How I first heard about logwood for hair, and my first tries

I first heard about logwood's use as a natural purple hair dye in a Facebook group for henna users called Henna Hair.

Somebody living in a country other than the US described how she used henna and logwood in equal parts by weight, along with distilled water and baking soda using a particular preparation method, to achieve a wine red purple color as an alternative to the typical range of colors achievable with henna, indigo, and cassia mixes. It's a nice way to neutralize the orange tones in henna while adding a fun purple tone, without turning it browner. 

The method involves boiling the logwood (powder or soaked bark chips) in a small amount of distilled water for 5 minutes, then letting it cool for a couple minutes before adding baking soda to turn the dye from orange to purple. (It's a ph-sensitive dye.) She then heats this liquid without boiling for 5 additional minutes. Then, she adds the liquid to her henna powder in a mixing bowl, optionally adds a little indigo to further darken it, stirs it up, and immediately appies to her hair. She covers it and leaves it in for 3-4 hours. 

I decided to try it using an infusion made from bark chips, since they were easier to buy on Etsy at the time. (Now, I use pure logwood powder which is available on Etsy or Amazon. Don't use logwood extract powder but just regular ground logwood. And don't use trap dye, which usually contains toxic petrochemicals.)

This is what I did:

60/40 henna to logwood by weight: 1/3 cup rajasthani henna (3.13% lawsone) and 22g logwood bark made into a tea with baking soda (used that liquid to mix the henna). The amount of baking soda was 1 Tbsp per 100g logwood. Also added a tiny amount of guar gum for thickness. Note that I had a bad first try in which I had added aloe, which totally deactivated the logwood dye. So this is technically my second try. 

The result:
It worked, though I craved a truer purple color that also faded less over time. So I began experimenting with alum, as you'll see in other posts. 

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