THE Black American Princess: Henna'd Hair for the Summer

So after reading up on Henna for months now I decided to try it out for the first time... I have always been pretty cautious about dying my hair. I don't relax my hair, so why would I want to put some other chemical into my hair. So I did a bit of research...Then I decided what concoction I was gone put together:

200 g of "Jamila 2009" a Body Art Quality Henna for Hair from Mehandi. This was the easy part. Pretty much decided that I was going to start out simple my first time and see how henna worked on my hair: in terms of color, texture and health....all qualities which I have heard henna enhances. Then I decided on what type of mixture to make.

I had to choose an acidic liquid to mix in with the henna: easy lemon juice...i sure as hell wasn't using something nasty like vinegar in my hair. Then I decided to try to see if I could get my very dark hair to even possibly show a little red. So I decided to experiment with something natural to enhance the red. I decided to boil the purple/red color out of some beets to mix in....

This is the consistency the mixture should be, kinda like yogurt...

I covered it and let it sit on the counter overnight...you don't need to let it sit that long, but because of my timing it just ended up that way. During that time I also went out and scooped some cinnamon because the smell of henna, while some people apparently love it, is not one that i wanted sticking in my hair. So I prepped my bathroom and got my plastic gloves ready...

I bet if I hadn't done this I would have messed my bathroom all up...but I didn't really end up dripping a whole lot. I had my hair sectioned off in 4 parts and starting from the root on down I covered each section with a fair amount of henna. I just finger combed it through my hair because I didn't want to add any unnecessary stress to my hair while putting this new product in. It was thick enough that i could use it to mold my hair into a wrapped type of style. Then B saran-wrapped my hair covering my whole head.

Made sure it was tight and nothing was dripping out. My ears did end up having a lot of henna behind them, but the color only lasted a few days. I had some extra henna and I stuck it in the freezer to save it for the next time. Had to sleep on a towel to make sure that I didn't mess up my pillowcase. Next day I filled my bathtub up and emerged myself to try and get the henna out as evenly as possible. I did this twice to get all the henna out and then conditioned it since I heard henna can dry your hair out.

While the color is really not as noticeable as I hoped, my hair is pretty dark, but my hair does feel strengthened and definitely glossier. Here's the before and after:

Before