Re: Henna chemistry (green?!)

Posted by Anon on September 07, 1999 at 13:49:17:

In Reply to: Henna chemistry posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on September 07, 1999 at 02:08:29:

: It also explains why hennaeing over bleached hair makes it a vivid
: green.....it has to do with a blue dye part of the quinone that
: normally doesn't penetrate, but will dive right into very porous
: bleached hair and make it vivid green.

Whoa...neat! I suspect if there were a safe way to make the
blue/green on skin, it would have been found by now.

Which brings up a question. I've been doing side-by-side tests on my
soles, and one of them had some lasting dull green, much like the
paste color upon application (before it turns black). It's orange-red
around the edges and on the skin ridges, so at first I thought I just
hadn't gotten all the paste off the skin (maybe some stuck in the
footprint grooves). But...well, I scrubbed, and it's still vaguely
dull green though it's been at least 2 weeks and most of the rest of
the tests have faded. Anyone ever have this happen?

Details: simple henna-water mixture, put on kinda thick in solid
areas, lemon-sugar on top. I only left it on a few hours, but didn't
really do a thorough scraping afterward, so some henna may have
remained overnight. I did 6 patches (2 each of 3 different henna
samples), and only one, to the side of my arch, had this greenish
effect. I'd been doing various experiments on the same foot the
previous month, but nothing particularly unusual or destructive - not
even the ammonia thing. -Anon

Follow-ups:

• Re: Henna chemistry (green?!) Catherine Cartwright Jones 15:18:17 9/07/99 (1)
  • Re: Henna chemistry (green?!) Anon 17:08:24 9/08/99 (0)