When it comes to body art, I’ll take pure Henna tattoos over dangerous, scarring inks any day.  Henna ink, when mixed from pure, natural ingredients, provides a long lasting, beautiful design without  the risks or side effects of chemical ink tattoos (ie Parlor Tattoos).

      Two of the lawyers who work for my have discovered my blog, and one of them pointed out to me yesterday that I hadn’t posted anything since November.  It’s been a very busy month, and even today I don’t have time to write a “real” post.  I originally wrote this post in late June for Lucine, but it didn’t get posted until some time later, and I just realized that I never posted it here, so voila! 

      I’ve waffled on the tattoo question for many years.  My parents would have allowed me to get a tattoo from the age of 16.  After I was commissioned in the Marine Corps, my dad actually wanted us to go together to get Marine Corps tattoos.  I waffled.  I couldn’t decide what design to get or where to place it.  Over the years, I have had many ideas that I thought would be great tattoos, but I could just never make the commitment.  Today, I am thrilled to have my skin unmarked by a parlor tattoo.

My Reasons for Not Getting a Tattoo

      I have many practical and logistical reasons for not getting a “real” tattoo, but ultimately when asked why I have refrained, it always comes back to this:  I wouldn’t take a sharpie to Diana the Huntress.* 

      I love my body and my skin.  I am extremely fit and healthy, as is my skin and, I love every unmarked inch of myself.  It’s really too bad nudity is so taboo in our culture, because there is a good chance I would indulge in it – of course, the lack of pockets would be a problem.  I like the way my body looks exactly like it is.

      There are also many risks involved in getting a chemical ink tattoo that just don’t seem worth it to me.  Obviously, there’s the risk of buyer’s remorse.  You get a bad tattoo, or your life changes, and suddenly the cartoon character on your shoulder doesn’t look so classy in a backless dress.  Your options then: remove it and have a scar in its place, or cover it up with something bigger and gaudier.  Skin ages and changes, tattoos fade and sag.  Living in the South, I’ve been exposed to a near constant parade of women (and men) in bathing suits or summer clothes sporting tattoos that were probably quite lovely 20 years and three kids ago but now just look kind of sad or trashy.*

       There are also the health risks to be considered.  First, you must find a reputable parlor with minimal risk of getting scarred up or contracting hepatitis or the like.  Then you have to consider the fact that many, many tattoo inks, even in good parlors, contain known carcinogens, heavy metals, and endocrine disruptors.  Tattooed skin has been proven more likely to produce cancerous cells than un-tattooed skin.  (References here, here, and here).  I figure if I don’t want to expose myself to those kinds of chemicals in my cosmetics, I certainly don’t want to inject them into my skin.

      Another reason many people posit for not getting chemical tattoos is the pain factor.  For me, it’s not a factor.  I’m not afraid of pain, and I’ve been through plenty of it in my life.  I’ve taken on painful experiences that were as transformative as drug free childbirth and Marine Corps training.  I’ve been abused, and I’ve experienced incomprehensible grief.  I don’t wear pain as a badge of honor.  I have nothing to prove.  Letting someone jab needles into my for body art holds no significance for me.  And I hazard to say that people who go on and on about and glorify how much their tattoos hurt and how important it is that tattoos hurt, have a very different experience of pain than I do.  I love body art for the beauty of it, not so I can have something else to whine about or point to in a lame attempt to “prove” I’m tough.  After all, we all know I’m tough.*

      “Indecision may or may not be my problem” – Jimmy Buffett.  I am wildly indecisive about minor things.  Put me in a stressful situation and I am calm, decisive, and determined.  Take me shoe shopping and watch me melt into a puddle of inconclusion.  I love and embrace change.  I am constantly evolving, shifting, moving forward, and moving on.  I have never found a tattoo design that I think is so quintessentially me that I may never want to change it.  Even if I did, I have no idea where I’d put it – somewhere where it could be visible if I wanted it to be, easily concealable if not, and that wouldn’t show in a slinky evening gown.  So, yeah…

Henna is the Answer

      I discovered Henna when I was researching going No’Poo.  As soon as I used it on my hair once, I was in love and immediately started exploring its body art potential.

