TIPS TO MAKE , APPLY MEHNDI & MEHNDI DESIGNS

Tips For Making Henna Paste:

The ingredients and techniques for making Mehndi paste are not much intricate and very simple but care is required in making the right concentration. Follow the steps suggested below and enjoy your days of henna (henna is the another name of Mehndi).

Steps for making good henna paste:

1. Primarily, you must have good henna powder to work with. New henna powder generally appears green, while old henna is much more muted and may appear slightly brown. Get a small amount of henna powder. Avoid black hennas and herbal hennas. Do not use hennas that are intended for hair. You will know good Mehandi powder when you use it. First, it will have a very stringy texture when you mix it, even in plain water. As an earmark try lifting a spoon of paste; it should come off the spoon smoothly and in a thin string, like molasses or honey. Good henna also tends not to stick to the sides of your mixing container. It is viscous and smooth. Good henna will stain your skin a light orange within minutes of application.

Make sure that your henna is filtered well. It should not contain any twigs or fibers, which commonly emerge in grades of henna that are intended for the hair. You can use sifting devices, which can be nylon cloth fixed to a sewing hoop, an industrial-grade sieve, a tea strainer, or a nylon stocking stretched over a mixing bowl. If you choose not to sift your powder before mixing, straining it through a nylon stocking will give you the same effects that sifting would, in addition to removing any lumps you attain in paste.

Ingredients for making henna:

* Lemon Juice - Henna only releases its dye immediately while using citric-based lemon juice.

* Aromatic essential Oil - The most commonly used essential oil in henna art is eucalyptus oil. Often henna companies sell "Mehndi" oils or "nilgiri" oils, which are combinations of various essential oils.

Tips To Apply Mehndi:

It's advisable to use a cone made of rolled plastic, parallel to a cake beautifying tube, with a tiny hole at the end. The benefit of such an application device is that you can attain amazingly fine lines, and getting used to a cone is much easier than using Jacquard-brand bottles, which may tire your hands. Generally, one cone can be used to decorate up to ten less-elaborately designed hands; for very detailed work a cone will cover two hands.

Mehndi also comes ready-made in tubes; these containers provide an easy technique of Mehndi application, but often henna in these forms will lack a smooth consistency, and most professional artists avoid ready-made pastes because it is impossible to differentiate components added in the paste.

Procedures to make a mehndi cone:

To make the plastic cone, I cut a rectangle and rigid plastic paper. Roll the cone by recognizing the tip region with a position just about one inch from the long end of the four-sided figure. Roll this into a cone and adjust the width of the tip. The entire procedure takes practice, and hence don't give up. Following this, take a piece of glue tape and, placing it at the tip of the cone, fix the tape downwards of the cone. Now, pack the paste mehndi cone. Take a spatula and pick up a mehndi to drop drop the mehndi paste into the cone. Depending upon the volume of your cone, fill up the cone until it is about half filled. Now close the cone with care and put the adhesive tape on it. Now your mehndi cone is ready for your designs.

MEHNDI DESIGNS: