Summer is upon us and that means more exposed skin!

Summer is also known as “henna season” for most henna artist as this is when most of our business occurs. Parties, weddings, baby showers, festivals, you name it and there’s a reason to get some henna. Because henna is temporary on the skin, it’s fun to get it and watch the progress of your design from paste to stain development to the time that it begins to fade.  Henna is perfect for those who do not want to commit to any “permanent” design or those who like to try out many different designs. 

Have you decided to get henna but you don’t know how to take care of it? Here are a couple of tips to help get the most out of your henna stain:

-Leave your henna paste on for as long as possible, at least 2hrs.

-If your paste begins to crack and flake off, you can mix lemon juice with sugar and spray it onto the design or dab it with a cotton ball. The lemon juice will break down extra cellulose in the henna paste making the dye readily available and the sugar will help keep the paste on the skin. Be advised: sugar can attract insects…

-Once you remove the henna paste, keep the area dry.

-Refrain if possible from scrubbing the area that is stained by the henna. This will keep the henna stain from fading.

-Apply a sealant on the stain during the day; raw cocoa butter, shea butter or olive oil work well for this.

Henna stains can last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. A month or more in some cases. Get the most out of your henna stain so you can continue to show it off this skin season (aka Summer)! 

Have questions about henna or looking to get some henna soon? Contact me through the Bookings & Contact tab.

It’s that time of year again.  We create some kind of resolution or list of goals to conquer for the upcoming year. These can range from health and fitness, financial, spiritual, what have you.  You want to be a different you from the following year and sometimes that can happen. Some people are capable of following through with these resolution/goals and others….fail. Most New Year’s resolutions fail due to 1) unrealistic or vague resolutions 2) the use of fear as motivation for your resolution 3) the lack of mental preparedness to start and continue their resolution.  I myself have decided to set some goals (not resolutions) for 2015 and let me be the 1^st to admit that I am not the best at managing my goals or time so I’ve decided to try something new. I saw a blog post which was referred by Mahin’s Daily Bellydance Quickies (DBQ) email which talked about how to conduct your own annual review. If you have the time to read it, you should. I’ll post the link at the bottom of this blog post. It talks about analyzing your past year: what you did well and what you didn’t do well, and then the lessons learned from the previous year to what you plan to do for the following year and how you plan to set it out. The annual review covers many different aspects (goals, savings, travel, etc) and aims to prevent your goal (or resolution) from becoming another failed resolution.  The concept seems easy enough so I will attempt to give it a try. I’ll take the first seven days out of the New Year to work through this annual review (the blog post author say it can take about a couple of hours to several days to plan out everything) and I’ll work to implement goals I’ve set for myself.

Now what does this all have to do with Razi?

Well Razi wants to do more with her art and her business, which is Bellydance and Henna (and fire—but we’ll get to that later).  If you have been following me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, what have you, you know that recently I’ve been putting in work. I’ve been dancing and doing henna more in town than anywhere else verses when I spent more time traveling and doing and performing at various workshops. I actually reduced the amount of Bellydance workshops I attended in order to save up to go to the Henna Intensive & Retreat in California in 2014. It was my second year going and I Bellydanced and took workshops both years. My art life is a bit of a balancing act between dancing and henna. My biggest concern is to keep my business from accumulating an insane amount of debt; this happens to be one of the goals I hope to accomplish this year—to lessen or erase the debt I’ve collected while running my business. There’s a saying that it takes about 5yrs for your business to be profitable and most businesses will fail within their first two years.  I’ve just cleared my second year as a business owner so I know I have some time to go.  I am fortunate in that this is not my main mode of making ends meet. I currently live off my graduate student stipend so the money I make from my business goes back into the business.  Money management and planning is definitely going to be a big goal for me in 2015. Hopefully it will pay off in the end.

Other goals for 2015 include performing more with fire. I’ve been dancing with fire fans for two years and fire eating for about a year now. I’m happy that I’ll be able to apply some fire techniques at a couple of events in February and March. The March event I’m particularly proud of as I will be teaching a Bellydance workshop and performing at the Henna Chai & Budokon University Retreat in Mayland. This will be my first real workshop teaching experience (more on this later).  Another goal I have is to henna more on people and things.  Recently, I started to design henna’ed candles and have decided to sell my work. I’ll be posing the candles soon onto this website and I also plan to sell them out in town in the Spring.  I also want to Bellydance more in the area and best way to do that is to go to more workshops.  The closest workshop taking place will be on Jan 24^th, Atlanta-based Bellydancer Karma Karmelita will be teaching Turkish Oriental and I hope to perform in the hafla that goes with that workshop. Karma is also my fire eating instructor so I’ll be happy to get a fire lesson with her while she’s here.  There are many things I want to accomplish this year and as this is my FINAL year as a grad student I’ve got to get moving. Here’s hoping that the annual review will help motivate me to stay on track so that I won’t be like the many others failing with their goals.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Annual Review, Mahin’s DBQ, Karma Karmelita or the Henna Chai & Budokon University Retreats check out these links:

http://shes-got-hips.com/learn-to-dance/daily-belly-dance-quickies/

http://chrisguillebeau.com/how-to-conduct-your-own-annual-review/

http://hennachai.com/about-us

http://www.karmakarmelita.com/