      I started doing Henna Tattoos around Feb/Mar of 2012, and have been loving them ever since.  In addition to allowing me huge flexibility in design and location, henna tattoos are much safer (and cheaper!) than parlor tattoos.

      Now, when I refer to henna tattoo ink, I am talking about pure henna leaf mixed with simple, safe ingredients at home.  The stuff you find in boxes or sold on the streets in Tijuana are likely to have all sorts of other chemicals in them which could be dangerous.  There ARE “henna” mixes that contain carcinogens, which is why I always mix my own.  The recipe I use at home can be found below.

      If I ever were to want a permanent tattoo, I would definitely “try it out” in henna first.  I love being able to have one design for a few weeks and then change it up.  I love being able to try different places.  If I get something I really like, I can just trace back over it, and I get three more weeks!  I love being able to have different body art on vacation than I would in my office setting.  I am pretty addicted to these Henna tattoos.  And it doesn’t hurt that MacGyver is an excellent artist (and admirer).

How to Mix Henna Tattoo Ink

      You want to start with “body art quality” pure powdered henna leaf.  This is the powdered leaf of the henna plant (Lawsonia inermis), and nothing else.  I get mine from my local herb store, which carries Frontier brand herbs.  You can order this brand of henna online here.  You can also order high quality henna from Mehandi. 

      The amount you will need varies based on the size of the tattoo you would like to do and the device you plan to use to apply it.  I usually just scoop out about 3 tbsp of the henna I have already mixed up for my hair.  If I mix up a batch just for a tattoo, I usually make half a coffee cup (how’s that for measurement?), which is always WAY more than I need, even for my biggest tattoo.

      Put your henna powder into a glass mug, dish, or bowl that you don’t mind getting stained (my henna has actually never stained any of the mugs or bowls I put it in, but I still don’t use my favorites).  Using a non-metal spoon or chopstick, mix in lemon juice (or any other acid – lime juice, vinegar, etc.) until your mixture is the consistency of thick yogurt or smooth mashed potatoes (it will be stickier than mashed potatoes, but it’s the thickness that matters).  Once mixed, place an airtight cover over the surface of the mixed henna (touching the surface of the henna).  Plastic wrap is most often recommended for this, but I am experimenting with alternatives because plastic wrap is evil.

      Let the covered henna and lemon juice mix sit for 12 hours at room temperature.  The very top “skin” of the henna should turn brownish, indicating dye release, the rest, you’ll see when you stir it, will remain green.  At this point, you have henna hair dye.  You could technically use this on your skin, but to make the ink easier to work with and to ensure the best color, two more ingredients are recommended: sugar and terp.

Sugar

      Adding a little Fair Trade sugar or something similarly sweet and sticky like maple syrup allows the henna to better bond with itself and your skin.  To get the best dye, you need the henna to hold together and form a crust.  Sugar is the preferred method for ensuring this happens.  The amount you need will be based on the amount of dye you’re making, but you don’t need much.  The Henna Page offers excellent detailed instructions on this step (and the other steps, too).  I would estimate that I usually add about 2 tsps of sugar to about 1/2 cup of mixed up henna.

 Terp

      A “terp” is a monoterpene alcohol, a chemical produced by plants.  Adding a little terp to your dye increases the potency of the hennotannic acid (the dye) in your henna for a faster, darker stain.  There are a number of essential oils that contain terp, but I use Tea Tree Oil since it has been traditionally considered safe (and even recommended) for use on skin.  Just a couple drops will do.  The Henna Page also offers excellent guidance on the Terp step.

