As a henna artist, I love to watch my own stain evolve from its beautiful orange colour to a sumptuous, deep brown. (After that, I want my canvas back!)
Recently, I went to a family wedding, and I – of course – wanted to have a statement design, where the colour was so strikingly dark.
In an older blog post, I gave my five tips to ensure a deep henna stain. Did I follow my own advice? Oh yes! But I also went the extra mile: I didn’t use my hand for day-to-day activities nearly as much as I usually do!
“How do you mean?”, I hear you ask.
Well, let me start from the beginning. I applied my henna last thing at night, when everything else was done for the day. So, on clean skin, with oils and creams removed, I lay the henna paste onto the skin in the shapes I wanted. I really enjoyed setting aside this time to relax and pamper myself!
Once the paste had dried, I applied a sugar and lemon sealant and slept with it on. This eliminated the need to ‘keep it out of water for the next six to eight hours’ – my favourite way to do this is to sleep!
In the morning, the henna was truly stuck to my skin! In its cracks, I could see that the colour had deepened to a burnt sienna colour. In this moment, my heart melted, and I fell in love with my art all over again!
I removed the paste using coconut oil, and applied my henna balm to protect it during the shower. Then, throughout the day, I reapplied the balm every time my hand was to have contact with water. I’d never been so vigilant in my life before; this is how much I really wanted a super-dark stain!
As well as applying the balm when I did have to submerge my skin, I kept my hand out of water as much as possible. This unfortunately wasn’t an excuse for me to avoid doing the dishes! Instead, I simply used rubber gloves.
In all other instances, I used my other hand as much as possible. You can see this effect in the images, where the stain on my fingertips is much lighter than that on the palm side, as I used my fingers more than I did the full palm of my hand.
So, I kept my hand out of water as much as possible, moisturised it regularly and tried to avoid activities where I’d need to use it. But what else? In short, that’s it.
But I was so obsessed with that lovely stain that I even made sandwiches single-handed, held pots and pans with my fingertips, and picked up my toddler mostly with my other arm! I stripped back all these little things that I usually use my hands for, wherever it was possible.
And this was the result! Four days later, my main palm stain was so vibrant!
Brides chasing intense wedding-day henna!
So, brides, you know where I’m going with this. If you’d like a henna stain as deep as mine, you know we’ll be able to deliver it to you. And by using our aftercare, following my advice in my older post, and in this one, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t come out as dark as this!
Get in touch with us and let us know how we can weave a design as strong as your love story into your henna for your big day!
On the other hand, if you've just got some henna but want some aftercare to help you achieve the same result, then just head over to our shop where you can buy our full aftercare kits, for your convenience, or just the exclusive henna balm!
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