Dyeing hair with henna for the very first time - Khadi Henna, Amla & Jatropha

My beauty perfection is having ginger hair, green eyes and freckles. I already have my green lenses  ;) and I'm hardly trying to be ginger from a while now...

Why henna?

Casual hair colourants didn't meet my expectations. I started to dye my hair quite recently, in April. My natural hair colour is dark blonde, but unfortunately with time it started to be darker and mousy, vague - not blonde anymore, but yet not brown either. I was using some lightening shampoos with chamomile and lemon and they helped me for a while to stay more on the blonde side, but with time that was not enough, so i finally started using colourants. I tried couple different ones, but colours were never right (red, while I wanted ginger) and fading away very quickly. The worst dye I have tried was foam dye by Nice&Easy - colour washed away after only a week, wtf! In meantime I came across many positive reviews about colouring hair with henna, so eventually I decided to give it a go.

I bought my henna on Amazon for £7, it arrived from Germany. In the box there were: bag with henna powder, foil cap and gloves.
The powder is very fine and has characteristic smell, like strong green tea + something else.
What's important - Khadi's henna is 100% natural, herbal dye. Before you purchase your henna make sure you know what you're buying, because there is a few companies that are selling "henna", which is really just chemical hair dye + a little bit of henna. Mixed dyes like that give the most unpredictable results, I read so many bad opinions about them. Always go 100% - either completely chemical dye or purely natural, never in between.

The powder is more green than on the picture.

Unfortunately the leaflet was all in German, so I had to research some blogs and Khadi website for instructions. I have chosen the simplest method of preparation: I used some hot (but not boiling!) water to achive thick yoghurt consistency and let it cool down a little when I went to wash my hair with shampoo without any silicons in it. Henna should be acidic, so many henna powders are supposed to be mixed with water and lemon juice, but we don't have to do that with this particular one, as Amla is acidic itself. To my mixture I also added one table spoon of hair conditioner (no silicons!) and one table spoon of turmeric powder - on dark hair Amla and Jatropha give more red than ginger results, turmeric has brightening properties, so I added it to make sure I will achieve ginger.

Ready to use mixture smells like Panoramix's cauldron :P Green tea, herbs, weird smell... but certainly better than the ammonia.

After washing ma hair and drying it a little bit with towel, my henna was ready to use, still warm, but not hot. I found application difficult - it was only the second time I have ever applied dye myself, usually one of my friends would be helping me. During application henna dries out on hair a little bit and makes them sticky, so I ended up with my hair tangled in two dreadlocks. I must admit that I went through real emotional crisis during application, I was sure that I just wasted my time and money as I couldn't get all of my hair evenly covered in henna and I was afraid that the dreadlocks are just going to stay there FOREVER. I used up only half of the mixture for my shoulder blade-lengh hair, while the packaging says that one box "should be enough for shoulder-lengh hair". I was sure that in the best case scenario I was going to end up with spotty hair. Fortunately, henna surprised me positively :)
I kept the mix on my hair for 2 hours, under plastic cap and towel (I was heating up the towel with hairdryer every so often, because it's important to keep henna warm). During rinsing my hair detangled easily, the dreadlocks were gone, yay! My hair was nice in touch, very soft, just the weird smell resembled. After rinsing thoroughly I applied a little bit of hair conditioner (no silicons), to make sure I will comb my hair with no problems. Then I left my hair to dry naturally.
The result exceed my expectations, most of all the colour was even! The colour differs depending on lighting, but I am a definite ging now:

My hair before henna - faded cooper from Nutrisse.

Day after henna - intense artificial lighting (Halloween at work)

Two days after henna - dark room and picture with flash (Halloween with friends)

4 days after henna, artificial lighting + flash from some distance

4 days after henna, artificial lighting + flash, close up

As you can see my hair is in good condition after this colourisation. It was a little bit dry (henna as a herb is a bit drying) and I wanted to put some oil on it soooo badly... but I couldn't, because first 48 hours after colourisation are crucial for colour intensity and lasting and it's best to just leave hair alone, so henna has time to "catch" and oxidise properly. If you can, you should also avoid washing it during this first 48 hours, however because of work I had to wash mine about 12 hours after colourisation. I have very greasy hair that requires  washing every morning - after henna my hair was dryer, so it looked quite all right in the morning, but I knew that in the middle of the day it will be greasy again... so yeah, I shouldn't, but I washed it anyway :P
The herbal scent lasted on my hair for about three days (even though it was washed every day!). For the first couple of days water would get slightly tinted during washing, so I accidentally marked bright towel, but the good news is that post-henna-tinted-water-stains are easy to get rid of - I just washed my towel on 60°C programme with some casual laundry liquid, no extra stain remover required. The stains from actual herbal mix are much worse - during application I splashed some on my trousers and top and even with stain remover they didn't come off completely during the wash. So be careful and keep  any precious clothing away from henna ;)

two weeks after henna, natural light

It's been two weeks now since my first henna colourisation and my hair feels great, it's soft and shiny (on the last pic I got dry shampoo on my hair so it's not as shiny as usual ;)), doesn't fall. Colour looks nice, natural but vivid. I will sure use henna again.

Advantages of dyeing hair with henna:
+ finally perfect ginger
+ colour doesn't fade away and change as quickly as after other dyes
+ hair is soft and shiny
+ henna doesn't damage hair the way chemical dyes do

Disadvantages of dyeing hair with henna:
- dries during application and tangles hair
- weird smell (although I prefer this smell to ammonia smell...)
- the dyeing process takes longer than with chemical dye
- for some time after colourisation hair is more likely to frizz

Conclusion: for sure I'll dye my hair with henna again, but next time I'll do it when I got at least two days off in a raw, so I don't have to wash my hair for at least 24h (preferably 48).