Lady in Red: How I Became an Unnatural Redhead Naturally With Henna

There's me pretending to be a wolf.  Aroooooo!

My husband has always told me how cute he thinks I am, just the way I am.  The fact that we met while both working at a Boy Scout camp says something about level at which the bar of my appearance was set.  If he fell in love with me while I was only allowed to wear olive Boy Scout shorts with a turquoise men's t-shirt.  And it's not like I was spiffing myself up much.  I guess I did wear powder-this red dust that covered the trails at camp was almost like a self tanner powder.  Despite all of this he often said, "You look great the way you are, but if you ever want to dye your hair red, I won't complain".  I had NEVER died my hair.  I liked my natural color, I felt like I would giving in to the beauty myths of the teen/women's magazines, I didn't think it was worth the money, and it supposedly fried your hair with toxic chemicals.

This year we were both apart for the weekend before Valentine's Day.  I was at my parents house and my sweetheart of a mom offered to watch little Q so I could get a much needed real hair cut funded by her.  As I was making some pretty big changes to my hair already, I thought maybe I could do a couple of red streaks for Scott as a Valentines Day present.  I headed to the health food co-op in Davis and there  I found the perfect solution: henna! The whole box was only about 6 dollars and I only used half, it will wash out gradually over 4-6 weeks (no roots) and the only ingredient is organic henna leaves ground up into a powder.  No toxic chemicals  AND it is GOOD (conditioning and protective) for your hair instead of bad.  True, it only adds color instead of subtracting, so I couldn't go blond with it, and my black haired friends are not going to get much change.  But, I thought it would be a fun change and I knew my husband would be happy with the gift.  I picked the "Bright Red" color which had a wolf on the front (see photo above).  Each color featured a different animal and I was briefly tempted to pick the cutest animal, but the wolf color was a good match.  I had reoccurring nightmares as a child about coyotes/wolves, so, needless to say, this is not my favorite animal.

I took it back to my parent's house and got started.  First I microwaved some hot water to boiling and added half of the powder until it was, as the directions said, "the consistency of already stirred yogurt."  Then I waited and hour or so for it to sit while we took the kids to the park.  Next, I put on gloves and very carefully applied the mud to just the bangs of my newly cut hair.  It was helpful to have my mom to assist as the henna will dye all sorts of things.  Then, while my bangs were clipped to themselves, I alternated between blow-drying them and using the henna to make all sorts of crazy henna temporary tattoos on me, my mom, and my son (he wanted a heart on his hand for Valentines Day). After about 2 1/2 hours of mostly eating dinner, my mom said, "you'd better wash that stuff off!"So we rinsed and dried my bangs and washed off our skin.  When it was wet, it was hard to see any difference, but once it was dry, it was VERY red! Once I saw the effect on the bangs, I had so much left over, I thought, "oh, why not," and did the same thing to the rest of my head.  The first 24 hours, I wasn't supposed to use shampoo.  Then, the first time I washed it I accidentally used the new light blue organic cotton towel gifted to me by my dad to dry it.  I would not recommend this.  The first 3 days the color is pretty bright which changes into the more subtle color you can see in the photo below.  My hair is just as soft as ever, I am having fun being a redhead for a few weeks and Scott is enjoying the Valentines Day gift.  More fun than the tongue piercing my 1 year old son got on Valentine's Day when he fell of the bed and caught his tongue on some thing sharp on the way down.  The poor guy couldn't nurse for 12 hours and still has a bit of a slice.  :( Boo!  And yay for unnaturally red hair dyed naturally!