Pre-Order your Jamila at Henna Muse and get the amazing sale price of $43.00 per kilo or $7.25 per 100 gram box.

I will ship every pre-order the day my Jamila comes in if I have to stay up all night!

[url]http://www.hennamuseshop.com/product.wml/storeid/1100/productid/43914/The-Henna-Muse-Shop/Pre-Order-Jamila-2009-kilo.htm?SessionID=0a00001e07d90603081804dcc3[/url]

I bought my airfare this morning. There's no turning back now!

It sounds like its going to be a pretty low-key deal this year.

Can't wait!

Yeah, I'm going home to visit and work the Black Swamp Arts Festival in Bowling Green Ohio. If you can make it, it's a great time. Good free family fun including crafts and kid friendly live music. There's also 3 stages worth of music all day long and several art shows, a beer garden, and fair food.

Bowling Green is a great place to hang out. If you know Ann Arbor MI, its a lot like that, just a little smaller.

If you can make it stop by and see me! My tent will be in front of the Happy Badger on the North end of Main Street. -no, I was not able, for the 7th running year in MY HOME TOWN, able to get into the juried shows. Why? Because, apparently the blue-haired festival board thinks henna=fake tattoo. They won't even respond to my calls or applications. WON"T EVEN RESPOND! Thank goodness a hip local store like Happy Badger recognizes my value! Rant over- Hope to see ya there!

I finally got my new supplier worked out and I am so glad. Both the product and service are 100% better, and I wasn't even unhappy with the old product.

These photos are taken on day 2 but the color continued to get darker for 4 days after removing the paste! No lie. It's wicked-stringy too. Maybe even more so than that Oh-so famous Moroccan!





Please forgive me for the sock line. It's been COLD!

I can't wait to try this stuff on my palm tonight!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23635695@N05/sets/72157603887380115/

I'm inspired. I'm going to do my palm with my new Raji today.

I've got my line of mica powders up now! Very fun stuff.



I've stopped posting business stuff here so I can use this as more of a personal journal, but I'm really excited about this one.

This is a link to my business blog on the stuff: http://www.bodyartbyjen.com/blogpics/micamehndi.jpg

I have never had such a good time with a workshop! I had limited the class size to 20 people, and it was walk-in-only, no prereg. So when i arrived 1/2 hour before the workshop was meant to start, it was already nearly full! I let 5 extras slide in before I started turning people away. The funny thing about this class was that it was nearly half men!

I did about 1/2 hour of lecture then we started to do some painting. This is where the kids (when I do colleges anyway) start tentatively doodling on paper. Unsatisfied with the first attempts they wrinkly their button noses and come over and ask me for a butt hat. NOT THESE KIDS!!!!!!!!!! I only did about 5 peices for the whole class. They were much more interested in learning to do it themselves. When they called me over it was for advice on a clogged tip or how to get more even lines. When they left most kids were all painted up with their own work or eachother's. They really dug in and got involved in a way that no class I've ever taught before has. It was so much fun!!

To top it all off, since I was 3 hours from home and the workshop didn't wrap up until after 11, the university sprang for my room. It was so much nicer than what I would have bought for myself if they had just given me cash for a room. It was a very nice treat.

here's the class:




and here's some of the henna they did:









In general, a wonderful experience!

Done with Yemeni summer 2007 henna. Much better than recent Yemeni crops. Taken about 4 days after removing paste. My fingers and wrist were a little darker a day or two before.

I go through these spells where I am absolutely obsesses with understanding the chemistry of henna. I have a bunch of questions!

1. Why do water mixes turn brown, but acid mixes don't? I think this is an effect of reduction from lawsone (HNQ) to its hydroquinone counterpart 1,2,4-trihydroxynaphthalene (THN). If your familiar with the diagram of a lawsone molecule, THN looks just like it except the Os sticking of the top and bottom of the second carbon ring each have an H stuck to them. Could it be that HNQ is orange (ok, we know that's true) and that THN is colorless? Acid reduces HNQ temporarily to THN? IF so does it serve any useful function.

2. Where does lawsone connect with keratin. I have a lot of sources that lead me to believe that this happens at the thiol of a cysteine. Cysteine is an amino acid. A thiol is a part of the molecule that has a sulfur and a hydrogen atom, or SH group. I've been told that these groups are non reactive in an acidic environment. Hmmm. It actually appears that rather than non-reactive, they're just slow to react. (Besides, I've got all kinds of papers in front of me talking about michael addition reactions with thiols. Michael addition prefers an acid environment.) It does appear, however that the Ss like to bind to each other. These are S-S (or disulphide) bridges. The trick may be to break these bonds to get more SH groups available to bond to the lawsone. I tried something today. I pre teated a patch of skin with alcohol (my control) another with ammonia, and a 3rd with lemon juice. Then I put henna on over all three patches. We'll see what happens.

3. What's the brown slime on top of your paste when it's released? I think it is strands of HNQ all linked together. They're just too big to penetrate skin, or anything else so they don't dye anything. I wonder if we can do anything to test this? What would break the links? If we knew we could mix some of that stuff with something that would break the links and see if it becomes more useful.

I've got more good ones, but I'm afraid I'm going off the deep end...

IF YOU KNOW A NICE CHEMIST PLEASE HAVE HIM/HER GET IN TOUCH WITH ME. I'M GOING MAD....