Mehndi

After working with Darcy’s great mix all weekend, I finally had a pretty decent idea of what a good paste consistency is. I mixed some up last night, adding more and more and more lemon juice (but only a small bit of sugar and honey, and not too many essential oils), stirring the hell out of it with a spoon. I let it sit on top of the fridge loosely covered with saran wrap all of last night and until I got home from work today. I think it thickened up a little as it sat out, so I mixed in another generous splash of lemon juice before loading my cones.

I also had a better idea of what kinds of cones I like after working with Darcy. First of all, I’d been folding the tops over and taping them down, which works horribly. Darcy twists the tops and secures them with little rubber bands.

Funny story — I’d been saving like five little baggies of those tiny, multicolored orthodontic rubber bands since I was an awkward teen with braces, with the idea that someday they would be useful. This summer, I finally tossed them out, thinking that if I hadn’t used them yet, I never would. Stupid me! I totally could have used them to secure the tops of my cones! Oh well — I made do with a spool of hemp I have on hand for macrame.

Even though the Walgreens near work didn’t have mylar gift wrap (like Darcy’s usually does — lucky her ), I still had some cello I bought from Mehandi.com. So this is what I ended up with:

I have three more in the freezer, after seeing how quick the things thawed out at the school fair on Sunday.

Anyway, I clipped a cone for a very, very fine line and went at it. Get this — no clogs, and perfect control! I think the key to nice, smooth lines is being able to drape lines of henna across the skin. This seems to work more or less with any design, from straight lines to circles, as long as you sling it right.

The worst problem I had when I was doing a few of Darcy’s designs on my feet was the fact that I’m not quite flexible enough to get my foot right in front of my nose, where I can see everything well enough to henna accurately. The lighting in my apartment sucks, too, making it even harder. But, I managed to bust out some of the finest designs I’ve done yet! They’re not perfect, obviously, but I’m totally pleased with the paste. Tomorrow I’m going to work on my technique on my hand, which should be easier to reach and see.

I also finally got the right stuff for Maxx’s sealant that I’ve been dying to get straight. Plain old Elmer’s school glue (not the gel glue), mixed equal parts with lemon juice. I added some fine glitter I had lying around, but I don’t think I dumped enough in for it to show. It was thin enough to dab on, getting it nice and covered and moist, but not running — a huge problem I was having with my sealers before. (Another thing I learned from Darcy this weekend: When you seal something with lemon sugar, you don’t glob the stuff on! You gently dab it just enough to moisten the design. You shouldn’t even be able to see wetness on the skin, really.)

I’m going to seal each design at least three times so it’s well protected while I sleep tonight. I want good stains to show off my hard weekend of learning.

I hope this mix does stain well. I also need to figure out an easier way to load my cones. It was really annoying, even though I was trying to do it the "easy" way by loading a ziploc baggie with the henna, clipping the corner off of it, and squirting it in the cones, which I placed in a mug to keep them upright for me. I should find one of those plastic syringes they use for giving medicine to dogs and cats and babies. That would probably work a lot better.

The design on my wrist and finger are kind of awkward, but I love what I came up with for my fingertips.

Unfortunately, it totally smeared and bled overnight (even though I didn’t use saran wrap, and even though I blowdried it before and after sealing it with glue — the price of an over-sugared mix).

Oh, and I had a fun time with the sealer again. I’ve been using Elmer’s gel glue because it’s all I had lying around, and it doesn’t mix very well with water. This time, I added a bit of eucalyptis and geranium oil to make it smell pretty, and it changed the texture of the glue somewhat. It mixed right up with a few drops of water to make a thick but spreadable sealer with a more even consistency than the gel glue with water alone. The eo’s also made it cloudy for some reason, which was weird. But it worked. Too bad my batch of henna didn’t do so well.

I don’t think I ever posted my ankle experiment. I did my ankle in an easy floral design from my old Earth Henna kit, taking an extra effort to use fine, crisp lines.

To ensure that it dried properly, I utilized my handy-dandy blowdrier. I sealed it with watered-down glue, applied with one of those little Crayola paintbrushes from their standard kids’ watercolor sets (I have two, so I had a brush to spare). I then blowdried this, and applied another layer or two of the glue. This seemed to be pretty thoroughly sealed, so I went searching in the sock drawer for something I could claim for overnight henna use. Lo and behold, my boyfriend had some loose, unfortunately-colored socks left over from a horrible job uniform that I could use and ruin with abandon! So I skipped the saran wrap in the hopes of stalling any possible henna bleed and socked myself instead.

This was by far the easiest henna removal yet. All I had to do was scrape at the edges of the glue in the morning, and the entire thing peeled off like a bad price tag, leaving a pretty orange stain behind.

I am so sealing my next design the same way!

In other news, I got my right hand professionally henna’d at the Reno Rib Cookoff by Renu of hennadesigns.com:

That cool neclace I got at the cookoff as well.

She was so fast! She applied with a jaq bottle. I was particularly interested in the way she sealed it. Her mix was lemon juice, sugar, and honey, but she applied it with a little dowel wrapped with cotton at one end. The dowel was probably five or six inches long and maybe a quarter-inch or less in diameter. She would just whip it out of the jar of sealer and roll it over the design. It was quick and painless, and I bet it would work with watered-down glue. The lemon-sugar-honey mix sealed it fabulously, but it was hell to get off. I picked at it and picked at it and it just kept sticking. I rubbed at it with vegetable oil and it just kept sticking. So I gave up and washed it off with water. That hasn’t seemed to affect the stain too much, though.

