Henna on my Head

My excitement for today comes in the form of acquiring a fantastic Henna artist who is willing to tattoo the Dare to Remember campaign logo on my bald head! Jennifer Arndt, a friend of a friend is quite happy, to my infinite pleasure, to fulfil my request on the day of the shave.

If you aren't familiar with Henna, let me explain the technique. Henna is a flowering plant used to temporarily dye skin (and other things, of course). For skin dyeing, a paste of ground henna (either prepared from a dried powder or from fresh ground leaves) is placed in contact with the skin from a few hours to overnight. Henna stains can last a few days to a month depending on the quality of the paste, individual skin type, and how long the paste is allowed to stay on the skin.

This is an image of Jennifer's work prior to the paste being removed from a client's foot. As you can see, it goes on as a fairly thick, black paste. I hope to leave the tattoo in this stage on my scalp for as long as I can since the Henna skin diagram I found states that facial skin results in the lightest "stain".

Apparently dabbing a sugar/lemon mixture over the dried paste helps to seal in the color by causing the paste to remain on the skin longer. Every little bit will help! Eventually the dark paste will begin to flake off, at which point, I will scrape it off and be left with a light orange stain. Over the following three days, the stain is supposed to darken to a brownish red color. Another technique to keep the stain dark is steaming and warming it - must do that as well.


Jennifer has never tattooed a scalp before so she really has no idea how long the stain will last. I plan to try my darndest to keep the Dare to Remember logo as dark as possible for as long as possible. This is an image of a client's hand once the dark black Henna paste has been removed. Gorgeous right?!

The hands and feet have the thickest skin and so the stains on them last longest and show up darkest. Never-the-less, I will have a Henna tattoo of the cause for which my newly bald head will stand for all to see (if only long enough to take one awesome photo).

This idea came with the acception of a dare I challenged my friend Shannon to. She is getting a real tattoo, so to compliment hers, I decided to temporarily tattoo my baldness. This DARE just keeps getting better and better!