Back in apt, and henna update

So after it rained in my apartment, Zeb and I went to stay with my parents for a week. Now, I love my parents, but being back home with them made me realize just how much I love having my own space, my own kitchen, my own BED!! On one of the last nights there we had some yummy margaritas and lounged around outside under the almost full moon.

In the next pic you can see how my henna was doing. That was 12 days in and it had faded to a nice mellow orange. It seems like the lighter it got, the quicker it faded because it only lasted about 4 more days after this pic. I washed a ton of dishes after we got back to the apartment and did some good scrubbing and cleaning and it took the henna right off. Barely any was left after that.

But now we are home. The carpet still has to be cleaned so we can't move all of our stuff back into the bedroom yet, but it's still good to be home! I have taken my shop off of vacation mode and am going to be adding some more items soon.

Henna, day one

So here's day one of the henna, well, after it was washed off that is. I mixed it with lemon juice and added some sugar and lavender oil. I let it sit over night and then some, so it was on for just under 12 hours. The pic was taken about 10 hours after I removed the paste. It's a nice dark rust orange/brown color and from what I've read it will darken over the next day. If I see a difference I'll take more pics and post them.
So I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Drawing is definitely not one of my strong points but all of the instructional videos I watched broke the steps down so the designs seemed managable. I think it turned out pretty decent. My leaves are a little wonky and there's other areas I could have done better, but it still makes me smile every time I look at it.
I will mention though that my skin feels a little dry. I'm assuming that it's from the lemon juice that I mixed in with the henna. Not to mention, after it dried a bit I put on a sugar and lemon juice mixture to protect it. But it's not bothersome, just something I thought I would note.
So I think in the next day or so I'll do one on my foot. I really enjoyed the actual process of "drawing" the henna on. It was slow and fluid, rather meditative. I could see myself coming home from a stressfull day, getting out my henna and drawing away. :)

Henna tattoo

So I watched some youtube videos about henna. They were by user Free Hand Mehndi. She has some really great videos where she does designs but she also has some awesome informational videos too that show you all you need to know to do your own henna tattoo. So I got inspired and decided I would try my hand at it, literally. lol. So, as it turns out, she has an Etsy shop, freehandmehndi, where she sells a complete starter kit for only $12. Good deal! So I got the kit, followed all the steps in her videos and now the henna is drying on my hand. I'm going to let it sit overnight and then I'll take it off tomorrow. I'll post an update pic tomorrow so you guys can see how it turned out. :)