Caca Rouge Henna from Lush

I make no secret of the fact that I henna my hair. I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a natural redhead, even though I was born to be one (literally, I was a ginger baby). I've blogged about it in the past, including this post full of tips.

In the past I've used powdered henna that I ordered on-line, and it was great but shipping was expensive. When I saw that LUSH Cosmetics had these Henna Hair Dyes at their local store, I decided to give them a try. In addition to being able to buy them locally, they had a couple of other things going for them: instead of having to mix it with water and lemon juice and then sit over night, you just pour boiling water over it, let sit for a few minutes, and mix. Another time-saving bonus was that they say to only leave it on for two hours, not three to four like the powder. Plus it has cocoa butter and other stuff that's supposed to be good for your hair. Sounds great!

Here I am pre-henna. Yikes, you can really see my roots! No way I can go to Tribal Fest looking like this!

So I started mixing up the henna. It took a lot more water than I expected, which meant more time and more stirring. Ultimately I think I didn't add quite enough water, because chunks of henna kept falling off my head all over the place. Good thing I put newspaper down this time, but even so I made a huge mess of my bathroom and myself.

See! There's even henna in my cleavage. Oh, the indignity! Please feel free to point and laugh at how ridiculous I look in a saran wrap turban, too. By the way, you have to keep this henna warm while you use it, so my head was feeling a little toasty.

Because of how much henna I lost on the floor (and my neck, and my shirt, and the counter) I was concerned as to whether I got enough on my head, and whether it would really color my hair that well. Also, when it came time to shower, I found that this product is much grittier than what I have used before and it made a huge, huge mess in my shower.

I thought I had managed to rinse most of it out, but after my hair dried, it looked like this. UGH! I think it's because of the cocoa butter. It took about 3-4 more shampooings to get my hair back to normal, but when I did it looked like this:

Oh yeah, that color! And the butter made my hair really soft and pretty and healthy, once I finally rinsed it all out. I suspect that this product would be really great for people who have dry hair. Mine tends a little more towards the greasy end of the spectrum, so I think it was a little too moisturizing for me. If you have similar hair to me, you may want to use a non-moisturizing shampoo to rinse your hair out. In fact, I was almost desperate enough to use some Dawn dish soap, since it's designed to cut grease!

LUSH will apparently apply the henna for you in-store, and I think next time I'll go that route. I'm happy enough with the results that I want to see how they do it and get some tips on how to do it better myself next time (plus I don't want to mop henna off of my floor again).