hennablog

So a few people have asked about henna on eyebrows. I actually rememberd to take photos of the results the last time I did it. :) It took me a few tries to perfect it -- you really need to take care to keep water from lightening it up too much for the best results.

First photo: A few hours after taking the paste off. It's a little orangey. In the shower, I put beeswax lotion (courtesy Darcy) on my brows, because normally, a shower will significantly lighten them.

Second photo: The next morning (over 24 hours later). It's more of a henna red color, and stays this way for a few days. I did the beeswax lotion again this morning to maintain the color.

I used to glob it on and clean it up with a Q-tip. Now I just outline my eyebrows with a cone and then fill it in. I use a heavily molassessed paste, because it stays soft, making it easier to get out of your eyebrow hairs after it's been on there for a few hours.

Oh, and a tip: Don't go to the DMV to get a new liscence photo taken the morning after hennaing your eyebrows! It looks kind of funky to have uber henna hair with these weird orange eyebrows, lol.

Posted by Elaine at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm experimenting with different henna recipes to get a consistently good consistency for doing designs -- not so dry that it immediately cracks, not so sugary that the design flattens out and bleeds like a bad batch of cookies, not so thin that it just dribbles down the skin.

Last night I mixed the following recipe:

• 5 teaspoons powder (scooped and leveled off with a knife)
• 5 teaspoons chai tea, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 1/4 teaspoon essential oils (mostly terping oils, but with some fragrant oils too)
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice

I tried it out immediately after mixing, straining, and coning it and was able to do a beautifully delicate design:

Unfortunately it won't stain because the henna didn't have time to set, thus there was little to no dye release. :) I coned it and left it out overnight, and popped it into the refrigerator this morning before work. I'll test the staining power of it tonight sometime.

For a sealant, I nuked a bit of lemon juice, sugar, and honey in the microwave, stirred it up, and dabbed it on with a paper towel. That stuff did NOT want to come off in the morning! Nor did any of it flake off in the tissue I wrapped it in.

After I get this straight, I'm going to experiment with using molasses instead of honey, making my henna vegan.

Also, I found out that these oversize holographic origami papers from Japantown make awesome cones:

In other news, be on the lookout in the next couple weeks for the launch of my new henna site, HandfulofHenna.com! My ultimate goal is to integrate this blog and gallery into the new site using Moveable Type, adding sections for articles, recipes, designs, and booking information should you need a Bay Area henna artist. ;) I promise to dedicate an entire section to henna hair care with photos and summaries of the experiments I blogged here in the past year or so.

Thanks, and happy hennaing!

Posted by Elaine at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A lot of interesting things have been going on in my blogging absence! Here's an attempt to keep you guys up to speed.

The UK-based henna artist Cat Hinton, who has a background in biology, is running a series of henna experiments that challenge the Western notion that lemon is the ideal liquid for henna mixes. She hypothesizes that lemon juice inhibits enzymes from breaking down plant cell walls. The dye in henna, lawsone, is in a plant cell wall. So, lemon juice might actually inhibit staining, rather than make it darker and better. Her experiments deal with lemon juice vs. papaya and pineapple juice, two fruits that have an abundance of enzymes. The nitty-gritty comes to this: Henna Tribe artists are discovering that mixes with plain water stain way better than lemon mixes.

For those of you who find tap water less than romantic, try substituting plain water for your favorite tea. You may need to add more sugar to your mix, because lemon juice has a certain amount of fructose that makes a lemon mix need less sugar for the right consistency than a water mix -- around a tablespoon or two per 100 grams of henna, as estimated by Henna Lounge artist Darcy Vasudev. And don't forget your terps!

In the world of henna for hair, results are similar. I've pared down my henna for hair recipe to henna mixed with hot chamomile tea. (You can also use hot liquid in your mehndi mixes if you want to use them sooner rather than later.) I also learned that there's no need to shampoo it out. Henna is a natural cleanser and conditioner for hair. Drawing a bath and soaking it out is a wonderfully relaxing experience, and leaves your hair clean and silky-soft. (You may have to scrub your tub with some baking soda to get any residual henna stains out, but don't worry -- it won't permanently stain your tub.) No conditioner is needed, either.

However, if you do want to condition your hair, a few drops of oil (olive, coconut, or a hair oil like Weleda's rosemary hair oil), you just need a drop or two combed through your wet hair. For a deep conditioning treatment, saturate your hair with oil, wrap with a scarf, leave on overnight, and wash out in the morning. (Beware that coconut oil starts to smell sour after 5-10 minutes; if it bothers you, you might want to use a different oil.)

