Weekly Photo Challenge: Hands

The application of henna as a temporary form of skin decoration is popular in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and many Middle Eastern countries, including Oman. In fact, many of my students and colleagues come to class with very elaborate designs on their hands.

One of my colleagues from Pakistan enjoys creating henna tattoos in her free time, so she offered to design something for me. I didn’t want anything too flashy; just something quite simple.  She applies  elaborate designs to her own hands but I insisted on something really basic for my first tattoo.

Actually, applying henna is a fairly straight forward process. All you have to do is use a cone and draw your design. Of course, you need to be able to draw the design without making a mess. After the outline is made then fill in the drawing with the henna. Then, it takes about 30 minutes for the henna to dry.

You should not wash the henna off.  Instead you let it flake off naturally as it dries.  In the evening, after I returned home from work I mixed some sugar and lemon together and put this on my tattoo so that it would darken the color of the henna and help the tattoo  last longer.

This is what my tattoo looked like this morning. It is not that dark so maybe we will add some more henna today to darken it. A henna tattoo is great because it is natural, inexpensive, painless, risk free and doesn’t last forever. This is a good option for people like me who are not sure if they are ready to live with a permanent tattoo.