Customer Reviews

Henna Paintings

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As a professional henna artist with years of experience, purchasing this book was simply nothing more than a mistake. First off, I doubt the ability of the author to have any true experience working with henna as the majority of the photographs in the book do not show actual henna work but temporary body art that is done with body paint and ink brushed onto the skin.

The actual mechanics of henna seem to be unknown to the author which is readily apparent just in their descriptions of how to prepare your own henna paste. The instructions are just simple incorrect and do not even delve into such fundamentals like terpinoil essential oils that are necessary to true bring the deep warm colors that henna is known for. Furthermore she speaks of letting the liquid base of coffee/tea & citrus juice sit over night where this has no bearing on the quality of the henna since you need to add the warm liquid base to the henna powder before allowing it to sit for 24 hours before adding essential oils and then allow the paste to sit at least another 12 hours for the henna to have a proper dye release within its molecules. Letting the liquid base sit for 24 hours do exactly - nothing, for the henna. She even alludes to adding soot to the paste in order to gain darker tones, but then speaks out later against Black Henna stating that it has soot in it! (Which is once again, WRONG. The danger of Black Henna is the inclusion of PPD, a chemical dye that is known to cause permanent scarring and/or severe skin irritation.)

In my opinion, the book is really nothing more than a photo showcase of (bad) body art examples. The few henna examples that are included are not only done badly, but are often misleading in their descriptions of the traditional folk art forms they are supposed to be representing - swirls tribal like patterns being described as Moorish in origin for example, which in truth is a traditional design scheme that is heavily formulaic in its use of geometrical patterning featuring diamonds, triangles and never in my experience celtic like tribal spirals.

Don't waste your cash on this poorly researched and misguiding book. If you are truly interested in learning about henna and want reputable books for your library start by doing your search through great online resources such as [...]. Unfortunately there are very few really good books dealing with one of the world's oldest forms of body art.

i think this book was pretty good! i love mehind and this shows very good pichtures! This book is very very useful for begginer mehind painters! like me! now i can accutally do my hands and my aunts hands.