Henna/Mendhi

I love playing around with mehndi, its so much fun! Whenever my little cousins come round, they're always at me to put mehndi on their hands! I used to love it too when I was younger and used to beg my mum to make some for us to put on! Not much has changed, except now we buy the mehndi cones instead!!

These cones can be found anywhere! I usually just go to a store that sells Asian clothes, and they have the cones over by the tills! Not all cones are amazing though, I've come across so many cones that were a waste of money! They wouldn't come out well, or if they did the end result (colour) wasn't that nice, etc, etc. I'm actually still looking for the "perfect" cone, but I've found this one that can do the job in the meantime.

Its known as Nadra Black Outliner Cone Mehndi and can be purchased online at:
http://www.chohanfashions.com/nadra-henna-mehndi.html
or even eBay stock them. With these cones you are guaranteed colour and the henna comes out evenly.

My only worry with these cones, is that it smells like paint. The kind of smell that would give you a headache! Its really not a nice smell. I mean mehndi has a very strong distinctive smell, and it masks that scent, so whatever is in it must be strong!

I only just put mehndi on for the purpose of showing you guys so I didn't finish my full hand, but you may if you would like to! Also, since I wouldn't class myself as a professional, its not going to be amazing! But here it is..

With mehndi you want to be able to do the patterns free style... You don't want to try and copy a design or a template, you just need to basically express what you want. I love working with flowers and hearts and attempt regal designs, so I try!

But, I suggest that if you want to start out with mehndi, then definitely use flowers, mangos, speech mark bubbles, striping, whirlpools, etc. Just easy designs that look nice! You can fill up your hand as much as you want or you can just do a thin strip! Just go with it!

So this is the colour the Nadra cone came out with. I didn't even wait for the mehndi to dry, I just washed my hands while it was still wet, since I didn't want to wait around. It already took me 20mins to do the pattern, and I had work to do, so I had to rush! This is quite a strong colour and its still slightly visible 5 days later.

For the best colour, you want to put the mehndi on in the evening then when its quite dry, you want to put a bag around your hand and sleep like that! Then in the morning before taking it off, squeezing lemon juice over the dried mehndi helps, as well as just warming your hand over a fire before washing it off! This also helps it last for longer!

This is one that I did before Xmas, and I left it overnight. I think this was day 5 after washing it off, so you can see the colour is still quite vibrant! I filled my whole hand, both sides for this one, and it took me around an hour to do!

Originally I was just going to do the bottom half, then I got carried away and ended up doing the rest of my hand!

On both sides!!

During the night, most of it came off, so the above pic was when most of it had come off the next morning.

Then when I washed it off, this is what it looked like:

 Well, that's all from me! Send me some pics of your mehndi designs, I'd love to see them, and if you want to see me actually do the first design then the video is down below! Be sure to like the video if you do, and subscribe to my channel for more videos! And leave a comment either on this blog or on the video letting me know what else you want to see!

M xoxo