Henna again.

Needed to henna my hair again since the old grays are more than 1/4 inch long. I do like how henna blends them better than commercial hair dyes because the way my hair grows with henna I'd be doing it like every other week.

Mixed Henna Sooq Organic Rajasthani Indian Henna 100g powder with strong black tea & a little apple cider vinegar (added about a tablespoon each Amla, Brahmi, Bhringraj powders into the henna powder before mixing in liquid) until consistency of pudding. I let it have dye release overnight & then froze since I didn't have time to do henna that next morning.

Today I thawed the henna paste in sink with warm water (store it in a ziplock freezer bag & just place that in the water.) While that was thawing, I mixed 1 Tablespoon indigo & a bit of salt, with warm water & let dye release. Mixed about 4 tablespoons of the henna paste into the indigo paste & added some conditioner. Smeared this mixture onto roots first & then rest of length (with gloved hands.) I applied Vaseline along the hairline so I would not get staining on my face. Wrapped hennaed hair in plastic wrap. Topped with a cheap plastic shower cap & then my head wrap. Left on my hair for about 3 hours while I finished a book & did chores around the house. Rinsed out using cheap conditioner to help get the henna paste out. Viola finish product with wonderful coppery highlights rather than grays.

I truly love my change to henna hair coloring because of these natural highlights and how they help blend the grays for longer than traditional dye. I no longer have that root demarcation where you can easily tell where the virgin hair begins. Even if I would match my hair to the roots- the dye would fade & my colored hair would be a different color than the roots. Henna doesn't strip the color out first so you can't see this line.

A few photos of my newly hennaed hair.


I visited my old blog http://daynahooze.typepad.com/blog/  and it made me miss VOX so much. I miss all the posting we used to do back then. The other thing I noticed was how young I look with the old weight. I had seen Brooke Shields on Good Morning America saying how she thinks she looks years younger when she has 10 extra pounds on her- I can relate. I never looked heavy in my face so I kind of wish I could maintain all the face fat I had while losing the weight.  I have some serious cheekbones now and I kind of want the little bit of chubby cheeks I used to have only a few years ago. Last week I found 2 pairs of size 2 jeans that fit me really well. Somehow I've lost additional inches when the scale is still reading the same. I am guessing I'm losing a little fat but maintaining good muscle so I'll take it. I wore one of the jeans this weekend and I felt so much better in them. I hadn't realized how baggy the size 4's were until I did that. It's funny because I still don't see myself as "skinny"because I still have lots of curves everywhere. I'm not trying to lose additional weight- just maintain what I have now although if I did continue this trend of losing inches but not weighing less I will be happy because it will just mean that I am getting leaner.






4 comments:

  1. Have you ever done your hair with straight indigo? What happened? In my experience I have always mixed it with henna, trying to get close to my natural color, and I have sometimes had pretty good success. It always seemed to me that the blue faded out fairly quickly, and the red/orange remained. I have an event coming up for which I want to have blue hair, but I don't want it to be dynamically blue, and I want it to fade out fairly quickly. I am thinking about bleaching out the ends so they end up brighter or blue/green, and then getting a trim before going back to work. I just want to see if anyone else has done it before I take the plunge.

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  2. From what I have heard from reading about henna & indigo- Indigo does not stay in hair well without henna first- so those that want really black hair do the 2 step process of henna only then indigo as another step. I only add a little indigo to my henna- like 1 part indigo to 4-5 henna just to tone down the henna to a more brown color. Did hear that adding salt to indigo makes it stick better & have been doing that. I don't notice much fade to my hair at all since I hendigo about once a month to cover grays but was finding my hair was getting really dark overall so actually bleached it to add highlights 2 times ago. As for having dynamically blue hair- that can only be done with indigo on white hair.

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  3. Deboo- this is the closest to blue I've found-- the site henna for hair has lots of info-- http://www.hennaforhair.com/mixes/jonathan/

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  4. Deboo- Chapter 5 in the henna book on the site shows mohair (white to begin with) dyed with varying amounts of henna/indigo.

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