Tuesday 10 March 2015

Naturally Revitalizing Your (Real or Fake) Ginger Hair

Ever since I was a kid and saw Practical Magic I have lusted after Nicole Kidman's red hair (incidentally I think I sort of also wanted to be a witch but hey...!). I mean seriously her hair is gorgeous...


And of course dancing with midnight margaritas is always a plus (though as a kid the crazy dancing sufficed).

Weirdly even my mother wanted a red-headed daughter, but what with her and my father having almost black hair this seemed a somewhat fanciful wish to say the least. To cut a long story short, and a lot of attempts using chemical auburn dyes in my early uni years I kinda gave up on the "dream" but then I discovered henna. All I can say is my love affair started and many people now can't imagine me any other way. In fact often people are shocked when they realize I am a fake...! Including an authentic ginger friend of mine (apparently I have betrayed him with my faux gingerness).

Henna is really THE best dam way to get natural looking ginger hair, I have been faithfully using henna for I think three years now, I am kinda hazy as to when I started.... However I hate dealing with roots, and the fading. Though hennaed hair doesn't root anything like chemical dyes and it kinda blends in when it grows out, I still hate it. It gives me away! IF people are observant. And it is always a much better colour in the sun, inside when the light is dull my hair is equally dull and I am always battling against this. I feel like my hair is reflective of my personality, or at least it should be and therefore it can't be dull...! 

Sunned ginger locks.


So I was inspired by this post and decided to make my own doctored version. Not only did I feel a little like a Nicole Kidman witch, it really worked after one treatment and was far less messy than a henna root job. I THOROUGHLY recommend. It brightened my hair, lightened it a bit, and made my roots disappear. 

Winter dulled ginger (and this is a good day). It just ain't bright enough pour moi.



Natural Henna Hair Mask

Ingredients

This can be played with depending on what you have in your home.

Chamomile tea
Olive oil
Honey
Henna (I use Lush's Caco Rouge because I know I can trust it not to have any funky copper deposits or whatever).
A natural conditioner, in France we have a brand called Nectar of Nature that seems to be less offensive then usual brands)
Aragon oil (optional)

A JAR OF SOME SORT (my conditioner came in a tub not a bottle so I am recycling that as there is not a lot of it left anyway).

First take a square or so of henna and cut it up as fine as poss (the hot water never dissolves it totally).


Then pour half a cup of boiling water over the tea. I used two because I think packaged tea is a bit weak. If I wasn't so broke I would have bought a packet of actual chamomile flowers from the natural store (Bio C Bon) and brewed that up, but that was 5euro and this box of tea was 1.50, I figure there will deff be a difference in quality but I am broke so hey ho....

Give the gloop a good mix. 

Then add the extras. A good squirt or two of honey. A glug of oil. A few drops of aragon oil. And then mix in the conditioner until it hits the desired consistency. I ran out of conditioner as all I had left it what is you can see in the tiny mug.

It ended up looking like this:


(I apologize profusely over the picture quality, I am having camera issues right now).

On a casual sunday afternoon whilst I was drawing, I dunked my head under the shower head, towel dried it, then coated it in this mixture and then covered it in cling film and let it sit for about 30min before washing it out. 

Deff was a good quick perk up! I think I might put some more conditioner in though when I get around to buying more. Or I might just use this, as its impossible to OD on henna in my eyes.


I ended up transferring it to a prettier container too. I am gonna coat the label in modge podge so it holds up better,


I am hoping that this mixture will give me "in the sun" ginger hair all year round. And with its hair lightening ingredients (chamomile, honey, olive oil) it should gradually build up to achieve just this. But if I get bored of waiting I might just coat my head in honey and do it that way! 

Seeing as this is generally stuff I have sitting around (I bulk buy my henna in the UK because the taxes here on that stuff is insane) it was basically free at the moment I decided to make it. If you are a henna head too, just keep a square back next time so that you can mix up a batch of this to keep you going until you henna again (I never use more than three squares at a time now anyway).

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