Henna

After about a year of procrastination, I finally managed to try out the henna kit Ewan got for me. Part of the problem was that no one seems to want to give an exact recipe, and there’s a lot of winging it involved. That is not one of my strengths, but with a little help from this Mehndi book and a convoluted yet very informative web site, I decided to give it a go. Ewan was my willing (and trusting) guinnea pig for this little experiment, so I let him pick a design. He wanted something Maori-like, but since using moko on a non-Maori is extremely offensive, we went for some kirituhi (non-symbolic “skin art”) on his forearm. I looked through some Maori art books, designed a pattern, came up with a henna recipe of my own and went for it. As you can see, I got a little carried away and improvised a bunch of stuff that wasn’t on the original design. The first picture is what the henna looks like when it’s being applied to the skin. It’s kind of like frosting a cake, with ribbons of henna that sit on top of the skin and stain whatever’s underneath. I used a jacquard bottle with different sized metal tips to squeeze out the henna, but I think it would have been a lot easier on my thumb if I’d added more lemon juice to my henna paste before filling the bottles. Then I sealed his arm using a comercial henna spray, mostly because it came in the kit, it was getting very late, and I was too lazy to make the traditional lemon sugar sealer. We wrapped his arm in toilet paper and celophane for the night, and in the morning he scraped off the paste with the help of a little oil. I read that it’s better not to let the design come in contact with water for a while, so he didn’t wash his arm for the rest of that day. The second picture is what the design looked like after a couple of days. Henna stains deepen over a period of about 12 to 48 hrs after the paste is removed. Don’t ask me why, it seems a bit crazy but that’s definitely what happened with Ewan’s design. His design lasted about a week and a half. All in all, it came out fairly well. The stain was deeper near his wrist because the skin gets thicker there and takes up more color. Next time, I’d definitely wait longer before wrapping and sending him to bed, but… as I said earlier it was getting VERY late. We’ll start earlier next time. I would also try using heat packs on the design once I’ve wrapped it to deepen the stain. We did have the heat turned up in the house, but I don’t think it was quite enough, especially since it’s winter. I’d like to try a traditional Indian pattern on my feet, but I’ll have to wait until summer so that I can enjoy it. Who’s next?