How to Apply a Henna Tattoo

      This is really a matter of preference and availability of materials.  Basically, you just need something that you can fill with the gooey liquid that will create fine lines.  The tool I’ve most often seen other people use is a jac bottle (or what I think of as a fabric paint bottle) – a bottle with a fine tip on the end.  We use a syringe which allows MacGyver to do really intricate, beautiful work.  You can also use a carrot bag (like you would for icing) or a mylar cone, or really anything else you can think of.  For instructions on how to use all the tools I’ve mentioned and more, check out the Henna Page.

      Whatever you’re using, you want thick lines of henna on your skin, just like one would create with puffy fabric paint or icing (though smaller than one would usually use for icing a cake).  Once your design is applied, don’t touch it.  Allow it to dry thoroughly.  As I mentioned, it should form a crust.  After it’s completely dry, it may crack a little, which is ok, but you should still avoid cracking it.  The longer the crust stays on your skin, the better dye you’ll get.  Once in a while, I’ll even put medical tape over a tattoo (after it’s completely dry) and sleep with it on, though that’s not necessary.

       After a few hours (I’d say no less than 3 hours), the crust will begin to flake off and you should have a beautiful red/brown stain underneath.  At this point, you can wash off all the crust if you’d like.

      Just like with henna hair dye, the stain will continue to develop for three days.  Also note that the dye will act differently on different parts of your body.  Henna gives the darkest, longest lasting stain on hands and feet.  It works, usually, on any body area, but hands and feet get ideal results.  For me, I love to put it on my back, but those tattoos don’t last nearly as long as other locations – which makes me sad.

Eye of the Beholder

      *Before anyone starts sending me hate mail, writing catty blog posts about me, personally attacking me thinking I won’t find out about it, OR sending “anonymous” emails to me or my husband trying to create drama, please heed this:  These are my own personal opinions.  I don’t like the way a lot of parlor tattoos look.  I also don’t like the way pastel colored skinny jeans look.  That doesn’t mean I’m trying to insult people who DO like those things.  Some people think all tattoos are beautiful.  That’s their preference.  Some people don’t like henna.  Again, individual preference.  The world would be a much sadder and more boring place if we all had the exact same idea of beauty. 

     Thank heavens we don’t – no matter how much the cosmetic and fashion industries try.  Henna just happens to fit with my idea of beauty for myself while parlor tats do not.  Look for a more detailed post on body modification of all kinds in the future.

      So if this post has offended you, or inspired you to want to strike out against me in some childish way, perhaps you should ask yourself why.  Your anger comes from you, not from me.

Everything Changes

     I wrote this post in late June, just weeks before we lost my brother.  When I was home for his funeral, a number of his friends got tattoos to honor him.  He had a tattoo of a frog on his arm – a tattoo I called him stupid for getting (a sentiment he later shared and he wanted to change the frog’s hand gesture).  He wanted to get another tattoo.  He wanted to get one that said “Come Monday, It’ll Be Alright,” from a Jimmy Buffett song.  I don’t know why he chose that particular phrase, but that is what he wanted, and I have considered getting that tattoo for him, I wouldn’t be the only one who did.  I thought about getting some other phrase, or some image that represented us coupled with a phrase.

      I have been thinking about getting the Geller cup – which is essentially a toll doll nailed to a chunk of 4X4 – a representation of the sibling rivalry between Monica and Ross in Friends – a show Boo and I watched together nearly constantly when I visited home.  But I’m not sure.  I feel like there must be something better, something perfect.

      I could also get a Harry Potter quote, since Boo introduced me to HP, but so many of those are so overdone now.  This tattoo needs to be unique and special to Boo.

     So I waffled, and I’m still waffling.  Sometimes, I need the scar of losing him to be a visible mark on me; I need to see some indelible representation of him there always.  Sometimes I think he would have wanted me to.  Other times I think it doesn’t make sense to get a tattoo for Boo when tattoos really aren’t me.  I still really don’t know.  At this point, I think I’m waiting for a sign.

       But I have experimented with a couple in henna.  I will try to add the pictures later if I get the chance.

 

 

The post Henna Tattoos: Safer Body Art appeared first on Urban Earthworm.

