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Mixing henna colors

3/5/2012

Well, I'm back in that phase of wanting more blonde, less red. Does anyone else want one color one month, another the next? Yes, I thought so.
Anyway to get to the point, I'd been mixing Chestnut and Blonde self-mix henna dye the last few times to make my grays more golden blonde. It was looking good, but towards the ends of my hair it was pretty red from using straight red henna self-mix (the Candy Apple). I do love the red, but when you want a change...hmmm.
So tonight I mixed 1/2 cup of Blonde and 3 heaping teaspoons of Brunette (gasp!) into another 1/2 cup container and filled that with Chestnut. I put it on all my hair, let it sit an hour or so and rinsed. I used the Brunette because of its high indigo content, to tone down the red. I worried a little bit that it might make it a lot darker but hey, hair grows, right?
Success! My base color is a great light brown with blonde highlights. I tried to snap a pic of it but my camera needed the flash indoors and on fresh henna about all you can see is shine!

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Those sneaky gray hairs are no match for pure henna!

2/23/2012

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OMG gray roots creeping in! Definitely time to do something about that! I was in a creative mood today and thought I'd play around with mixing an Options Henna Bar and some of the Self-Mixing Henna Dye and see how that did. I love both of them, but hadn't actually mixed them together to dye my own hair.

Nearly done slicing Options Blonde henna bar.

Here I've got a Blonde Options Henna Bar almost all sliced up. It would be safer to use a cheese cutter, but that would have involved washing mine so instead I used my favorite Old Hickory paring knife.
There's a little history with that knife. It was my mother's favorite knife and was passed down to me so it's pretty special.
Note that the slices are pretty thin; they'll dissolve a lot easier that way. Always always always cut AWAY from you if you slice soap! Did I mention to always cut in the direction away from you?

I've got the slices in the mixing bowl with my Chestnut henna self mix handy. I went ahead and cut up the whole Options Bar since I was going to do my shoulder length hair and hubby's hair and mustache. I had a lot left over.
I used a Blonde Options bar because last time I used straight Chestnut self mix henna and it was just a touch darker than I really wanted. The Blonde only contains cassia and gives a very light blonde color.
The Chestnut is an equal mix of cassia, henna and indigo. It gives a lovely dark blonde to medium brown, depending on your starting color.

Options Bar sliced and dissolving in hot water.

Instead of the usual 6 oz. of hot water that I would normally mix with an Options Bar, I went ahead and used 10 oz. because I was going to add 1/2 cup of self-mix henna dye. Before I add the self mix powder, I'm going to mix this on low speed until I'm sure all the Options Bar is dissolved. The reason for that is because the self-mix dye lowers the water temperature as it fizzes.
Pop chemistry question: Who can tell me why the temperature lowers?

Mixed and ready to apply.

Here's the final mix. The consistency is about like instant pudding. I put it on dry hair, which was very easy because dry hair is far easier to section than wet and since my scalp started out dry I could be sure I got every bit of the roots because I could feel the wetness of the dye.
We actually got involved in a movie and I left it on about 2 hours. I got fantastic color! :) The formerly gray hair is now a rich gold color, while the rest of my hair is a dark blonde.

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Mixing henna colors

Those sneaky gray hairs are no match for pure henna!

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