Natural Hair Colour – It’s Not Chocolate.
A lovely bar of henna
I picked up this delightful chocolate-looking bar of hair colouring from Lush, the makers of all things smelly and nice and just wanted to share it with you. This bar makes natural hair colouring even more eco-friendly as it doesn’t need packaging which is cool. What is less appealing is the very strong grassy / herbal smell that makes me a little bit sneezy.
The reason for the ‘natural’ smell is that this bar is made from pure Persian henna (a flowering shrub/ small tree that contains a coloured chemical called lawsone in the leaves). The henna dye is made by drying and grinding up the leaves into a fine powder ready to be activated by water and the protein in your skin or hair.
The stuff at lush has been turned into a convenient-to-handle (with gloves to avoid irritation) cake by adding the following ingredients to the henna powder: Cocoa butter: added to give the blend its soap-like structure; Indigo herb, red henna, ground coffee to further develop and modify the colour of the product both on the hair and in the bar; Nettle and Irish Moss powder are used for their ability to form a binding-type of gel when extracted and mixed in water. This binding power would ensure that the bar holds together and that the product had some slip on the hair when applied. The last added ingredient is clove bud oil which could be there as a preservative or may be used to change the smell. It seems an odd choice as clove can be quite irritant and is not registered as a preservative in Australia. The rest of the ingredients – Linalool, Citral, Eugenol, Geraniol etc are naturally occurring aroma chemicals that would have been introduced in the perfume. These have to be listed for the European market as they are known allergens that people with sensitivities may wish to avoid.
For those of you that are interested but want to know what everyone else thinks first there are some interesting comments on the Naturally Curly forum. I am not likely to try this as my hair is too blond for henna – I just go orange! On top of that I have my Stevie English appointment coming up next Friday. Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Take care and love you hair. Naturally
xxxxxx
Realize Beauty 
Clove Bud Oil helps bring out a brown tone in your hair. It doesna’t require preservative because its solid. I used Lush henna for about 5 years, the results can be unpredicatable (especially if you have the odd grey hair) but having cocoa butter on your hair for 4 hours minimum leaves it beautifully soft!
Thanks for that! Solids do still need preserving though as do powders such as mineral make-ups as things like this can still grow bugs as they are full of organic matter.
Heh, you should tell Lush that, they’re always banging on about solids not needing preservatives! That explains why I’ve had so many of thier solid products turn funky.
Funnily enough I did used to speak to the Lush founders when I was looking after their account way back in the UK. They are quite lovely and very funky so I’m sure they will work it out.