Sutton Coldfield Festival of Arts

• Venue: Marquee 3

Streetly professional artist Bharti Patel will demonstrate her mehndi art during a Festival workshop on The Parade on Saturday July 12, between 12 noon and 12.45pm.

Bharti, who also delivers workshops on silk painting, tie-dye, mod roc art, mask making, glass painting and on the making of wall hangings and mobiles, is keen to show her skills to locals in one of the marquees.
Mehndi (or Henna) is the application of henna as a temporary form of skin decoration, in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Somalia as well as expatriate communities from these areas. It is typically employed for special occasions, particularly weddings.

Henna paste is usually applied to the skin using a plastic cone or a paint brush, but sometimes a small metal-tipped jacquard bottle used for silk painting (a jac bottle) is used. Henna can be bought at a store in plastic or paper cones. The painted area is then wrapped with tissue, plastic, or medical tape to lock in body heat, creating a more intense color on the skin. The wrap is worn overnight and then removed. The final color is reddish brown and can last anywhere from two weeks to several months depending on the quality of the paste.

The patterns of mehndi are typically quite intricate and predominantly applied to brides before wedding ceremonies. However, traditions in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sudan sometimes expect bridegrooms to be painted as well. In Rajasthan (north-west India), where mehndi is a very ancient folkart, the grooms are given designs that are often as elaborate as those for brides. In Kerala (southern India), henna is known as mylanchi and is commonly used by the Mappila (Muslim) community during weddings and festivals.

In Arabic and Persian-speaking countries, such as Morocco, it is done for any special occasion. It is done during the seventh month of pregnancy, after the mother has had the baby, at weddings, engagements, family get-togethers, as well as many other reasons to simply celebrate an event.

Mehndi decorations became fashionable in the West in the late 1990s, where they are sometimes called “henna tattoos”. This term isn’t accurate, because tattoos involve permanent surgical insertion of pigments underneath the skin, as opposed to pigments resting on the surface.