Henna for Hair

As cool as my henna highlights were, I decided to go all-out anyway. I wanted to see how the henna conditioned it, and I was feeling the need to be a little extreme (angst from overwork). So, I mixed together my recipe of henna, chamomile, yogurt, and lavendar, slathered it through my hair, wrapped it with saran wrap, and covered all that with a makeshift turban made out of a half-sized sarong I got in Hawaii.

I then laid down on the couch, wrapped a heating pad loosely around it all, and dozed off, because I was operating on three hours of sleep.

My mix was way too watery, though. Despite all my wrapping, when I got up after two hours to use the facilities, it started leaking out from behind my ears. It only sort of got on everything. And good thing I was wearing a black shirt!

Anyway, I averted disaster, slept for two more hours, then got up and rinsed it all out with conditioner — Herbal Essences Intensive Blends, or whatever is in my shower at the moment. I would highly recommend combing it through real well with a shower comb. I’ve been using a shower comb for a few years now anyway, but it would’ve been nearly impossible to get the tangle of henna out and get the conditioner in without one.

I then blowdried it so that any remaining henna wouldn’t stain my pillow, and threw on my bright green Happy Day shirt because I found Joan’s Henna Tribe comment about reverse oompa loompas really funny. So, behold! Elaine with freshly glowing orange henna head!

It stayed that color for about a day. It really is orange — I’ve been comparing it to a t-shirt I have that’s brown with big orange letters on it. During Day 1, my hair matched the letters. After one wash, though, it’s starting to calm down to a more auburn shade. Here’s a photo from, let’s see, about 20 hours after washing the henna out:

Very, very cool. I’m liking it a lot! It’s an even prettier red today, but I’m skipping photos today because I’ve been working like an ox, and I’ve got bedhead.

The only thing that bugs me is what an amazingly different shade my eyebrows are. I have a solution to that though, so stay posted!

Well, there you have it! This is the best I could do taking a photo of the back of my head with a digital camera at two in the morning. It’s all pretty light at this point because it’s fresh off my head, with no time to let the color mature. If you can’t see a difference (it’s pretty subtle), let me expound.

1. The coffee had a browning and slightly darkening effect. It took a lot of the red out of it compared to the other mixes.
2. The yogurt mix had a pretty straightforward color. Not too dark, not too brown, not too red. A little orangey. I have a feeling that this would be about the color of a standard henna and lemon juice mix, or a henna and water mix.
3. The tea tree mix was brownish, too, but unlike the coffee, it maintained more of an auburn hue, not the "mousey" brown color my coworker described the coffee’d segment as.
4. The chamomile is my favorite. It’s a dark, vibrant red that has a bit of a golden sheen.

This next photo is a good comparison of the henna color compared to my natural color. I only henna’d the underlayer of my hair (for the sake of this experiment!), but when I was twisting the upper layer out of the way in order to take the photo above, I got some of the henna’d hair in the twist, which made for a great contrast. You can really tell how the henna is an almost transluscent coloring over your natural color.

And here’s a pretty cool photo of the overall effect! I forgot that my hair has tons of layers in the back, so my "under" layer isn’t really under anything. So I have this feathery flame effect going on.

I think it’s pretty cool!

And I’m all prepared to do my whole head tomorrow, using my favorite ingredient: chamomile.

My recipe:

• 80g henna
• 1 cup double-strength chamomile
• a dollop of full-fat yogurt (for texture and consistency)
• a few drops of lavendar essential oil for the smell, to be added immediately before application

I hope I mixed a big enough batch…

Okay, still no photos, but early reports are in! A coworker was noticeably impressed with the chamomile mix as opposed to the coffee mix. He described the chamomile as "vibrant" and the coffee mix as "mousey and dark." I’m postulating that the chamomile worked great on my hair because it has a naturally golden-reddish sheen to it anyway, so the red in the henna complimented the yellow in the chamomile for a most excellent result.

Someone in the Henna Page forums mentioned that terps like tea tree oil also have a browning effect for her, and from these early results, I’m thinking they have a similar effect on my hair, as the reddest bit is obviously the chamomiled segment. I’m anticipating my final mix to be mostly chamomile with a touch of yogurt for smoothness and some lavendar essential oil for smell.

I’m really glad I did the test. I was going to use indigo and coffee to take the edge off of the orangey-red, but my red didn’t turn out orangey at all.

Look out, world! Come Monday, Elaine’s gonna be a redhead again!

Well, it’s too dark out to get any good photos (you can expect those in a day or two), but so far, the color is gorgeous, and there’s not much difference between the four. At first I thought that the chamomile side was more auburn, but it might have just been the lighting in the bathroom.

The color looks totally funky with the layers in my hair, too!

And now I smell like a weird, lemony-chocolate cup of coffee. With that, I’m off to some hard-earned Z’s. Oyasumi.

Here we go! We’ll start with the before pictures.

I divided the underside of my hair and slathered my mixes into each segment. Unfortunately, I’m horrible at dividing my hair into segments, so by the time I got to my fifth mix… I didn’t have any hair left!!! The last mix was the plain lemon mix, and I’m assuming that it’s going to be similar to the yogurt mix in color, so the yogurt mix will have to be my control.

Anyway, I wrapped each segment in tinfoil and wrapped my head up like so:

And now I’m going to go to work like this. Because I have to work late tonight, and it damn well wasn’t going to interfere with my henna experiment!!

God, work today is horrible. I hope I get to go home tonight with enough time to henna my hair.

In any case — I checked up on the green goop this morning, and added the tea tree oil to the mix I was reserving for terps. The lemon mixes and yogurt mix oxidized beautifully. The yogurt mix looks like it has by far the silkiest texture. I couldn’t tell how well the chamomile and coffee mixes oxidized. The coffee I brewed was so black that it was pretty dark when I set it out last night, and so even this morning it was a pretty solid color straight through. The chamomile was slightly lighter green in the middle, but it might have just been a trick of the light. There was a little yellowish seepage from the chamomile — exciting, because that might indicate its power to dye hair yellowish.

Since I couldn’t tell how the coffee/tea mixes were doing, I left them all out instead of popping them in the fridge for the 10 hours I’m at work to keep it fresh. I figured it needs all the help it can get.

Hopefully I’ll have a fresh report tomorrow of how it worked on my hair… but I totally doubt I’m going to get home before 10 p.m. God. I need to get better at this henna thing so I can market myself and not be chained to a PC for 10+ hours a day.

I’m conducting a hair henna experiment.

There are those that say that adding coffee to your hair henna makes it
browner; that chamomile makes it more blonde, that yogurt makes it
condition more. We’ll see.

My control will be plain henna with lemon juice.

My mixes will be:

• Henna and coffee (Sarkisan chocolate macadamia, specifically)
• Henna and chamomile (Stash brand because Whole Foods was out of loose leaf)
• Henna and yogurt (Horizon whole-fat plain)
• Henna, lemon juice, and tea tree oil

The tea and coffee I brewed double strength. Coffee was made in a
french press with 4 tablespoons coffe per 8 oz water. Chamomile was 2
bags per 8 oz. Each batch will be made with 1 tablespoon (about 5
grams) of henna.

I’m off to mix it up. Application is
scheduled for tomorrow (on five segments of the under-layer of hair on
my head). Photos should be ready by the weekend.

To the lab!