Oh, Lush Henna!

(Just so you know, I sang that title to the tune of Ultravox's Vienna.)

A couple of weeks ago I asked Twitter for shampoo and conditioner recommendations and two lovelies, Sarah and Deepa, who makes beautiful jewellery, told me to try Lush.  I'll be honest here, I'd always avoided Lush because the smell that wafted out of its shop door always made me wrinkle my nose up and the one time I went inside a Lush store I found the smell so overpowering I had to leave. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.  So to avoid smell trauma I placed an order on the Lush website and I got myself some Curly Wurly shampoo and some Coolaulin conditioner.  

I am so very glad I did.

Curly Wurly is without a doubt the best shampoo I've ever used.  It smells of vanilla and coconut, detangles my curls and leaves my hair soft and bouncy.  The Coolaulin is also coconutty, works like a dream and leaves a really nice shine.

I popped to town in the week and while I was there I thought I'd brave Lush. Yes, the smell was strong but I think my love for their wonderful shampoo and conditioner cancelled that right out and I mooched around the place smelling this and sniffing that and I left with a pot of Rub Rub Rub shower scrub which is fabulous!  The girl in the shop gave me a copy of the Lush Times and there was a whole page in there about their henna.  

I've been dyeing my hair for about ten years now.  I started to get greys when I was about twenty-three and by the time I was twenty-seven they were really annoying me and the semi-permanent dyes I had been using just didn't work so I switched to permanent colours.  Every time I dyed my hair I hated it; hair dye smells so chemical and it would sting my scalp, make my eyes hurt and it would make my hair dry.  After a dye job my hair would be dull and dead-looking.

The Lush henna article and reviews convinced me to give it a go and yesterday I bought a block of Caca Brun henna.  I grated the entire block into a glass bowl, added just-boiled water and stirred it into a green paste. The green of the mix was a bit worrying;  it was a very nice shade of green but so very different to 'normal' hair dye.  I had a lot of fun slapping the mud-like concoction all over my locks and I was pleased that I put newspaper down as it did make a mess.  I then wrapped my hair in clingfilm, much to Chris' amusement (he said I looked like a Mutoid from Blake's 7), for two hours and then I removed the clingfilm for a further two hours.  Then the massive washing out process took place.  I washed it out with some Karma Komba shampoo and Jungle conditioner and was delighted to see that all my greys had blended away.  I applied a little R&B hair moisturiser and let my hair air dry - I didn't use any mousse, serum or other styling products.  This morning I woke up with shiny, soft, bouncy curls that smell fantastic.  My hair is now a rich dark chocolate brown that shines ever-so-slightly red in the light.

Yes, the henna made a mess, and yes, it's way more time consuming than chemical dye application but it feels so much nicer and the effects are so much better.  The colour is more natural-looking and my hair feels brilliant.  I really can't see myself going back to chemical dyes now.

But I'll tell you what I can see; lots more Lush purchases!  I am really impressed with their products, customer service and ethics.  I've even become immune to the shop smell.

Thank you, Lush.  You've totally transformed my hair!

NOTE: I am not affiliated with Lush in any way (other brands are available) and I'm not being paid or rewarded to write about their wonderful products. I'm just a very impressed customer and newly-converted Lush addict. 

I look like Alan Davies in drag

I was in Cambridge at the weekend and when I got home today I switched on my computer to find a huge wodge of emails, some bead-related and some not. There was also an absolute shedload of spam. Emails from banks where I don't even hold an account and super-duper deals from Vista Flippin' Print along with offers aplenty of cheap bead imports, medicine, hot girls that are ready to chat to me now and patches that will do miraculously wondrous things to pieces of anatomy that I don't even possess. I love the internet, I really do, but I hate spam!

One of the nice and normal bead-related emails I received was from Joy who sent me this photo of a bracelet that she made with her first beads. Isn't it fab?!

You may have gathered from the title of this post that I'm currently in the midst of a hair crisis. This happens every now and again. As you might know I'm 'blessed' with curly hair which annoyingly has a mind of its own. I need to find a new hairdresser but in my experience hairdressers that can cut curly hair well seem to be few and far between. Sam, my hairdresser back in Southampton, was wonderful and she knew exactly how my hair 'works'. My mop could really do with some sort of professional help right now but I'm nervous about trying a new salon. My hair looks enough of a mess as it is and I don't want to risk trying somewhere new and then walking out looking like Brian May. That would be bad. Last week I discovered a wonderful website - Naturally Curly - which is full of advice and information for us curly girlies and it has a really well-stocked shop full of interesting-looking hair products. Thing is, it's a US-based site and the financial mess our country is in makes buying things from America pretty dang expensive at the moment. Rubbish. Anyway, by looking at the Naturally Curly website I've discovered that my curls are type 3A. I didn't even know that there was some kind of Curly Locks Classification System, but now I do.

So I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go find me a salon and I think I'm going to have to do that walk-in-and-speak-to-someone thing. I hate that. I've never been a girly girl and hairdressing salons make me feel uneasy. It's all the technical hair language, forced conversation, girly chit-chat and staring at yourself in the mirror with your hair in some crazy pinned-up mess while wearing a back-to-front-cape-and-a-rubber-car-mat-thing that puts me off. Plus all the other ladies in the salon always seem to be having interesting and complicated colouring and cutting done - things that involve spacey-looking swimming caps and tin foil. I always feel a bit of a frump just having a trim and a few layers done. Going to the hairdresser is quite a stressful thing. Am I alone in thinking that or does anyone else feel that way too?

Okay, I'm going to stop droning on about my 'do (it's more like a 'don't, actually) and instead I'm off to work out what colour beads I fancy making tomorrow. But before I go I'm going to say two words - 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Go see it. It's an awesome (as Chris would say) movie. Definitely one of the best films I've seen in a very long while.