Usually I’m a fan of the Jamila henna powder that I get from Henna Caravan. After reading Mehndi by Loretta Roome, I took Loretta’s suggestion and bought some paste at the Indian grocery store. It sat in my freezer a while before I got the chance to mix it up, but I was finally able to give it a test run. Check it out!

I’ve been trying to get better about mixing smaller batches of henna more often so that I can make sure that the paste is fresh as possible. So I mixed up half of the box (50g) following the recipe suggested by Henna Sooq.

I mixed up the paste on Monday night and was finally able to use it last night. I’m going to need to add more lemon juice to the paste before I make another cone. I’m also going to try running it through a stocking to break up clumps. I got all the way through a design on my foot with fairly good, smooth lines. The piece on my hand, however, is quite a bit bolder than I had wanted it to be since the cone kept clogging up on me.

Here’s a snapshot of the doodle I did on my hand after I scraped the paste off this morning.

Its been about 7 hours since I took the above picture and the paste has already darkened to a good orange-brown color (pardon the lighting).

Hopefully I will get to play around some more in the next couple of days. I’ll keep you posted!

So those of you that have known me for any extended length of time have probably known me with several colors of hair, including pink, purple, blue, several shades of red, and my favorite, teal. I haven’t dyed my hair in quite some time. Mostly, this was because I have been making an effort to stop using chemicals on myself, and i wanted to see what my natural color was like. I’d also resisted using henna on my hair because I don’t really want to be a redhead. What I DID want was the conditioning benefits that several of my friends are enjoying from using henna on their hair.

So after a *teensy* bit of research and a fair amount of pondering, I decided I would do the Henna + Indigo recommendation from Henna Caravan. I followed the directions to mix my paste for a dark brown color. Sadly, I didn’t get to take good “after” pictures the first time around but I was able to grab a couple of before and after shots from this application. My hair was only a bit lighter the first time around, so you can try to imagine the difference… similar result, just less drastic the second time around.

Again, pardon the quality of the pictures, they were snapped with my phone in my dining room

The paste weighed a TON and I slept with it on overnight. You can see in the before pictures that my hair was a bit greasy looking. I’d been noticing it was much oilier than usual the past couple of weeks. I just switched my shampoo/conditioner, so that could be a factor, but I’m not sure why it’s happening. Hopefully in the next several months, I’ll learn a thing or two about taking good care of my hair. The henna/indigo seems to have stopped the oil problem for now.

Here are the shots from yesterday, the day that the paste was removed:

I think its a bit redder this time. I didn’t have as much indigo to use as I did the first time. Overall, though, I really like it. Its really soft and very shiny. My favorite part- not greasy anymore. I <3 henna.