Tuesday, April 5, 2011

My 3rd Henna App is Today!

So, obviously it's not Friday. I got so lazy last week and had no interest in doing a henna app this past weekend. I love henna, but it is a tad bit time consuming...I've gone to fast tracking my henna paste by using hot green tea as the dye release activator - which also removes the 3 hours of waiting for the dye to release. But it's still time consuming - applying takes about 20 - 30 minutes. Then there's the minimum of three hours to let it work in the hair, followed by an hour of rinsing and 45 minutes of twisting my hair up.

I like the henna results, but the process is a bit much. I've decided that I'm only doing twice weekly henna apps for April, and then starting in May I'm backing it down to once a week. Originally I had thought I would do twice a week apps for April and May...haha how naive I was! June will be two apps for the entire month and by July, I'll only be doing henna once a month. Again, it's not the cost, because for $3.99 a box, it's definitely worth it. But a henna day means I can't leave the house and I have to work conference calls and work around the henna rather than the other way around. o_0

A few people have asked me how I learned about henna so I'm giving credit where credit's due! I'm not a magical know it all who just randomly got the idea to henna. I strongly suggest that someone thinking of taking a dip in the henna pool checks out the following resources:

www.hennaforhair.com (seriously a treasure trove of info and a place where you can buy henna if there are not BAQ henna suppliers in your area)
www.curlynikki.com (awesome for African Americans looking for information on maintaining natural or very curly hair. Curly Nikki also talks about henna quite a bit as she's a serious henna head!)
www.blackhairmedia.com (I used to be seriously addicted to this site when I was wearing my extensions more regularly however they have hair care forums that cover everything from natural to texturized to weaves to full lace wigs. If you're an African American woman - or even just someone who wants to learn about hair in general - I highly recommend this site.)
Youtube! (seriously...if you want step by step directions, this is the spot. There are a lot of vloggers on there who will show you how to make henna, apply it, and different styling options for people with natural hair. All you have to do is search!)

So, I'll try to update this post or just make a new one later with updates on my hair (pictures). I took a couple over the weekend, since my hair was looking super cute - I tried a new twist/setting option. It looked really cute but didn't last after a few hours (womp womp) so I won't be making it my go style...but for "once in a while", it's a good alternative!

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