Monday 17 August 2015

Henna? It's happening..


There came a point in my life where I set myself two personal, internal challenges:

1) To see how far I could get without additional hair added, like weaves, extensions and wigs.
2) To not use henna.

Well, this year might see both of those challenges go up in smoke - but let's talk about the henna.

Back in the emerging natural hair society of 2009, when Black Girl with Long Hair was still hosted on blogger, and KimmayTube was who people where logging in to watch on Youtube, the only way people seemed to be able to do henna involved a long, drawn out process that sucked up at least a day of your life, involved military precision and organisation to prevent staining everything within viewing distance, and then an age where you tried to rinse out twigs and bits from your hair (this is why Cassia and I no longer roll together).

Sure, you got seemingly invincible hair (according to the forum legends, anyway), but it then dyed it a permanent shade of red and rendered commercial dyes useless?

You have to spend how long afterwards putting moisture back in your hair?? (The worst I heard was 1 month of bi-weekly, hour long, deep conditioning to reduce it from 'straw-like' to 'just kindadry'. WHAT.)

 And you have to do this on the regular???

No, no, no, nopeity nope nope.

But times move on, things change and evolve. I ignored the henna gloss trend of 2010/2011 and was resolute on my hennaed-hair ban - until now.

The fact is, I nearly made it past armpit length I've made it past armpit length this summer, just by extensively washing and going. But my poor fine strands just seem a little bit exhausted, and I thought to myself - why not help them out a little bit? 
It's not cheating (I'm still trying to convince myself here) - my strands are really puny and are actually transparent from more than a foot away. I have splits up to 5 inches on some of my hair strands and I know I'm due for a trim.

Fortunately for me, here in the UK, we have a little henna head guru of our own...Curly Proverbz! I found her whilst Instagram-flicking and I love her ideas on how to include henna without the mess and fuss...and mess. Henna tea? Why did I never think of that before? Inevitably, I caved and bought some from Sheabutter Cottage (also available from Beauty by Zara) and am now eyeing up Curly Proverbz's henna butter mix...


Have you ever used henna for your hair? Why?