Belated Henna: Egyptian theme
So, back in mid-June, the fantabulous serpentseye traded me a professional massage for a mehndi piece for Cleveland Pride.
She settled on an Egyptian theme piece, extending from shoulder to wrist, and bonus prison-style knuckle "tattoos". Here it is, directly after application. As I said in an earlier post, the blue underlying the henna is watercolor pencil, which I use to sketch out complex designs before applying henna.
In that pic, you can see the sun-bearing scarab beetle, two (rather chubby) cobras wearing Deshrets (the crown of Lower Eygpt), and the Eye of Ra.
On her forearm, she wanted the hieroglyph for "peace" with lotuses, and a cartouche containing the name of Cleopatra.
On her knuckles, I wrote "bombshell", signifying both the name of her burlesque/bellydance troupe, The Rubber City Bombshells, and the fact that she is tres haute.
These next pictures were taken 48 hours after application at Cleveland Pride; it aged/colored up wonderfully.
I was a bit concerned with how this piece would color up as it aged. The henna was an old cone that I hadn't used at a previous henna event and had been re-frozen. That did affect the texture of it considerably, making it much less stringly and much more gloopy. Hence, the chubby-ass cobras; I just didn't have the control with the twice-frozen gloopy henna to do the finer linework. Still, serpentseye was pleased, and that's all that's important!
All these and more can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bec1976/
She settled on an Egyptian theme piece, extending from shoulder to wrist, and bonus prison-style knuckle "tattoos". Here it is, directly after application. As I said in an earlier post, the blue underlying the henna is watercolor pencil, which I use to sketch out complex designs before applying henna.
In that pic, you can see the sun-bearing scarab beetle, two (rather chubby) cobras wearing Deshrets (the crown of Lower Eygpt), and the Eye of Ra.
On her forearm, she wanted the hieroglyph for "peace" with lotuses, and a cartouche containing the name of Cleopatra.
On her knuckles, I wrote "bombshell", signifying both the name of her burlesque/bellydance troupe, The Rubber City Bombshells, and the fact that she is tres haute.
These next pictures were taken 48 hours after application at Cleveland Pride; it aged/colored up wonderfully.
I was a bit concerned with how this piece would color up as it aged. The henna was an old cone that I hadn't used at a previous henna event and had been re-frozen. That did affect the texture of it considerably, making it much less stringly and much more gloopy. Hence, the chubby-ass cobras; I just didn't have the control with the twice-frozen gloopy henna to do the finer linework. Still, serpentseye was pleased, and that's all that's important!
All these and more can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bec1976/