Ok, it might be a stretch to call getting a henna tattoo at the state fair "self care". :) But it was something I'd always wanted to do and it felt like a bit of an extravagance and a treat. I loved the look so much that I was sad when it started fading, so I decided to re-trace the design.
Henna (had to look this up) is a flowering plant from which a dye can be created. In this case it's prepared as kind of a "mud" that's piped onto your skin just like you would pipe icing details onto a cake.
It takes awhile (maybe 1/2 hour?) to dry. I used my craft heat gun to speed up the process a bit, being way careful not to burn myself. But there was still a lot of waiting around…
After it's totally dry, you just brush of all the crumbles of mud into the garbage can. It will be kind of a light orange, but by the next morning it will have darkened to a nice deep brown. By re-doing it a couple times it lasted for about a month.
Also under the heading of treating yourself…
If you've never had a pedicure, try it! Honestly, I'd always had a bit of an issue being "served" in that way. It just felt too…I don't know…too Dynasty. Remember that show from the 80's with Joan Collins? I always associated pedicures with rich old white women wearing shoulder pads and diamonds being served by women working for less than minimum wage. Kind of a class disparity thing, and if there were sides to take in that drama in my head I wanted to be in solidarity with the workers. Power to the people and all that. But after visiting a professional salon, seeing all the different kinds of women who were the clients and talking with the woman who did my pedicure I felt better. She had gone to school specifically to do this job and she was great at it. Anyway, I'm off to Maui soon and am really thinking it might be time to have another pedicure!
~ k