I should be doing more henna as spring and summer come into full-force, so look for more updates soon. Until then, happy hennaing!

Posted by Elaine at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So last night I decided to henna my hair again, because the roots were starting to show. As reported by other henna heads, the second application layers over the red tones and turns out absolutely gorgeous. Not a hint of orange to be seen! It is pretty bright -- almost fire-engine red -- but that will mellow out, and for the next few days, I think it's going to be pretty fun!

Click here for the results of my first henna application, as well as a photo of my natural hair color for comparison's sake.

This is my hair immediately before my second application:

Aaaand here's my hair immedately after washing it out and blowdrying it!

Damn, I love it. And while last time it was orange on washing it out, this time there's hardly any orange to be seen -- just a groovy, groovy red.

The mix this time was slightly different because my yogurt went bad and I was too lazy to get more. I used:

• 100 g henna
  (my hair has gotten longer -- and I was running out of henna in my last batch, which was only 80 g -- and I didn't add any yogurt, which adds volume to the mix, making it so that you can use less henna)
• 2 T lemon juice
  (for highlights and what-have-you)
• About 1.75 c double-strength chamomile
  (I made two cups, but didn't need to use all of it)
• 1 drop lavendar essential oil
  (I used several last time and the strength of the smell almost made me woozy)

I mixed the chamomile in while it was hot, and left the henna out to cool for about an hour and a half, instead of overnight. I still had dye release -- must've been the heat. (Though I hear that henna dyes hair so well that you don't even need to wait for dye release.) I left it on for just shy of four hours and washed it out by combing generous amounts of conditioner through (but no shampoo). Blowdried it, and I'm not going to wash it until tomorrow morning.

I forgot to put veggie/olive oil around my hairline, so I ended up with a little bit of an orange halo, but it was mostly gone by this morning.

And my hair is oh-so-silky once again, which is amazing, because it was pretty darn silky before.

I'll post another photo of the mellowed-out color in around a week and a half, and I'll probably do this experiement one more time to see how three layers of hair henna look as compared to one (or none!).

Posted by Elaine at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 :P), 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.

Posted by Elaine at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I realized that I never posted all of my hair photos. Now that it's nice and mellowed out, in its final color, I think I can! I hear that repeated applications deepen and darken the red color, but if you're a blonde (like me) and you henna with chamomile and a bit of lavendar (like I did) this is what you can expect!

BEFORE

IMMEDIATELY AFTER WASHING OUT

COLOR AFTER A WEEK AND A HALF

I love the final color, and I've been getting a lot of compliments on it! Now, almost a month later, I'm starting to see my roots, so I might reapply in the next week or two. I want to add one to three more photos to this log -- the color a week and a half after the second application, and the third, etc., to see what kind of color buildup I get using this mix.

I guess I should also note -- even though I'm a blonde, reddish hair runs in my family (from my maternal grandma), so I've been told numerous times that red hair really compliments my skin tone. In fact, my closest friends have historically described me as a natural redhead, even though from my photo it's pretty obvious that I'm totally not. :P

I originally didn't notice much of a change in my hair texture, but now that I've been living with it for a month, I can say that it's made my hair thicker. I used to cut down on the conditioner in the shower so it wouldn't weigh my fine hair down, then spritz it with a light leave-in conditioner and a thickening spray. Now all I do is comb through a slightly more generous amount of my "heavy" conditioner and let it air dry! It's never been softer, and I have no issues with it being too fine. I think it's a little less wavy now too, but I bet I could still emphasize the wave with some hairspray and a diffuser if I wanted to glam up.

And the shine? Amazing! I actually have friends asking to touch my hair after seeing the sunshine play through it. As for me, I really have to cut the habit of feeling my hair up throughout the day (it's just so soft! :P) and checking out my reflection in car and shop windows as I pass. Geez, you'd think I'm self-absorbed or something! ("Aren't most bloggers?" Touche, touche.)

In conclusion, this experiment has been a roaring success! I may never want to go blonde again. :)

Posted by Elaine at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow! It turned out pretty good. The skin color is no better/worse than filling in my eyebrows with powdered makeup, and it matches my hair color better than the brown eyeshadow I usually use anyway, even during the orange stage. I can't tell for the life of me if it actually stained the hairs red. We'll just have to see how it matches up with the hair on top of my head after a couple days.

So there you have it! Henna works well on eyebrows, too!

Posted by Elaine at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Elaine at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. -Groucho Marx

Okay, I'm going into very unknown territory here. My eyebrows were so not-red as compared to my newly-henna'd hair that, well, I henna's my eyebrows.

This is with the paste on, obviously.

