Frequently Asked Questions: Recipes

The question I get most often is, "What is your Recipe?" My recipe and ingredients are very basic:

• Henna Powder
• Lemon Juice
• Sugar
• Cajeput

Email me at recipes@everydayhenna.com and receive this recipe and instructions, a thorough explanation of the process for mixing the paste, sifting the henna powder, straining the paste and other recipes using Tea Tree, Ravensara and other essential oils to add fragrance.

What do you think is the perfect henna recipe? I am trying to find out what to do so I can have the perfect henna recipe and paste.

The main thing you will want to do is learn to have fun with your henna and Mehndi.

The one thing you should remember about henna is that she is fickle. All of the information I give you and others give you about Mehndi and henna, and how a particular henna powder acts, is limited in may ways and is not always generalizable. Your own body temperature, location, type of water used, season of the year, your mood, etc., will impact your henna stain at a particular time. While playing with your henna powder and Mehndi, you will learn how to work with a particular powder or powders in ways that coax them to give you the best of what they have. And hopefully, their best will be the results you want. Getting a henna powder to give peak performance will be a combination of what you do to control some variables, and the nature of the henna powder.

In that, I am saying that working with henna is similar to working with clay. You have to know that there are different clays and each has a different nature, and therefore requires something a bit different from you in order to yield its best. It is that marriage of the artist and the clay that determines what is yielded. The commitment of the artist is to learn what the clay needs. Once that is learned and respected, the artist gives the clay exactly that...and then the clay moves in the artists hands. It is the agreement between the artist and the clay.

The same with henna powder. Henna powder will not yield to your recipe or environment. You will learn what a particular henna powder likes or does not like added to it. Whether or not it likes or needs to be wrapped. How? By the stain it yields. That is why fresh henna powder is necessary. If fresh henna powder does not work for you, the issue is not in the powder but in how the powder is being manipulated. That is the hardest lesson for people new to henna, and henna artists who have been around for a very long time, to learn. But once learned, you learn to watch your powder, paste, paste application, paste on the skin, stain... everything... and learn from what you see before you. If you are new to henna and mehndi, that probably makes little sense right now. But if you watch and take note...you will become an expert quickly on how to get your best stains. And that may well defy a lot of conventional wisdom. It doesn't matter. It is how you get your best stains. And that is what you are after.

Is it cheating to use a premix henna paste?

The premixes are in many ways an entirely different product. People using premixes are usually more focused on the design and are usually very much into the addition of color in their designs. The premixes offer some possibilities not available with henna powder. And henna powder offers some possibilities not available with premixes. There are henna artists who regularly mix their own henna paste from henna powder, who also keep some of the "Natural" premix henna pastes on hand. They use it when they get a gig at the last minute and don't have time to mix their own paste. They use it if they run out of their own paste at an affair. They really reach for it and use it when something goes wrong and their own paste is not working. So for some people, the "Natural" premix henna paste is a back-up tool.

Also, for some people, color is important in their body art. The color premix pastes offer these people a safe and temporary way to create body designs. Options are important to have and to offer.

Is it cheating? No! It is a choice and another tool to help you to get the job done.

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