It’s by far my favorite design that’s currently on my skin. The lines are fine, the geometry is gorgeous, and I just love the cuff style! It peeks out from the longish sleeves I like to wear. The color of her henna is nice, too.

I’m trying to scrub off the coverup henna on my left hand. If it goes away any time soon, I might try to emulate my right hand design on my left hand. Those Moroccan designs — they’re just coolio!

So it didn’t go perfectly, but it went pretty well, in my opinion.

I didn’t get my EOs in the mail, so I added ground cinammon and
allspice to the mix so it would smell good. Nice combo! Completely took
out the "moldy lemonade stand" motif.

Some things I’m gonig to fix my next time around:

• WAY less sugar. I used equal gram weights of sugar and henna
  powder… I’m thinking using half or a third as much sugar as henna
  powder. I don’t know how to describe the results. Whenever I wanted a
  line to end, it wouldn’t, because the end would refuse to leave the
  cone.
• If I add cinnamon and allspice, I need to either get it
  powdered, cook it into a liquid to add, or strain my paste before using
  it. I had a slight clogging problem with those added in.
• Gotta
  remember to wait until it’s dry before putting the lemon juice/sugar
  mix on to set it! I totally smooshed my nice, delicate hand henna with
  the lemony cotton ball.
• I’m totally using an Elmer’s glue mix to
  set it next time, not the lemon juice/sugar with a coating of New Skin.
  That stuff totally stinks. I guess, alternately, I could just apply the
  New Skin outside instead of in the kitchen…
• If I do apply New
  Skin outside instead of in the kitchen, I need to remember to do it
  after the lemony sugar skin dries, too. Or else it ends up running,
  then crystalizing, then being sticky.
• And lastly, maybe I’ll make a smaller batch. I ended up with five cones, lol.

Now, onto the photos! I took these before setting the paste. None of these come directly from a pattern book, btw.

My left foot.

My fun hand henna that I squished with my lemony sugar ball after taking this photo.

A design I tried to do on the outside of my left ankle. It looks narsty
because, well, it’s really, really hard to see the outside of your
ankle. Either that or I haven’t been doing enough yoga. Anyway, yuck.

So tomorrow I get to scrape the paste off, and it should be a nice dark
color by Saturday or Sunday, if I’m lucky, and my tea tree oil did what
it’s supposed to do!

Now, I’m off to wrap these babies and
stick ‘em under a heating pad. In true fog city fashion, my apartment
is freezing. Not good for henna.

This is my new thing:

(image from the Henna Page)

No, not moldy crack. It’s henna! Properly applied, it should look something like this:

(image from the Henna Page)

The first time I did henna on myself, last Christmas, it turned out like this:

The stain was pretty dark, but the lines? Terribly chunky. And I also
didn’t realize that, should one henna one’s fingernails, it doesn’t
fade. Took six months for my nails to finally grow out, and for me to
stop getting horrified looks from people that assumed I’d been horribly
burned in a freak accident.

That was using a kit I bought from the Earth Henna Web site. (This Web site is cool because of their photos of naked henna chicks.) Now, armed with information — and samples! — from The Henna Page, I’m ready to try again.

The keys, apparently, are Mylar (the stuff shiny baloons are made out
of — as well as oven mits, space suits, and those crinkly emergency
blankets) and dextrose. If you roll a Mylar fattie — er, cone — and
fill it with henna, you can razor off the tip of the cone to make as
thick or thin of a line as you need. The dextrose is just corn sugar, a
monosaccharide that makes the henna more pliable and easier to apply.
Plain old table sugar works too, but "dextrose" sounds way more mad
scientist.

I think the first time I saw henna was on my Indian
coworker after she came back from visiting her husband and family. She
was hands-down one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. Even though
the henna on her palms had faded to a burnt orange color by the time
she returned to work, it was still beautiful!

The second time
I saw henna was in Morocco. Morocco, Orlando — as in, the Epcot Center
Morocco, at a little kiosk across from a restaurant that usually had a
guy in a Genie costume from Disney’s Aladdin hanging around. The henna
artist looked terribly bored, probably because she was sick of doing
henna "tatoos" of butterflies and flowers on pre-teen girls’ midrifts.
She did my hand and arm for me, but it didn’t turn out too well,
because I immediately started picking at it, instead of letting it set
for the 4-8 hours it usually needs.

This time around, when I
get my new stuff in the mail, I want to do my feet and legs in nifty,
yoga-inspired patterns. That way I’ll have something to cheer me up
when I go back to doing yoga again, and I’m sitting there trying to get
my index fingers around my big toes and failing miserably.

Ooh, ooh, I know — I’ll do a Japanese theme, and do "ganbare" on my toes. LOL.

Anyway, if you’re a geek like me, you should totally read up on henna at The Henna Page.
It talks about the culture and history behind henna over many cultures,
India and Africa being two big ones. It talks about the chemistry of
henna, and how certain ingredients react with the powder to release its
dye. Naturally, it gives you plenty of step-by-step henna how-tos, and
lots of patterns you can use. And it even has some of that Myth Busters
trial-and-error element, because the author of the page has tested mix
after mix of henna ingredients, disproving the effects of some and
creating whole new recipes using others.

So, that’s my new "thing." I’ll let you know how it turns out!