Georgie Says… Henna Hair

Over the last few months, the beautiful sunshine has lightened my hair up to a light honey brown. For my skin tone, I prefer my hair a little darker and so the time has come for a home dye session! This year, I’ve been slowly switching over to natural cosmetics and Lush has been my go to for all things beauty. I now use a PitRock for deodorant, I remove my make up and moisturize with coconut oil, I use a natural cleanser (current favourite is Lush Dark Angel), and my shampoo of choice is Lush’s I Love Juicy!

When it comes to hair dye, Henna seemed like the ‘natural’ choice, and after reading the bounty of reviews, I went for the Brun.

Here’s what Lush say “Our bricks are made using the finest quality Persian henna, conditioning cocoa butter and gorgeous essential oils that leave your hair looking and smelling fabulous. Henna coats your hair like a varnish, which means your individual shade sits underneath the henna, creating a colour that’s unique to you. Available in four shades, Brun contains indigo and a pinch of ground coffee to coat your hair in a deep chocolate brown colour, with nettle powder to tone and soothe the scalp. “

The Before Picture

Here we go, my Henna adventure:

 

13:00 – After watching and reading a variety of tutorials on how to use this magical block, I boil the kettle. Having seen people with shoulder length hair use 4 of the cubes, I decide to go with three for my bob. Using my best chefs knife to chop these up into smaller bits, I put them into a plastic jug and pour over boiling water until it’s covering the chunks. This seems like a good amount of water to start… I haven’t been able to find anything with measurements or exact quantities for anything!

 

13:10 – 13:30 – I spend what seems like forever stirring and trying to dissolve the henna. Why is this taking so long? It’s like swamp water that smells of green tea. I am being incredibly impatient with this – like when you’re melting chocolate over boiling water and you want to turn the heat up to make it melt quicker, but you know that you have to do it slowly in order to get nice, silky chocolate.  Oh that I wish this jug were full of chocolate instead. I have to add some more boiling water, until it resembles the consistency of thin yoghurt.

 

13:30 – My patience has finally worn thin. Sure, there are still some lumps but I’ll just squash the lumps into my head when I apply it. That’ll be fine, right? I grab cling film, a clip, Vaseline and the mixture and head to the safety of my bathtub. It seems that henna is a very messy business. But they say that about normal hair dye as well, and I can usually do that pretty much anywhere without losing my rental deposit. I guess I’ll do it in the bath just in case.

 

13:45 – Vaseline slathered thickly along my hairline, my ears, my neck, and wearing an old t-shirt, I position myself in front of the mirror. It doesn’t seem too difficult to apply, as long as you partition your hair. But then it’s starts dripping everywhere. I’m not keen on having a Dalmatian print bathtub, or legs for that matter, or arms… Before I was too far-gone, I jumped out of the bath, washed my gloves and grabbed a magazine. Once I’d lined the bath with the pages, it was second time lucky.

 

14:00 – Once my hair was thoroughly slathered and I’d used all of the henna mixture; I wrapped my hair up in 5 layers of Clingfilm. I did have henna all over my arms, legs, face and back… I had to have a little shower in my Clingfilm hat to ensure that I wasn’t getting a two-tone back as well as luscious hair. After an intense clean up session, the waiting began.

 

14:30 – Stuffed peppers food baby.

 

14:35 – I’m going to be productive and roast some rhubarb, so I can eat healthy greek yoghurt and roasted rhubarb every day for breakfast this week.

 

16:00 – Fell asleep on the sofa whilst watching Wayward Pines. The henna has seeped out the bottom of my hair. I now have a designer henna splodge on one of my cushions. WHY WON’T YOU LET ME NAP, HENNA?!

 

16:05 – Make myself some yoghurt with meringue and passionfruit curd. This sugar rush is definitely required, so I don’t fall asleep again and ruin my upsettingly expensive sofa. Oh great, Netflix isn’t working now.

 

17:00 – It’s been three hours now. I’M BORED NOW. So it’s into the shower. I can’t even feel the water hitting my head because the henna crust is so thick! It takes around 15 minutes to get my hair into a pliable state, so I give it a couple of washes with my Lush I Love Juicy Shampoo. After this, it’s pretty clean but there are still quite a few grainy bits. I decide that this will do. This is a good representation of my attitude to life.

 

17:20 – Blow-drying my fringe suggests that this is going to be a success. My hair is already looking much darker and richer with lovely red tones.

 

17:25 – I’m having a nap now.

 

18:04 – Well, the final product is here – all shiny, rich and lovely. My hair feel very thick and healthy, and it smells like the hippy shop my parents used to hang out at… which I kind of like. This is definitely the best colour result and best coverage I’ve had when dying my hair at home.

 

The After Picture

 

Pros: Amazing overall result, lovely colour, great hair condition, and all natural!

Cons: TAKES FOREVER, and now I have to clean the bath.

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