Experiments

I mentioned in my last post that I'd been doing some henna experiments and I'm going to tell you what they were. 

In my henna art course, I was given a recipe to mix my henna powder with, supposedly to create darker stains. It basically involved boiling up three tea bags in a small amount of water, reducing it down and mixing the henna powder to a paste with that along with a few drops of eucalyptus oil.

This is the boiling process!

Now, all the recipes I'd seen online said that using tea made no difference and that the useful bit was lemon juice as you needed the acidity to release the dye. 

Being the scientifically (ish!) minded person that I am, I thought I would test this mix against the one Henna Caravan use which involves mixing the powder to a paste with lemon juice. 

I set to work!

I'm using here some finely sifted Pakistani henna I got on eBay.

Left is the tea mixture about to be prepared, and on the right is the henna caravan mixture. 

I left the mix for 24 hours in air tight boxes and then (after some learning how to make cones in class) I piped some onto my right hand.

Here is the result:

On the left is the tea mix, and the right is the lemon. I think the results are pretty conclusive that lemon worked better with this stuff, HOWEVER, neither of the stains were very good at all. I don't know it was dodgy henna so I will have to do more experiments but I don't think I'm going to be bothering with the tea mix too much.

I currently have two more experiments underway. In my henna class on Thursday I made up some purely lemon juice and Moroccan henna. It got put into a cone immediately and so left almost no stain when I played with it in class, and a little bit when I played with it the following day. It's now been 5 days and I've got a bit of it on the inside of my wrist to see how well it stains after that long left in the cone. I suspect leaving it in an air tight container would have done better!

My second experiment is using a gel derived from a fruit called Jagua. It's a bluey black gel, difficult to get fine lines with, but it should develop into a very dark black stain without any of the nasty chemicals in so called "black" henna. Just in case anyone is thinking of using "black" henna - please don't! It uses PPD which is only FDA approved for hair, not for skin and prolonged contact like in henna and can cause chemical burns to the skin. NOT WORTH THE RISK!

This is my Jagua. You can also see here the faded experiments of last week! I shall post an update of its progress! It's pretty expensive, but there seems to be a large market for black henna tattoos, so it might be worth a try or two!

Only points so far is that it's taking a horrendously long time to dry!

Other things I did last week was work out a better way of sifting my henna. The usual way involves muslin or cloth, a spoon and a lot of patience! Something like this:

After a little bit of researching, I hatched a plan involving a cup, some screen printing fabric (because that's what I had), a few coins and an elastic band:

Excuse the mucky hands. The way it works is you fill the cup about a third to two thirds full of your henna powder and a few coins and then simply shake it over a bowl! So very quick and not a problem on my wrists like the other way!

This is my beautifully screen sifted Pakistani henna (SS P). You can't see how fine it is, but this is a picture of the coarse left over henna powder

I'm saving it because it can be used on hair and while I don't want to use it, I might Freecycle it when I've got more, or alternatively pipe some thick designs at some point!

Anyway, apart from my henna experiments, I've had a lovely week with the boyfriend including meeting some of his mates in Bouremmouth. I took the opportunity to draw on someone...

Obviously mine was the flowery stuff, not the tattoos!

Anyway. I'm going to go practice some more with henna. Hope you're all well!

Janet

P. S. 

Isn't JT just SO pretty...... o.O

(They are not his glasses, I am very glad of this!)