Trying henna for the first time *holding my breath!!!!*

[Bellalla]

So, I'm still waiting on my Nightblooming henna to arrive as the Henna Guys stuff sits on my shelf taunting me. Sigh. According to the tracking it's in Chicago.

My ColorOops arrived to day though, and out of a combo of hair boredom and contemplation, I decided I really couldn't go wrong trying it. I also, out of sheer curiosity wanted to see what the affect would be.

Anyway, here's a word of advice to anyone who has low blood pressure: don't use hot water to rinse it out for the recommended 30+ minutes. I came very close to fainting in the shower and have been sitting nauseous for a good 20 minutes. Ugh, that was unpleasant.

I only lasted about 22 minutes and didn't even get a chance to condition it, so we'll see how it turns out. I'll probably SMT again as my hair responded pretty well to that before.

[Bellalla]

I dried my hair a bit, just to see the colour, and it turned out a quite nice strawberry blonde. It's all frizzy in the photo because my hair reacts very poorly to being dried from wet.

Incidentally, this is almost the exact same colour I had on my waist length hair before I chopped it all off to one inch due to severe damage. The damage wasn't from colouring, it was from years of very poor health, and from my work, which required me to wear very heavy goggles with a tight head strap that broke a lot of my canopy.

I was using Natural Instincts for colour back then, which is only semi permanent, but strawberry blonde is my childhood colour, so just a touch of peroxide tends to bring it right back.

It's kind of funny to be back where I started years ago.

[AmberWillow]

Your natural colour looks similar to mine, and I think my hennaed hair is about the shade you're aiming for, although I've put several layers of henna on mine though. I have used both Lush caca rouge and fire gensai, they turned out similar but fire gensai was slightly more coppery.

[Bellalla]

Your natural colour looks similar to mine, and I think my hennaed hair is about the shade you're aiming for, although I've put several layers of henna on mine though. I have used both Lush caca rouge and fire gensai, they turned out similar but fire gensai was slightly more coppery.

Oh cool!
Do you have any photos? I would love to see.

[Bellalla]

So, I switched to a thread in the "mane" forum section because I had tentatively decided not to henna, but here's the immediate result for anyone who doesn't want to go looking for that thread.

[Bellalla]

*copying this post over so that people looking for henna content can find it

Why is friggin' henna so flippin' impossible to photograph????

I mean, I obviously had a hard time photographing my strawberry blonde because all of my photos of it in this thread either look very blonde or very strawberry, of which it was neither.

But still, henna seems IMPOSSIBLE to photograph!!! I'm now starting to understand why it was so difficult for me to get a read on how henna actually looks, because although it definitely looks different in different light, that difference is magnified, like a million times on camera.

My beautiful colour has calmed a bit to a more rusty copper, which is lovely, and I tried my best to get some photos of it that show what I'm seeing, but I don't quite trust these ones because they make my roots look like they have very little copper colour. That is not true to the lighting in the room because that photo is taken right by a mirror, so I can see in person that the henna on my roots shows up beautifully in that light, but the camera can't see it for some reason.



Exhibit two, this photo makes it look like my hair is fluorescent orange. Now, for sure, it's more orange in the sun, but I brought a mirror with my to see and in person it absolutely does not look like it does in this photo.


Anyway, photography rants aside, I'm extremely happy with the colour, and DH loves it as well. It's getting very greasy from my running my hands through it compulsively for two straight days, and I'm a bit terrified to wash it as I know sometimes the first application doesn't stick and I'm worried about it washing out from only my roots.

[Bellalla]

So, I think this photo does the best job of showing just how much the oxidation has toned down the colour. This is in the exact same intensity of direct sunlight as the dayglo yellow photo from a few days ago, and no matter what I did with my camera, I could not get it to look the same neon yellow/orange as that first day.

[Jane99]

The yellow gets me every time. I think “isn’t it supposed to be darker? It looks yellower!” You hair looks beautiful. How long did you leave it on for?

[Bellalla]

The yellow gets me every time. I think “isn’t it supposed to be darker? It looks yellower!” You hair looks beautiful. How long did you leave it on for?

I left it on for about 2.5hrs.
Thankfully, it never looked yellow in person, just on camera in direct sunlight, which was very strange.
Does yours look yellow when freshly done?

I washed it yesterday and some of it definitely washed out, but it's still pretty saturated. I was worried about my roots alone fading, and they have a bit, but not too bad.

[DropStitches]

So, I think this photo does the best job of showing just how much the oxidation has toned down the colour. This is in the exact same intensity of direct sunlight as the dayglo yellow photo from a few days ago, and no matter what I did with my camera, I could not get it to look the same neon yellow/orange as that first day.

Your colour is super beautiful, even more so now it's oxidised!