Reflections from my hair may now be blinding! (Lush Caca Rouge Hair Colour)

Member Name: nursie_nursie

Product:	Lush Caca Rouge Hair Colour
Date:	10/06/08 (820 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great colour and shine, better for the environment and not tested on animals!

Disadvantages: Messy, smelly and takes absolutely ages!

I have been dying my hair for so long that it is now hard to remember my natural hair colour! As a teenager I started to get the occasional grey hair, as I am sure you can imagine I hated it! I decided that instead of being teased for it that I would try and be considered cool by dying my mid brown hair to hide them and over the years it has been just about every colour you can imagine! Yes even blue and on one memorable occasion, pink!

I have always been a bit odd with my hair, my view is if I don't like it I can either get it cut or I can dye it again and if it is too short it will grow! I have even shaved it off from below my shoulders in length with clippers on a number six, bleached it and then coloured it pillar box red, yes, I am mad! Red is usually always my colour of choice though but not as bright as that these days!

I have become rather a Lushie and this product was my first purchase or should I say it was my poor boyfriends first purchase on my behalf! I had a look on the website and then he grabbed it on his lunch break for me.

I decided on Caca Rouge, a block of red henna. I thought, well, nothing ventured nothing gained and even if I get no colour except my greys going a red colour and looking like highlights that at least my hair should be shiny which is something that my hair hasn't been for years, probably because of all the ammonia based colourants which have been slathered on over the years, damaging it.

Being my first buy I had no idea of quite what to expect. My other half came home with rather a large Lush paper bag, on opening the bag and looking inside I was struck by the smell of Christmas which greeted me. Because Caca Rouge contains clove oil and to me it brings to mind Christmas although I am not completely sure why!

It was a block which was almost chocolate coloured and looking. Six squares with a pattern and the Lush logo stamped on to the top. It came with no instructions, they had asked my unsuspecting boyfriend if I knew how to use it and he had said I did, so we can't blame the lack of instructions on Lush as they would have put them in with it had I asked him to get them. It saves paper by not giving them out when they are not necessary. My block of henna was just wrapped in a small, clear plastic bag with a Lush logo on it. Less rubbish equals less impact on the environment!

Anyway this was on a Friday night, now about eight weeks ago and as I will tell you in a moment the process with this product is not a short one so I had to wait to use it, which is not like me at all! We had a friend coming to stay for the weekend so I had to wait till the Sunday lunch time when he had gone to use my new henna!

I looked up the instructions on the Lush website and found all I needed to know. I got out what I needed, a bowl which wasn't plastic and couldn't stain, a spoon, a cheese grater, gloves, comb, butterfly clip, boiled the kettle and put newspaper all over the floor by the window where I had a mirror ready and waiting.

I wore a boring old black vest style nighty, which wouldn't show up any stains that might appear. Henna will stain skin, clothes paint and flooring so if you are going to use it then be careful and clean up any spillages straight away!

I decided to grate the block as you could not break it into squares and it was very hard! I grated up a third of it and mixed in boiling water till it was a paste similar in consistency to that of any hair colour you usually buy. It was a funny green colour like cow pats in a field! It looked hideous but smelt rather nice, far better than chemical dyes!

Putting it on was rather messy I ended up with splatters all over the paper I had put down and over my neck shoulders and back. In fact I got into rather a mess! I found that for my very long thick hair I had not mixed up enough so called on my other half for help. After mixing up the equivalent of another squares worth (so a total of three squares) I slapped that on also and was done. I put my hair up with the help of a butterfly clip (I believe that's what they are called anyway) and then wrapped my hair in clingfilm. Not only does using clingfilm mean that you can walk about and get on with you day while looking incredibly stupid but apparently it means you get a stronger, brighter, more intense result from the henna. Well I don't care about looking an idiot as you can tell from the first paragraph of this review!

Cleaning the splatters off of my skin was easy a little tissue made wet was all it took.

Like I said this is not quick! The advise is to leave this on for a minimum of an hour but the longer you leave it the better the result. I left mine until half nine that night so it was rather a while. Then came washing it out!

