honest-lies.comHonest Lies – "Okay so Im the dragon Big deal You

Skip to content Honest Lies "Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero." Menu and widgets Home About Travel Log Books Twitter RSS Search for: Welcome! Honest Lies is the personal site of a 26 year old graduate electrical engineer living in the UK. Covering every day life, books and various other randomness. Read more about me and the site here . The One Where I Nearly Ruin my Landlords Bathroom i.e. the one where I attempt to dye my hair for the first time ever. With henna. Left: the day after dying (Monday), Right: two days after dying (Tuesday) Sunday 3rd May 2020, Around 6.30pm For my whole life, my hair has been the same color. And the same style. As I have eczema on my scalp I have to be super careful about what products I use on my hair, and I avoid going to the hairdresser’s. But I have always been fascinated about dying my hair. Through the no poo process I learned about henna and the idea of a using a natural, nourishing product to turn my hair lovely and red really appealed to me. The mess did not. From what I read henna was difficult and extremely messy. I was also worried I would not like how it looked in the end. But now we are in quarantine! I found myself impulsively buying some henna one night, after watching a YouTube video where someone dyed their hair and thinking about how much I would like a change too. It seemed the perfect time to experiment when no one is going to see the result immediately. I had time, both to apply it and deal with the mess, and to deal with any bad results without anyone seeing it. (So I convinced myself.) I bought one of those henna bricks from Lush, which wouldn’t be my first choice as I don’t like Lush, but it felt the easiest path to go down. They were out of stock of their fiery red henna so I chose the chestnut one instead, and had to admit to myself that was probably the best choice as something more subtle and thus, hopefully, less likely to go wrong. It took about a week for it to come, by which time the impulse had died away and I was no longer quite so interested. I admit what drove me to use it today was that my flat was slowly, after just a day and a half of the parcel entering my abode, starting to stink of Lush and I couldn’t take it any longer. So today I: Washed my hair and trimmed it, yes myself, and yes badly. (As an aside, last time I discussed my no poo routine I talked about starting to use shampoo again. Since then I have found that I do not like using shampoo regularly, as it dried out my scalp too much, but that using a sulfate free shampoo every couple of months works wonders to clarify my hair and does not have any affect on my hair or scalp or my usual nopoo routine. So today I used that shampoo to get my hair nice and clean in preparation for dying. I had hoped that I could just rinse my hair with water for this but from what I read, the cleaner the better for dying the hair. One site even suggested using a little bit of dish soap to really strip the hair, but having done that before (don’t ask, though it may be on the blog somewhere who knows) I really didn’t want to do that again. This was to be a nourishing thing as much as a hair dying thing. The whole point of choosing henna was that I could change up my hair without affecting my eczema and getting out the dish soap or even a sulfate shampoo seemed to defeat that, so I just used the sulfate free shampoo and hoped that would work…) The henna was suggested to be applied to dry or damp hair. So I thought I could wash my hair and then prepare the henna whilst it dried off. As my hair is quite fine I thought it would be too difficult to work with when fully dry. To prepare the henna, I lined a glass bowl with tinfoil and set that in a bigger bowl of hot water. I tried to hack up the henna block but it wasn’t working and I was concerned about the mess that was making so I just stuck the whole thing in the small bowl, added a little bit of boiling water and slowly, slowly, melted it down into a paste. It took absolutely forever to do and I had to change the big bowl once to get the water hot again but eventually I got a nice, thick paste to work with. (Why can’t Lush provide their henna as a powder? It would be so much more convenient and easy to work with.) I had been super careful to not add too much water to the bowl as I had read that if I made it too runny then it would be messy and not stick to the hair, so I was pleased I had seemingly got this right. At this point I was excited and optimistic. I laid some cardboard down on the bathroom floor to protect it, then took my henna in and got to work, sectioning my hair and applying the henna with a face mask applicator and my bare hands. Yes, you read that right. Tools you need to apply henna: Gloves Hair Color Brush A small mirror Paper Towels Cling Film or a Shower Cap A fabric headband , hat or something similar to keep the hair wrapped up and warm Tools I actually had: A silicon face mask applicator A handheld mirror Paper Towels A shower cap One of those cloth hair turbans used for drying the hair It was close, but not close enough. My poor hands were clearly turning orange even as I applied it. (And the color is deepening as I sit with my hair wrapped up and waiting for the color to develop.) And it was so messy to apply. I had watched exactly one tutorial, as well as reading the instructions lush had included and a couple of online tutorials. None of those dealt with applying to long hair and I really should have investigated that. I found it so hard to get all my hair coated and to get it all to curl around itself into a giant bun on my head, as per instructions. The paste was quick to dry and crumble, falling onto my shoulders, into the sink, and onto the floor , seeming to go everywhere but on my head. At this point I hated it and was no longer excited, just frustrated. I also could not see what was going on at the back of my head with my tiny handheld mirror and struggled even more with doing that part. Eventually I got all my hair just about coated and twisted around onto the top of my head , and somehow I even got my fringe coated and pasted on top of the whole lot of it. I went over with more henna, as much as I could, but the whole thing was threatening to fall apart so I had to give up and accept it as it was. I hadn’t used all the hair dye so I wasn’t convinced I had used enough to get a good result. I rinsed and dried my hands, definitely orange then, and applied my shower cap- one of those plastic ones you get in hotels that I steal for the express purpose of containing my hair when I do hair masks. (Can I admit that online?) Then I put on one of those hair turbans which I usually use for drying my wet hair, to keep the shower cap in place and to try to keep everything warm, as apparently this helps the red color to develop. Now I am sitting here waiting impatiently to rinse it out and see the results. It smells a bit but feels stable enough and I am pleased that my scalp doesn’t feel too itchy or uncomfortable , which gives me hope that it will be nourishing , or at least not give me a bad reaction. Oh, and I cleaned everything up immediately afterwards and it wasn’t too bad. Most was in the sink and on the cardboard. So I cleaned the sink immediately and put the cardboard in a bag. There was some bits outside the cardboard but as it was so dry and crumbly I could vacuum those up and there were only a couple of areas that needed a wipe down. The bathroom looks fine. I am not sure how washing this stuff out will go though, and am nervous for that. Also my hands are bright orange, even my nails are stained , and they smell of the product. I really should have invested in some gloves. I thought I could maybe use some plastic bags on my hands instead but that quickly proved impractical so I boldly removed them and now I am stuck with the results. I hope it fades soon. Eek Sunday 3rd May 2020, Around 10pm I left the henna in for between 3 a...