So last night I decided to henna my hair again, because the roots were starting to show. As reported by other henna heads, the second application layers over the red tones and turns out absolutely gorgeous. Not a hint of orange to be seen! It is pretty bright — almost fire-engine red — but that will mellow out, and for the next few days, I think it’s going to be pretty fun!
Click here for the results of my first henna application, as well as a photo of my natural hair color for comparison’s sake.
This is my hair immediately before my second application:
Aaaand here’s my hair immedately after washing it out and blowdrying it!
Damn, I love it. And while last time it was orange on washing it out, this time there’s hardly any orange to be seen — just a groovy, groovy red.
The mix this time was slightly different because my yogurt went bad and I was too lazy to get more. I used:
- 100 g henna
(my hair has gotten longer — and I was running out of henna in my last batch, which was only 80 g — and I didn’t add any yogurt, which adds volume to the mix, making it so that you can use less henna) - 2 T lemon juice
(for highlights and what-have-you) - About 1.75 c double-strength chamomile
(I made two cups, but didn’t need to use all of it) - 1 drop lavendar essential oil
(I used several last time and the strength of the smell almost made me woozy)
I mixed the chamomile in while it was hot, and left the henna out to cool for about an hour and a half, instead of overnight. I still had dye release — must’ve been the heat. (Though I hear that henna dyes hair so well that you don’t even need to wait for dye release.) I left it on for just shy of four hours and washed it out by combing generous amounts of conditioner through (but no shampoo). Blowdried it, and I’m not going to wash it until tomorrow morning.
I forgot to put veggie/olive oil around my hairline, so I ended up with a little bit of an orange halo, but it was mostly gone by this morning.
And my hair is oh-so-silky once again, which is amazing, because it was pretty darn silky before.
I’ll post another photo of the mellowed-out color in around a week and a half, and I’ll probably do this experiement one more time to see how three layers of hair henna look as compared to one (or none!).
