Fudging and Oxidation
Alrighty! Now to post the follow-up.
I left the paste on all night and took it off in the morning. Here are the results:
As you can see, my pretty hand design was totally ruined because I didn't wait for it to dry before sealing it, and I fudged the hell out of it! :( My foot looked pretty good though. Interesting thing about henna: Right after you take off the paste, it's bright orange. After you let it oxidize for a day or two, it starts to look like this:
God, I love how my foot turned out. I'm starting to have this trend of messing my hand up, though. I tried going over that big blotchy mess to make it look nicer, but it's just ... awkward. Yuck.
And now you all know what a fabulous color my carpet is, too!
I figured out how to describe the texture of this batch of henna. Slimy. Even after letting my hand dry for four hours, it was still all goopy and stuff. When I go to remove the paste, it isn't a tidy little mess of dried-up henna goobers. It's a coating of slime that's nearly impossible to get off! Definately less sugar in the next batch -- I'm almost positive that's the culprit.
Also, I'm thinking about nixing the saran wrap for when I leave this stuff on overnight. If you don't put plenty of layers of an absobant material over your henna before saran wrapping, you end up with a steamy little sauna and what I'm starting to think of as henna bleed. At least, that's my theory. (Remember, I'm not very good at this yet!) Unless you've sealed the henna really well with watered-down Elmers, or covered it pretty thoroughly with a wickable material, I bet that the sweat and moisture from the saran wrap sauna makes the henna flatten out, just like a bad batch of cookies.
Either that, or I just wasn't being as delicate as I thought I was. It could also be the sliminess of the henna that contributed to that.
Oh well -- it's not going to keep me from doing my ankle tonight! I'm going to seal with that watered-down Elmers I was talking about earlier. The back of the bottle says "doesn't run or drip; dries clear; safe, non-toxic; flexible when dry." A Henna Tribe person mentioned that it makes it nearly indestructable while on, and easy to remove. Just peel up the ends of the glue and peel it off, henna and all! (Though that may not work with the Slime Batch. We'll see. Hopefully it will, however, stop the henna bleed.)