is terrible smelling and can actually give me a headache (which I rarely ever get) so I was VERY pleased with this new smell.

          One of the last things I did was wrap my hair in plastic wrap. I know that sounds really strange and I looked really strange as well but I was told that if I wanted a blueish tint to my hair, to leave my hair in the open air so that the henna will oxidize, turning it a bluer color whereas if I wrapped it in plastic wrap, it would achieve a more red color. I couldn't decide at first, but after factoring in the time it takes (you must leave the dye on for at least four hours and some people even sleep overnight in it) I decided I would probably want it wrapped so I could do more than just sit in my bathroom for hours. I'm thinking next time I will try not covering it and see how it turns out :)
As I said before, I wanted to do more than sit in my bathroom all night, so I went down the hall to a friends apartment and watched them play video games all night (very productive I know). Also this now qualifies Derek Eicholz as being a VERY close friend of mine because he got to see me looking like a robot!

             And this is the final product! I took a shower to wash all the henna out at the end of the night (about five hours I left it on). Now, it is messy in the shower as well but give it some time and it will work itself out....just remember to wash the walls of your shower off when you're done haha.                             

Any questions?