Washing it out took forever! I removed the clingfilm and butterfly clip to reveal a manky green, brown mess which can only be described as looking like my hair was covered in a load of poo! I stuck my head over the bath and started to rinse. The bath filled (plug is rubbish and slow draining! Watch out for a drain unblocker review coming soon!) with an awful green dirty water full of grit from the henna rinsing away. My hair felt like it was full of sand after a day at the beach and after twenty minutes of rinsing I was getting nowhere fast so I decided that my back was killing me and the only way to go was by getting in the bath and having a proper shower. In the end I shampooed my hair three times and then conditioned it before my hair was clean and felt amazing. I got out the shower and wrapped it up in a towel.

After getting out the bath and tiles were in need of a rather thorough clean! There was a green scum all round the bath and the tiles had spatters of the grit. Luckily it was easy to clean off.

I towel dried my hair then brushed it which was easy as my hair felt lovely and soft and better than it usually does. It had that feeling it usually has when it has just been cut, no knots or pulling just in great condition the way you always wish it felt. I blow dried it which is unusual, I like to let it dry naturally as I know full well that heat can be very damaging and unless I am off out somewhere special I have no need to make it look flawless!

The smell of Christmas remained, the colour was not as intense as I would usually choose to go but was better than I had expected from the natural option! A brightish red with no grey! What more could a girl want? I found that unlike with most dyes my scalp had not really changed colour it was a slightly mustard colour in places but you wouldn't notice without looking closely.

The smell slowly faded away and after two weeks was basically gone but the colour lasted rather well. All red colourants fade! It is the worst colour for fading. My colour however was not bad at all. After eight weeks it still didn't look bad if it hadn't been for the roots showing I would not have found it very necessary to colour again so soon, well that isn't all that soon as with chemical colours I used to do it every six to eight weeks and the fading was more noticeable.

I used the second half of the block on Sunday and found that my experience was slightly better with it this time. By using slightly less water than before when mixing it up, I found I made less mess when applying it to my hair. I left it on for a whole twelve hours this time and the result is deeper but it is also due to the fact that it is building up in layers, so the more I use it the more intense the result will be.

Lush do the block in four colours, the original red which I used, caca noir which gives a black result, caca morron which gives a chestnut/mahogany result and caca brun which gives a brown result. Something for everyone really except blondes!

I have always been scared off of henna because you here people saying you can't use it for the reason that after you have done it once you have to let it grow out before you use anything else on your hair. This isn't strictly true it is not advisable to use anything over the top of it straight away and you should leave it for six months. The results you will get over the top will be different and so keep that in mind.

Henna is natural and so I feel happier using it rather than the dyes that I have used in the past and I can tell that my hair has benefited from it rather than been damaged by it and that is why I will be buying it again. I don't intend to go back to what I did to my hair before. From now on I will be treating my hair with a little more respect and hopefully that will show in the shine it has.

Although rinsing it out used so much water as it took so long this is a better option for the environment as you are not polluting the water with a load of chemicals.

Lush do not test their products on animals so you know that no creature has had to suffer so that you can have your hair the colour you want it to be. And to top it all off it is that natural that it only contains six ingredients only one of that six is synthetic! It contains, red henna, cocoa butter, lemon juice, powdered rosemary, clove bud oil and perfume.

I would certainly recommend this to anyone especially those who are looking for extra shine. If you don't want to change your colour then stick to the henna which most closely matched your hair colour and just add depth and shine to your hair.

At only £6.75 for a block which lasted two colouring sessions it is actually cheaper than almost all home chemical colourants and so very good value and my hair is thick and long so someone who has normal thickness hair above their shoulders would get about three uses out of one block, that is £2.25 a time!

Even though this takes so long it is well worth it. The only reason I have given four stars rather than five is the time it takes to rinse out.


*** OVER A YEAR ON***

I still love this product and have used it several times since, I have also tried the brown version which I also loved!

I have figured out that when rinsing it out using conditioner as soon as it is all soaking wet helps get it out more quickly.

Now my hair is quite short, almost a chin length bob and I can easily use a block for three uses but back when my hair was really short, a few months ago I was managing to get four uses!



Lush have stores all around the country and you can buy from their website or locate your local store at www.lush.co.uk

Summary: A great alternative to chemicals!