My logic went something like this:

1. I'm bored.
2. My grandma tatooed her eyebrows... what's so different about using henna on 'em?
3. Facial skin is too thin and oily to stain very well. So, my eyebrow skin shouldn't be orange for too long. I hope.
4. I'm bored.

So I took out my last cone of slimy-ass mehndi henna that I used on my hand the night before. (I had already decided to throw the batch out because, while the staining power was fine, it was a nearly unworkable texture and bled like hell overnight.) I coned in each of my eyebrows and cleaned them up around the edges with Q-tips. Then I put my hair back with a band to keep it from sticking to my eyebrows and took a photo for you all to giggle at. I'm gonna pray for four hours that this wasn't a really, really bad idea, then wash it out and take another picture for y'all.

Wish me luck!

Posted by Elaine at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As cool as my henna highlights were, I decided to go all-out anyway. I wanted to see how the henna conditioned it, and I was feeling the need to be a little extreme (angst from overwork). So, I mixed together my recipe of henna, chamomile, yogurt, and lavendar, slathered it through my hair, wrapped it with saran wrap, and covered all that with a makeshift turban made out of a half-sized sarong I got in Hawaii.

I then laid down on the couch, wrapped a heating pad loosely around it all, and dozed off, because I was operating on three hours of sleep.

My mix was way too watery, though. Despite all my wrapping, when I got up after two hours to use the facilities, it started leaking out from behind my ears. It only sort of got on everything. And good thing I was wearing a black shirt!

Anyway, I averted disaster, slept for two more hours, then got up and rinsed it all out with conditioner -- Herbal Essences Intensive Blends, or whatever is in my shower at the moment. I would highly recommend combing it through real well with a shower comb. I've been using a shower comb for a few years now anyway, but it would've been nearly impossible to get the tangle of henna out and get the conditioner in without one.

I then blowdried it so that any remaining henna wouldn't stain my pillow, and threw on my bright green Happy Day shirt because I found Joan's Henna Tribe comment about reverse oompa loompas really funny. :) So, behold! Elaine with freshly glowing orange henna head!

It stayed that color for about a day. It really is orange -- I've been comparing it to a t-shirt I have that's brown with big orange letters on it. During Day 1, my hair matched the letters. After one wash, though, it's starting to calm down to a more auburn shade. Here's a photo from, let's see, about 20 hours after washing the henna out:

Very, very cool. I'm liking it a lot! It's an even prettier red today, but I'm skipping photos today because I've been working like an ox, and I've got bedhead.

The only thing that bugs me is what an amazingly different shade my eyebrows are. I have a solution to that though, so stay posted!

Posted by Elaine at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, there you have it! This is the best I could do taking a photo of the back of my head with a digital camera at two in the morning. It's all pretty light at this point because it's fresh off my head, with no time to let the color mature. If you can't see a difference (it's pretty subtle), let me expound.

1. The coffee had a browning and slightly darkening effect. It took a lot of the red out of it compared to the other mixes.
2. The yogurt mix had a pretty straightforward color. Not too dark, not too brown, not too red. A little orangey. I have a feeling that this would be about the color of a standard henna and lemon juice mix, or a henna and water mix.
3. The tea tree mix was brownish, too, but unlike the coffee, it maintained more of an auburn hue, not the "mousey" brown color my coworker described the coffee'd segment as.
4. The chamomile is my favorite. It's a dark, vibrant red that has a bit of a golden sheen.

This next photo is a good comparison of the henna color compared to my natural color. I only henna'd the underlayer of my hair (for the sake of this experiment!), but when I was twisting the upper layer out of the way in order to take the photo above, I got some of the henna'd hair in the twist, which made for a great contrast. You can really tell how the henna is an almost transluscent coloring over your natural color.

And here's a pretty cool photo of the overall effect! I forgot that my hair has tons of layers in the back, so my "under" layer isn't really under anything. So I have this feathery flame effect going on.

I think it's pretty cool!

And I'm all prepared to do my whole head tomorrow, using my favorite ingredient: chamomile.

My recipe:

• 80g henna
• 1 cup double-strength chamomile
• a dollop of full-fat yogurt (for texture and consistency)
• a few drops of lavendar essential oil for the smell, to be added immediately before application

I hope I mixed a big enough batch...

Posted by Elaine at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, still no photos, but early reports are in! A coworker was noticeably impressed with the chamomile mix as opposed to the coffee mix. He described the chamomile as "vibrant" and the coffee mix as "mousey and dark." I'm postulating that the chamomile worked great on my hair because it has a naturally golden-reddish sheen to it anyway, so the red in the henna complimented the yellow in the chamomile for a most excellent result.

