Inn of the Wandering Dragon

I finally had a chance to play with my new henna mix. This mix is 1 part Jamilla and 1 part Rajasthani henna, two different crops from two different regions. I decided to mix them because the raj is supposed to be much more "stringy" than the Jamilla, which allows a person to string long delicate lines without the henna strand breaking. Essentially this opens up other avenues for the art work.

Unfortunately I made this quite a while back and I had to freeze it for later. Freezing the paste is fine, it is very effective for storage without breaking down the stain capabilities. But I do not recall how much sugar and lemon juice I added. As you can see in the picture, I obviously added too much! The paste, once thawed, alternated between pouring out of the cone and clogging. Massaging the cone helped somewhat. But my lines were quite soft and prone to spreading out (my technical term for that is splooging). In addition I had to hold my hand in front of the space heater just to get it dry enough to wrap. And this paste was not stringy at all, the Jamilla seems to have negated that.

When I first scraped off the paste I was in shock, the stain was so pale despite the paste being wrapped and left on over night. The fingers were darker, so I left those alone and reapplied the paste over the rest of the design. This time I only left the paste on for a couple of hours since I was tired and cranky and not in the mood to wrap my hand up again. The stain was still light but over the next few days it darkened beautifully. The design on my fingers was wonderfully dark and almost had a purple hue. The rest of the design was a very attractive red/brown. I did not think to take a picture of course and by now the effect is fading due to frequent hand washing.

But I have used up this batch so now this weekend I will try to make up some more. I shall cut back on the amount of liquid and see if that helps. This time I will write down what I mix for future reference! (although I may need reminding!)