Henna and Spice Made My Morning Nice
It all started when I tried to dye my hair with henna this weekend. Since I had to sit tight with a goopy, stinky mess on my head for two whole hours, I figured I might as well do something fun with the goopy, stinky leftover henna.
I wanted to try and create fanciful shapes inspired by the beautiful henna drawings that adorn the hands and feet of North African women on special occasions. I wondered if the dark green mixture would dry off and could be scraped off the watercolour paper I wanted to use, and if it would leave any kind of interesting stain like it does on skin (and hair). The short answer to my query was no, it doesn't. But it does dry to a lovely earthy texture that looks great over a tea-stain wash, and highlighted with colourful spices mixed with a few drops of water (my 7-year old and I used turmeric for yellow and paprika for red - cinnamon and ginger smell great but don't work so well). Ah, kitchen sink art... what better way to waste a whole morning while waiting for your hair to turn a neon-bright orange?
5 comments:
What a lot of fun. It will be interesting to see how the colors change on the paper over time.
This looks like fun. Art and hair styling go together...who knew?
So far, the colours on the paper haven't changed a bit, but the colour on my hair sure did. I'm going from an orange peel orange to a fairly attractive auburny red. I'll give it another week and see what happens. With my hair that is. For the artwork, I'm going to try all the spices and other herbs I got from the corner Indian grocery store. I'll let you know if I come up with anything interesting. After all , this is how artists used to create their pigments.
Oh, this is all so lovely!Neda showed me the way to get here!I'm from Portugal!!Hi!!!
Hey, Belinha! Thanks! you made my morning! This is what it's all about - we're creating this community ourselves and it's so energizing and so lovely! Me so happy!
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