My wife has been dyeing her hair with Henna for years and I have been doing the mixing and application for her. There is no reason you can't do it yourself.. There are several distinct color-grades as well as quality grades. If you are worried about it being "orange" go with a dark red or even a touch of Mahogany. Remember, you can always do it again to deepen the color (henna is not harsh on your hair). But there really is no easy going back. It does " fade", but it does NOT wear out and you can not just go to a salon and dye over it with commercial dye (not without some risk) . While we started with "light Mountain Henna" We are now hooked on using the higher "Body Art Quality" Henna

This is a great source. www.mehandi.com/shop/hairhenna.html

My wife's original hair color is sandy-blonde (not a light blonde) and we use Punjabi Prime .

Here is a picture of her locks
images.tribe.net/tribe/upl...2f74eb5225

The key to getting good rich color (as we have found it ) it heat and time. After applying (it helps to have a friend do it so you get the mud worked in evenly) put a plastic bag on your head and the put a heating pad (on low) on top of your noggin and then wrap your head in a towel turban. Turn on a good DVD and watch it. For my wife's hair, we leave it on up to 2 hours.

There is a lot of discussion of how to do this yourself on the Makeup and Hair for Dancers tribe: dancemakeup.tribe.net

I recently did mine for the first time and it was relatively easy. I bought my henna from HennaForHair.com.

Thank you so much for these tips!