Back to henna thanks to lush.

[mcgvil]

Three weeks ago i dyed my hair back to a reddish brown. Well it was supposed to be light brown but i wound up with red brown and light brown roots   So when i was in lush on thursday i was eyeing up the henna and the poor man working there got bombarded with lots of henna questions that he couldnt answer so he gave my enough free samples to do my hair   So thanks to him i'm now sitting with a pile of mud on my head  

I've used equal quantities of caca rouge and caca maroon. They smell a hell of a lot nicer than BAQ henna thanks to all the added extras although i think my addition of chai tea helped. They also released dye pretty much instantly as my faintly orange neck can attest to but one awful thing is the lumps! Even though i smashed the blocks up i still had lots of lumps in the mix that i could only remove by smushing them up with my fingers.

I've noticed quite a few people looking to go back to natural colours and giving up the bleach so i thought this would be useful for anyone considering henna. I'll update tonight once i've rinsed the henna off  

[thatlouise]

YEARS ago I helped a friend dye her hair with the Lush henna block stuff, it went so wrong.  Got lumps of the crap all over the kitchen (think it was more than went on her head) and it never even changed the colour!

Hope you have better luck =P

[Hazillian]

Bad luck, Louise. D: Henna doesn't do much for some people from what I hear.
But good luck to you, Gvil! Do let us know. :>

[mcgvil]

Why did anyone think putting gritty ingredients in the henna was a good idea!?! It took me 45min to rinse it out, washing 3 times and using a heavy duty conditioner once. And i'm sure there's still some grit lurking in there  The colours come out really well though! In some lights it looks really red and in others it looks brown so i've added a couple of pics in different lighting so you can see the variation. It's also made my demecration line less noticeable which is what i wanted. Although the colours come out well i doubt i'll be using lush henna again as it was a nightmare to get out but i think i've been left with a good base to start using straight henna to created a natural red.

Looks very brown here;



And then it looks auburn;





And now dark reddish brown;

[Hazillian]

Oh my god wow.
That's a beautiful shade. Henna's not really my thing, but that's lovely results.

Shame it was so difficult to wash out, though. I had the same problem with my bleach yesterday.

[Firefox7275]

Add coconut oil to BAQ henna: apparently makes it much easier to rinse, smell better and does not affect dye uptake. Would not do that with Lush dyes, they contain all sorts of other ingredients that might be affected by the oils. And use cling film to contain the smell and mess.

[pippachainsaw]

i used this on my sister in law last year & i agree with the bits. we grated it using the smallest grate on our grater and was still weird =s looks great though =)

[mcgvil]

Thanks guys I'm really happy with the colour and even happier with the condition my hair is in. It feels healthier than it has been in a loooong time.

Firefox- I've used BAQ henna before and it rinsed out easily. Lush already contains lots of oils so that wasnt the problem. The lush henna had little hard bits in it which didnt want to rinse out, i'm not sure what they are though.

[theodora]

Looks amazing! I miss the effect henna had on my hair, it made it super thick and strong and shiny. If only henna existed without the colour. So cassia is kinda like henna without the colour, but it's just not as good.
Another massive con for henna: it's a real commitment, as people say, you marry henna you don't flirt with it.

[Sian]

Love the colour
And Theodora, I'm sure my mum uses a henna conditioner which doesn't stain your hair. No idea what its called though :/ but sometimes its nice to know these things exist!

[meeshybop]

You can get a henna conditioner for like 99p from bodycare for a massive tub, dunno if it's the same stuff tho.