Showing off some henna

Hello all,

I'm excited to have a booking this coming weekend at a bridal shower, so partly in honor of that, partly as advertisement of my capabilities for any of the guests who might visit, and partly because I feel like showing off, here are some images from the past couple of months.

When I get bookings, I like to really dress myself up with the henna beforehand – again, partly just in the spirit of things, and partly to show my clients what they can expect to see on their own skin.  There's no better way to explain what henna does than to show it!  So, back in August, I went completely nuts on my palm in preparation for a booking with the Phi Mu sorority on campus.

I apologize for the quality of the photos here, but I hadn't yet rediscovered where my real camera had been hiding for the past year or more.  And when I was a kid, phones weren't even portable, much less capable of taking pictures, so quitcher whining.

For the record, I took my sweet time with this design, finishing the index finger over a couple of hours on a Monday night, and the palm over a couple more hours on a Tuesday evening.  Most of my photos show the henna paste still on the skin; that paste is staining your skin with the natural dye contained in henna leaves.  This is what henna actually looks like after after you've let it sit for several hours to absorb as much as you can, rinsed the paste off, and given the design a day or so to darken.

If you look very closely up near the large leaf shape (at the base of the fingers) you can see some "ghost" images of henna.  I slept with the henna paste on, but didn't do the best job of wrapping and protecting it, so when I closed my hand I got a few mirror-images of lines along the major creases there.

This detail of the index finger shows the mirror images very clearly, from the leaf up onto the middle and ring fingers.  Lesson: wrap your henna to protect it and to protect all the places you don't want it to go.

Over the next few days, I'll give you a forearm design I did for the heck of it at a birthday party – not a booking, just an excuse to give some free work to one of our favorite babysitters – and a pair of hands from the farmer's market a few weeks ago. 

Speaking of the market: Weather, illness, more weather, and a kid's double ear infection have kept me away from the market lately, but I really hope to be able to make it there on the 20th. The season ends for good on the 27th, and then I'll have to rely on bookings or else quietly go stir-crazy until next spring.

Cheers, all!