Someone in the Henna Page forums mentioned that terps like tea tree oil also have a browning effect for her, and from these early results, I'm thinking they have a similar effect on my hair, as the reddest bit is obviously the chamomiled segment. I'm anticipating my final mix to be mostly chamomile with a touch of yogurt for smoothness and some lavendar essential oil for smell.

I'm really glad I did the test. I was going to use indigo and coffee to take the edge off of the orangey-red, but my red didn't turn out orangey at all.

Look out, world! Come Monday, Elaine's gonna be a redhead again!

Posted by Elaine at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, it's too dark out to get any good photos (you can expect those in a day or two), but so far, the color is gorgeous, and there's not much difference between the four. At first I thought that the chamomile side was more auburn, but it might have just been the lighting in the bathroom.

The color looks totally funky with the layers in my hair, too!

And now I smell like a weird, lemony-chocolate cup of coffee. With that, I'm off to some hard-earned Z's. Oyasumi.

Posted by Elaine at 02:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here we go! We'll start with the before pictures.

I divided the underside of my hair and slathered my mixes into each segment. Unfortunately, I'm horrible at dividing my hair into segments, so by the time I got to my fifth mix... I didn't have any hair left!!! The last mix was the plain lemon mix, and I'm assuming that it's going to be similar to the yogurt mix in color, so the yogurt mix will have to be my control.

Anyway, I wrapped each segment in tinfoil and wrapped my head up like so:

And now I'm going to go to work like this. Because I have to work late tonight, and it damn well wasn't going to interfere with my henna experiment!!

Posted by Elaine at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

God, work today is horrible. I hope I get to go home tonight with enough time to henna my hair.

In any case -- I checked up on the green goop this morning, and added the tea tree oil to the mix I was reserving for terps. The lemon mixes and yogurt mix oxidized beautifully. The yogurt mix looks like it has by far the silkiest texture. I couldn't tell how well the chamomile and coffee mixes oxidized. The coffee I brewed was so black that it was pretty dark when I set it out last night, and so even this morning it was a pretty solid color straight through. The chamomile was slightly lighter green in the middle, but it might have just been a trick of the light. There was a little yellowish seepage from the chamomile -- exciting, because that might indicate its power to dye hair yellowish.

Since I couldn't tell how the coffee/tea mixes were doing, I left them all out instead of popping them in the fridge for the 10 hours I'm at work to keep it fresh. I figured it needs all the help it can get.

Hopefully I'll have a fresh report tomorrow of how it worked on my hair... but I totally doubt I'm going to get home before 10 p.m. God. I need to get better at this henna thing so I can market myself and not be chained to a PC for 10+ hours a day.

Posted by Elaine at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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! :)

Posted by Elaine at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm conducting a hair henna experiment.

There are those that say that adding coffee to your hair henna makes it browner; that chamomile makes it more blonde, that yogurt makes it condition more. We'll see.



My control will be plain henna with lemon juice.

My mixes will be:

• Henna and coffee (Sarkisan chocolate macadamia, specifically)
• Henna and chamomile (Stash brand because Whole Foods was out of loose leaf)
• Henna and yogurt (Horizon whole-fat plain)
• Henna, lemon juice, and tea tree oil

The tea and coffee I brewed double strength. Coffee was made in a french press with 4 tablespoons coffe per 8 oz water. Chamomile was 2 bags per 8 oz. Each batch will be made with 1 tablespoon (about 5 grams) of henna.

I'm off to mix it up. Application is scheduled for tomorrow (on five segments of the under-layer of hair on my head). Photos should be ready by the weekend.

To the lab!

Posted by Elaine at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.)

Posted by Elaine at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by Elaine at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes! It came, it came! My henna mail came!

I mixed it up tonight. 20g henna, 3 T lemon juice, 20g table sugar, and about 8 drops tea tree oil. (I only meant to use 6 or 7 drops, but it just dripped so fast...) Mash it all up in a ziploc baggie, put it in the fridge on a paper towel, and hopefully I won't have dye release until tomorrow afternoon. Then I can henna all night long -- yay!

This is perfect. If I did everything right, then the design will be fully oxidized in all its glory just in time for the rib cookoff in Reno.

I hope my essential oils come in the mail tomorrow. They smell nice. If they don't, I'm probably going to add ground clove and allspice to the mix so it doesn't smell like a moldy lemonade stand, lol. Which reminds me -- I need to get manly-smelling essential oils. I only got girly-smelling ones.

Stay tuned for photos. And look out, because after this... I'm planning on doing my hair! (Cue supervillian, end-of-the-world chuckling.)

Posted by Elaine at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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!

Posted by Elaine at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)