Henna Time!

I've always wanted red hair, and after seeing Megan's experience with henna, the lovely lass behind the amazing blog, The Nautical Owl, check out her henna experience HERE!, I decided to take the red hair plunge my self, well, not all by myself, I may have rounded up a few other victims....I mean volunteers.....

So, last week when my sister, her hubby and my adorable niece stopped by for a week on their way to Alabama, a few of us girls took a morning to cover out heads in stinky swamp goo, aka henna!

Before.....

I'm not going to sugar coat it, it smells like a swampy alfalfa field, and pretty much looks like it too. Is this really going to turn our hair red? 

Note Shawn's ( aka my sisters hubby) face, he's not sure about this at all!

One head down, two to go!

 I'm a leeetle nervous, all the other times I've dyed my hair it's turned orange, which would have been great had traffic cone been the color I was aiming for.....

All shower capped up and ready to wait the prescribed 2 1/2 hours!

Sadly I didn't get a pic of all three of us together, but here is an after pic of Megan, she got a ginger blond color, ain't she pretty? =)

And, here's mine, not a huge changed, but I knew going I that I would just get a faint red cast, but I love it anyway! =)

Some tips and tricks!

I got the henna from here: http://hennacolorlab.com/

All three of us did test on hair we got from our hair brushes (or from the hair catcher in the shower drain.....yes eww I know, but I don't brush my hair, so I had to get it from somewhere!), we just did a few teaspoons of the henna and some water in a plastic bag and smooshed it around with the hair, left it for a few hours then rinsed it off.

The website said you would need one packet for normal thickness, shoulder length hair, and said to get two for thicker or curlier hair, I got two for myself just in case, but me and the sister with the really short hair both could have just used the one packet, we had more then one packet left over after we were done!

It really does take a LONG time and A LOT of conditioner to rinse out the henna, I admittedly have super thick hair, but it took me a full 20 minutes of hanging my head upside down in the shower to get it almost rinsed out, the water was still faintly colored coming off of my head, but as my thighs and back were screaming from being hunched over, I decided 20 minutes was long enough!! 

The smell will last for a few days on dry hair and is still there when my hair gets wet, and the water still comes off of my head reddish, so I can't speak to how long it takes for the smell to fade and the color to not leech out! But, it has never rubbed off onto my clothes or pillow case!

Over all I am happy with the experience and the color and I will probably do it again, most like with a winesh color come fall/winter time!

Let me know if you try it, I would love to here about your experience with henna!