Chemical Hair Dye

      I started coloring my hair when I was about 17. I didn’t full-on dye my hair, but I periodically painted in big chunky highlights, as was the style around that time (care to guess what year I’m talking about?). I had always had sandy blonde hair, but as I got older, it got darker until it was a rather dull dishwater shade. Then, quite frighteningly to me at the time, it started to turn RED. The last thing I wanted was to look any more like my little brother, Boo:

      So I did what any typical American teen does, and I turned to the rainbow array of boxes on the drugstore shelves. While I eventually grew to love the natural reddish brown shade of my hair, I was completely addicted to the shine and pop of boxed color, so for a couple years I was dying my hair a few times a year with a shade as close to my natural color as I could find. Which, looking back, is just a sad example of buying into meaningless and contradictory cultural dictates.

      When I gave up shampoo, it became apparent to me pretty quickly that all the nasty, useless chemicals and endocrine disruptors in shampoo were also in just about every other cosmetic product I used as well. I’ve already written on swapping out cosmetics for natural, typically single ingredient products like using coconut oil as a moisturizer and hair product. But it also occurred to me that hair dye, of all the chemicals in my bathroom, had to be one of the worst. Just the fumes and the arm-long list of small print warnings it comes with were enough to tell me that. Not to mention the advice of both my doctors and midwives that I should I avoid it during pregnancy even though it hasn’t been conclusively proven to cause birth defects, yet.

      And if for some reason all that hadn’t been enough to convince me, there was the small matter of my baking soda rinse washing all the chemical color out of my hair in about 2 weeks.

      While my hair has always been quite a bit lighter at the bottom than at the roots, I’m pretty sure the chemical dyes were responsible for exaggerating the difference in hue from root to tip of my hair. My hair was its nice, dark reddish tone at the roots which faded into a blah sort of mousy brown and eventually ended up blonde at the tips. Really, it wasn’t that bad, but I still wasn’t thrilled with it.

      Lucky for me, while researching No ‘Poo, I came across this excellent homemade beauty products site singing the praises of henna.

Henna

      Now, if you’re like I was when I first discovered henna on Hilda Blue, you have been lead by the hair dye industry to think that Henna is some sort of terrible concoction that only hippies use because it does bad things to your hair. While it is true that many box dyes claiming to be henna, or containing henna as one of many other chemical ingredients often can be very bad, henna, just henna all alone by itself, is NOT bad, and is actually very good for your hair.

      The Henna I’m talking about is a plant, lawsonia inermis, the leaves of which, when dried and ground into a powder, can be used as a wonderful and effective hair coloring treatment.

      Now, there are a few things you need to know about Henna before you dive in:

1)  HENNA WILL ONLY DYE YOUR HAIR RED  –  There are a lot of products out there claiming to be henna that will dye your hair other colors – those are not true, pure henna. There are, however, other plants that can give you other colors – indigo for black, for instance. There is a lot more information on these other plants on Hilda Blue and Henna for Hair. That said, there are ways to dye your hair a variety of colors with plant based natural dyes. Henna for Hair has a ton of mixtures for that.

2.)  Henna is GOOD for your hair. Regardless of the color aspect of it, I love the way my hair looks and feels after I henna it. It is soft, shiny, and just overall very healthy. Many people use an herb similar to henna but without the dying properties (Cassia Obovata) to treat their hair just to get these benefits.

3.)  Henna takes longer and is (arguably) messier than chemical hair dye. It has the consistency of mud and I leave mine in for 3 – 4 hours. But it is worth it.

4.)  Henna is MUCH cheaper than box dyes.  You can get very high quality pure Henna powder online for $13.00 a pound, which would be enough to do my hair at least 10 times. I buy mine from a local bulk style herb store (I requested they order it, and they were happy to), and just a couple dollars worth has lasted me 8 months.

5.)  Henna is truly permanent. The pigment particles from the plant penetrate deep into the hair shaft, they do not simply coat it like most chemical dyes. I’m told this also makes it excellent at covering greys.

