Since my allergies to aloe vera pressed with skin and sea buckthorn have only become worse, I'm good with leaving it to everyone else and sticking to things that are properly labelled by people in lab coats, thankyouverymuch. Basically, at this point I can't trust anything that is an "extract", since I never know if the material used to extract with is aloe vera pressed with skin, or some other nasty I react to.
The only exception I have to this rule, is Nightblooming. Who I know and trust well enough to use her products. (And who is generally an all-around cool person and wrote some classic hair literature)
So whenever I post pictures of myself with cassia mud smeared all over, it's always from Nightblooming.
Writing about this made me want to do a cassia mud treatment. I haven't bothered to do those for a long while by now.
I keep a batch of boiled and frozen Rusalki Strawberry Blonde Herbal Henna Hair Color and Conditioner ready in the freezer for this. Supposedly boiling and freezing the herbs makes the plant cells break down to release the "actives" in them better.
The Rusalki is a mix and doesn't dye a whole lot, but since I want to get the can-only-spot-it-if-you-know-it effect and vague watercolour from it, I felt that three little chunks of 17 grams would be enough.
Some people do their cassie/henna mud with just water, but I like mine as a conditioner base, so I get a good, regular conditioning at the same time. It seems to work, but of course the herbal purists always tell me I'm wrong. Meh. I'm okay with that.
I added a bottle of (ridiculously overpriced) Olaplex to it. Olaplex never really "did" anything for me, but if the science is right, it's a good product and a good choice for a long conditioning.
100 gram of Organic Cassia Obovata to the mix. Mmm, smells like fresh peas and green vegetables.
And then I pretty much "filled up" until it had a nice, thick muddy texture. I reviewed the OGX Biotin & collagen a while back and thought it was the best choice for deep conditioner out of the four OGX I tried. So it will serve as the base for that again.
A good rinse and letting my hair semi dry again.
Also, a before-picture. Not that I expect to be able to spot any colour difference. I actually hope I can't.
Henna-cassia mud sexiness.
Getting it everywhere is kind of hard to avoid!
Cling wrap, bandage and... Hmm, something missing....
Doing the eyebrows too!
This mixture was surprisingly less drippy than usual. I don't know if it was the OGX Biotin & collagen or just that since cassia is a natural product, it's never 100% the same.
I usually spend the first hour in the bathtub just because the unavoidable dripping is so much less annoying there, but I ended up cutting it a lot shorter and getting out.
I will definitely use the OGX Biotin & collagen as base again if it is what keeps the damn dripping down.
The heatcap, which mr Igor had named "The Smurf" for obvious reasons. I think I managed to kill four hours like this before I got bored.
Rinsed clean and can't see any colour difference. Good!
Still moist, braided and still can't see any colour difference. Maybe a little in the eyebrows, strange enough?
Fully dried and up in a braided Nautilus bun. Maybe it's the contrasting, green hoodie, but now I actually think I can see a little bit of a tint. Not at the length, but at the scalp it seems a tiny bit more red than normal. But this is the can-only-spot-it-if-you-know-it tint I wanted, so I'm happy.
And my hair felt generally happy. It looks shiny and nice.
Melissa/Nightblooming is found the following places:
And speaking of Nightblooming, her Etsy store is turning 14 years old this week!
She usually has a sale going on around her store's birthday, so it's worth checking out.
In the first pic, Ida reveals that she is actually a supermodel...😉😘
ReplyDelete