7B-2 The Great British Henna Post

The Great British Henna Post:

#Howtomaketonsofhennapastewithonly15dollars

By: Julia Weinberg and Lucy Collins

Hi!! Welcome to our blog post. In this post, we will explain the ins and outs of our Maker Faire project. For the Black Pine Circle Maker Faire, we decided to draw designs on peoples' skin (and leather and wood) with henna.

We were inspired to do henna for the Maker Faire because at Julia's bat mitzvah, she had professional people doing henna. Lucy liked the idea of henna at the bat mitzvah, and had some done on her hand.

We felt that people who didn't do henna as a living (which is most people), would want to do it, but they would need an accessible

We were going to buy pre-made henna paste, but because this was a MAKER Faire, we thought-- "Oh! Why don't we mix our OWN henna!!" In the rest of the post, we will explain how we mixed our henna, came up with our own designs, drew with our own henna, the designs on people, wood, and leather, and just all around how we perfected the art of henna (as well as two middle school students could!!)

This is a picture of some of the henna we did.
The paste had not dried yet, so the person who's
hand this was, didn't take the wet paste off.

Let's just start with a brief history of henna...

Henna is an art that is over 5000 years old.

What does henna do/what can you do with henna?

There are lots of different things that you can do with henna. Some people put henna in their hair, in order to dye it brown. Some people, like we did, use it to die their skin in whatever pattern they want.

Where does henna come from?

Henna powder comes from a plant that is called the henna plant. Henna powder is crushed-up dried leaves of the henna plant.

Why does henna dye your skin?

Henna dyes your skin because there is a molecule called lawsone in henna. When you put henna on your skin, the henna molecules (lawsone) penetrate the columns of your skin cell, and then you have a henna design on your skin.

How do you make our "Lucy & Julia Henna Paste?"

Henna paste is made by drying the leaves of the henna plant, and then crushing them to make a powder. This powder is called henna powder (As explained before...) You can make the perfect paste by combining a half cup of henna powder, 5 teaspoons of sugar, a half cup of lemon juice, 4 tablespoons of any essential oil (we used tea tree oil), and lots and lots of love and creativity!! We got our henna powder from Amazon (we could not obtain a henna plant due to it only being available other continents...)

We made our first batch of henna paste using the recipe on Henna Caravan. We found that this henna paste was way too watery and runny. This was a big problem because when we would draw on someone with this paste, it would all run together(destroying the design.) So we decided that we could just add more of the henna powder or sugar, to make it stiffer. This worked!

We had issues with how to fill our bottles with the henna paste... 

For some reason, after we mixed our henna paste in a jar, we couldn't get it into the little bottles that we were using to do the designs with. We got the idea that we could put the paste into a funnel, and poke it with a pencil, into the henna bottle. This actually worked!

Designs!!

We created our own book for the designs that we had done. This included some that we had drawn on paper, but also some of the pictures of the henna that we had practiced of other people.🌺🌸🌹🦋 This was helpful to have at the Maker Faire because when people wanted a certain design, they could point to one of the pictures in the book, and say, "I want this one, but without the finger designs, please."

Lucy (left) and Julia (right) practicing henna on wood.

What did we learn?

We learned that henna is like a baking recipe: you generally follow the instructions, but if something doesn't look right, add what you think it needs. We also learned how to make henna really easily and cheaply.

 If we had had more time...

 If we had had more time, we would have practiced our designs more, because though we had made the henna paste, the designs we did looked a bit lop-sided and funky.😉😀

If you do this, you should:

If you do this, you should know that different people like to do henna with different consistencies, so it helps to make a more liquid-y paste, because it is easier to add more henna powder. This project is and easy and cheap way to be creative!! A "must do DIY"