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Anya's Mix
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Anya's Mix
| My journey to henna is a long
one, but I’ll try to keep the story short. I have naturally
mousy brown hair, and even as wee girl always thought it was
boring. From the first time I saw Julia Robert’s curly mass
of *red* hair in “Pretty Woman” (yeah, I’m a child of
the ‘80s) I knew I wanted red hair. My mother was cool
enough to let me dye my hair for the first time at age 11; as she put
it, “It’s only hair.” I went with a
cinnamon-colored semi-permanent dye that made my hair look no different
indoors, but gave it reddish highlights in sunlight. It
wasn’t what I’d wanted. A few other
semi-permanent’s later I got it to a redder color. In high school I was allowed to use permanent dye, and I did. I started off with a Hydrience color they don’t make anymore. My hair was the color of a copper pipe and was nearly to my hips, and I adored it. For the next few years it was healthy and nice despite the dye. In college things took a serious turn for the worse. The water was hard, and Clairol discontinued the color I used. I ended up trying a different shade of red and ended up with deep purple-red hair. I dyed several times in a row in a mad effort to fix it. I managed to settle on Herbal Essences 44 and stuck with that until I had nearly destroyed my hair. My hair, my admitted vanity, had been past my butt at its longest. From raking it with a brush, to over-dying, to hard water and aggressive styling it started to crumble from the ends up. Over the space of four years my hair had desinagrated up to my bra strap, was a mass of split ends, felt like straw and the color was uneven. Although I still have my beloved copper red at the roots each time I dyed it, the stuff at the ends that had been subject to dye job after dye job was deep auburn. It had been dyed so often that it absorbed much more color. I tried to stick to only touching up my roots, but all the split ends turned lighter and so I’d do the whole length every other time to keep it looking nicer. The split ends tangled badly and I’d rake my brush through my hair, watching pieces of hair flutter downward when I did. I was destroying my hair. To say nothing of the chemical-burn scabs I’d get on my scalp, and the fumes of the dye, all that good chemical stuff. Finally, a year before I graduated college I learned about henna. My sweetheart knew how devastated I was about my hair and encouraged me to do some research. In looking into how to better take care of my long hair, I found out about henna. I’d known about henna body art, but not about it’s effectiveness in hair. Finally, a small glimmer of hope. I ordered some body art quality henna and did a strand test. No bog-water green, praise goddess! Eagerly I mixed everything up (everything being henna and lemon juice), and following the advice on several sites, added a lot of paprika to give it a fiery lift. It worked well, but my hair felt dry afterwards and it wasn’t as coppery as I would like. My new standard mix gives me brighter copper hair with gold/copper highlights: 100g BAQ henna 25g Paprika 15g Turmeric 1c very strong chamomile tea (4 tea bags steeped in two cups of water for a few hours) 1c lemon juice  I’ve been using henna for a year and a half now, and my hair is much happier, and so am I. I’ve always had baby-fine hair, and it breaks easily. The henna has made it thicker, stronger, and healthier. My uneven color has also been evened out a lot with the henna, the ends are still a bit darker, but as my hair grows out and is trimmed, it’s improving. I also oil the ends of my hair several times a week and work it in with a boar bristle brush. This has helped immensely, and also helps with the initial dryness I tend to experience after hennaing. I think the most important thing I learned, other than henna, was how to take care of my long hair properly. There are some great resources out there, but I think The Long Hair Site is the best of them. Please, learn a bit about your hair! I wish I had done this sooner. I’ve managed to grow my hair out so it’s nearly down to my waist again, and I did it without chopping it all of, as several scissor-happy salons wanted me to do. I hennaed my hair, I treated it carefully, and it was trimmed once every 4 weeks. Slooooooowly, but surely, the worst-damaged stuff was cut off, and the quality of my hair was improved. I use Jason Natural Products Henna shampoo and conditioner. This is by far the best stuff I’ve ever used. It helps keeps the henna color vibrant (both the shampoo and conditioner are organic and have henna in them). I now trim every 6 weeks, and I’m still gaining length. Hair, Skin & Nails vitamins, from GNC also help give a boost in the hair-growth department. For those of you that made it all the way to the end, I hope this helps! There is hope for your hair after years of chemical torture! My hair is now darker red than it was when I dyed it, but flares a wonderful copper in the sun. The small concession from my perfect color is nothing compared to having healthy hair. Thanks to everyone else who posted to this site, your recipes and stories really helped to give me the confidence to try different things, and it makes me feel like a part of a henna sisterhood
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