Henna Hair... WHAT?!

If you know me you know that I am pretty Bi-polar with my hair color, though I have never made my hair pink or purple (I want to I am just scared!!), I do change it often between red, brown and blonde.  My go to color is always blonde though.  When I got pregnant my hair just went nuts, what was once a wavy curl became something rather special looking.  I decided to try to re-train and make my hair healthy again so that my curls can come back to life.  Obviously this would take a long time if I keep bleaching my poor hair, so Henna caught my eye.  I did not think it was possible to do this since I really enjoy my blonde hair as Henna can sometimes cause some funky colors to come out of processed hair.  I work at Lush and my manager one day told me that she bleaches our Henna out fine this is because we do not use metallic salts in our Henna line.  I was sold.  If I could bleach it out I would do it.  So let me tell you about why I made this decision.
When you dye your hair using Henna its not like a typical dye.  Typical dye will change the color of the hair it touches from the inside out.  Henna is like staining furniture,  you just coat your hair in color.  Why is this good?  Well just coating your hair in color is less damaging the opening and closing the cuticle of you hair a thousand times.  Also, like staining, the integrity of your hair is kept intact.  This means that any highlights, low lights or gray hairs will be coated with color but you will still keep that dimension in the finished color.  Henna won't give you the all over one color, but will have lighter and darker sections based on the highlights and lowlights you had before.  Then to top of the whole not going to damage your hair Lush puts their Henna in a brick of Cocoa Butter!! YUMMY! So anyways here is my Henna process.

 I figured out the type of color that I wanted, I knew I wanted something more coppery but I am coming from blonde so it was going to be a multi coat process.  Day one I coated my hair with Caca Rouge  which is a pretty simple process. 

1: Break up large chunks of the henna.  I cut off two squares and put it in a heat proof bowl and placed that in bowl in a larger bowl.  Then I added hot water to the bowl with the Henna inside it and to the bowl it was sitting in.  Think of it as a double boiler, or just use a double boiler!  Let the Henna sit in the hot water for a bit to start melting it down and mix until it becomes a brownie batter consistency (I made mine a little bit thinner because I thought it was easier to spread.)  Then coat all your hair with it, starting with your roots makes the process easier.  If you want a vibrant red wrap your covered hair with cling wrap for a darker color leave it uncovered.  Then leave it on your hair for two to four hours.  I decided to sleep in mine though so the cocoa butter could really penetrate my hair.  When I shampooed out the next morning this was my result.

 

It was a little too Fred and George Weasley so I decided to do one layer of Caca Marron on top the next night  and this was my result!

Sorry about the awkward pictures I feel weird when I take selfies! haha!  Also my hair was tied back and that is why it looks so funky in the picture! But on a serious note, I LOVE the color that came out!  I am going to keep using Henna on my hair at least until all of the blonde is out of my hair.  I will for sure recommend using it to anyone who likes a red, brown or black hair color!
*Its important to always do a strand test just to make sure nothing funky will happen.  Enjoy and check out the Lush Henna's!