What motivates people to have henna body painting is varied. While treating Chara Schreyer to a birthday dinner in a nice restaurant, the trio surprised her by lifting their shirts in unison. MacTavish had "Birthday" applied to hers. Schreyer's little sister, Natalie, had the word "Happy" painted in henna on her stomach. "It's a nice way to do something funky that has no permanence."īrown University sophomore Justine Schreyer, who is from Tiburon, was prompted, after two hours of coaxing, by her mother's friend, Heather MacTavish, to get a henna tattoo to celebrate her mother's 50th birthday. "I'm waiting for him, and wanted to do something different, and I can't shop for clothes right now," says Franklin. But on a recent visit to Allah's Sacred Earth, not a bride is to be found, and people are having diverse parts of their bodies painted.įor instance, Pam Franklin, 30, of Berkeley, who is eight months pregnant, had a Victorian ivy design applied around her left ankle. Mehndi traditionally is used on brides who have their hands and feet decorated for the wedding. Costs range from $20 for a hand to $100 for the entire back. What remains is a rich, burnt orange stain that lasts from one to four weeks, depending on a person's chemistry and how often he or she washes the area. This dark green paste takes about five hours to dry before it flakes off the skin. They mix up a paste of green powder from the henna bush and oil, then squeeze it from cones similar to those used to decorate cakes. "People come from different parts of Northern California and hunt this shop down," says Rene Randle, 19, a University of California at Berkeley sophomore, as she leaves Allah's Sacred Earth, which specializes in mehndi, an ancient, painstaking Indian method of body painting in which henna is used to dye the skin.Īt the Berkeley shop, 25 mehndi artists work freehand as they interpret filigree designs clients have selected from patterns in stacks of binders.
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