Beautiful henna remembrances for a beautiful day

I was putting lotion on my foot the other night, and my tattoo reminded me of getting henna for my sister's wedding. I love how henna looks. It smells good, and it's so neat to be able to have intricate designs all over yourself and then scrub them away when you want to be bare again. This is the lady who did mine, Kree Arvanitas. She was living in Athens, Greece for much of the last few years, and I caught her on the couple visits she made back to the Pacific Northwest. She's great, and appears to have actually moved back here now, so at some point I may look her up again.

She did these designs on my arms freehand in about an hour.
This was a couple of years ago.

This was done on July 12, 2007, shortly before I traveled to Montana for my sister's wedding. The one on my left foot is what I eventually turned into my tattoo. Decided to skip the toe decor, though. That would've been REALLY painful.

And the hands to go with it. I was very decorative for the occasion! There's a bit of green glitter on the henna as well, so what you're seeing isn't just the weird lighting in my old apartment (yes, it had blue carpet). Both arms and legs together took an hour to do. Kree's amazingly speedy, and does it all without guides of any kind to work from.

I also had some very basic henna done at some hippie festival in Fremont or Ballard or something back before all of these, and I can't remember when it was. Maybe 2006? Anyway, it was my first henna ever, and I loved it to death, so much that I wanted to get it tattooed on me, but then I remembered that tattoos on your hands are generally a fairly major commitment and usually inadvisable.

Very simple, but hey, it was my first time! And it kinda tickled...

Henna lasts a lot longer on the parts of you that have thicker skin, so the bit on the end of my finger became much darker and lasted for quite some time after the rest had faded. You see how it gets lighter up toward my arm? Most henna seems to do that. The small break in the vine part is where a chunk of henna had gotten dislodged before it had time to stain.

The last picture of my hand is what henna looks like after the paste is gone. The previous three were taken when the paste had just been freshly applied. Generally I sleep with socks on my arms in order to keep the henna from falling off everywhere in bed after I've had it done. Works pretty well.

Have any of you ever had henna done? What did you think?