6.)  Rinsing Henna down the drain won’t harm local wildlife and drinking water the way washing the chemicals from box dyes will.

7.)  If you use pure, high quality henna with no chemical additives, it WILL NOT react with chemically treated hair.  It is only the fake boxed “henna” mixes that produce negetive reactions because they often contain metallic salts.  Pure henna is just the ground leaf of the plant and will not produce those reactions.

      So, are you sold on Henna yet? I was in about 3 minutes, but I spent a number of days researching it before I took the plunge. In my opinion, the site Henna for Hair is the best out there for Henna information. It has everything.  Part of the reason I’m not putting too much “how to” detail in this post is because Henna for Hair has it all covered, including how to incorporate other herbs and ingredients to get different colors. You can also order high quality henna from the site, though I haven’t. I also haven’t been compensated in any way or asked to plug either Henna for Hair or Hilda Blue; they are both simply great sites.

Personal Experiences

      The first time I tried it, I did a basic, pure henna mix. Henna powder and lemon juice (and a little vinegar because I ran out of lemon juice – you just have to mix the henna with something acidic, lemon juice being the most common choice). Let sit for 12 hours and then apply. While I liked the results, my hair was just a touch brighter than I really wanted it, so since then I have done 2/3 henna, 1/3 indigo – roughly, I just eye everything.

      I mix up the henna with the lemon juice until it’s a sort of sticky mashed potatoes/thick yogurt consistency and let it sit, covered in plastic wrap at room temperature for 12 hours. The mix is brightish green to begin with, but as it sits just the very top layer turns brownish, the underneath stays green. Again, check out Henna for Hair for detailed directions and pictures of all this.

      When I’m ready to apply, I mix up the indigo powder with water until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes, then I mix the two mixes together – the henna and the indigo (some people do the two treatements consecutively, but I get results I love mixing them together). This gives me a nice bowl of greenish mud.

      I put on gloves and put the mud into my hair one section at a time until I have a very thick layer of the henna goop all over my hair. Don’t be stingy, you can’t put it on too thick.

      I wrap that up in plastic wrap (or something similar and more environmentally friendly) to keep in the moisture and heat.  Chill for 2 – 6 hours depending on how strong you want your results and how receptive your hair is to coloring. Since there are no yucky harsh chemicals, I don’t have to worry about burning my hair or anything like that. Keep in mind that henna (and indigo) will also dye skin if left on for some time, so wear gloves and wipe any stray goo off ears, forehead, neck, etc.

      Once time’s up, I just thoroughly rinse in the shower.  No washing or conditioning necessary since the lemon juice cleanses and the henna conditions. Bam. Beautiful hair.

      One thing to keep in mind is that the Henna color will actually continue to develop for three days, so you won’t see your final color until day 3 after application.  I find the interim period very amusing. The first time I did it, I had amazingly bright clown orange hair the day after I treated it. I wish I had a picture of it. The final color, though is always pretty close to what I want – natural looking but bright and shiny. Using the indigo, my hair is usually almost black until the henna fully develops. This is why I usually apply my henna on Friday evenings. One cannot wear a Marine uniform with clown orange hair.

      Just like my new shampoo free lifestyle, I am completely in love with henna (and indigo).

      Through the writing of this entire article, the feminist in me has been prodding and goading me, whispering in my ear that I am bowing to norms set by an unhealthy and unforgiving media by coloring my hair at all; that is absolutely true. It is also true that I am far from perfect, and while I try to buck a lot of the more ridiculous or harmful norms set by our society, at the end of the day, I like the way my hair looks with the henna. I’m sure one day I will stop all together – probably once I start the progression to becoming a white-haired crone. Until then, I’ll just try to keep my vanity from exposing me to too many carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

Have you ever tried henna (real henna, not the boxed stuff) or any similar herbal dyes/stains?

Have any questions for me?  I’m far from an expert, but I’ve been doing this for almost a year now.

If you do (or have) tried it, please share some pictures on my Facebook Page!

This post was originally writen for Lucine Biotechnology. 

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