Designs / Trends & Tips

Mehndi is an excellent way of making yourself catchy and distinguishing in the crowd. Complementing the gorgeous look of it with a classic Indian saree, any lady is definite to look ethereally beautiful. Fortunately, mehndi designs can be flaunted in western attires as well, provided you make the right selection. Presently, much preferred by the westerns who relate this art form to tattoos, they prefer sporting a small patch of design on their palms or around the bare ankles. Small, and less complex ones not only look subtle, but are great at grabbing attention if they are placed at the strategic point.

While Indian mehndi designs are simple to complex, the Arabic ones are even simpler with mostly veins, leaves and flowers drawn in a simple design that extends till the forearms and shanks. Arabic designs are drawn with only outlines and do not involve filling of patterns to keep it simple and classy. They dry easily and take very little time to draw. The African mehndi designs are the most dense ones, but flaunt the same outline style of Arab. Composed of clean geometric shapes like, square, spheres, dots, lines, curves, etc. they are drawn densely and closely, resembling a mesh. The Pakistani ones are the most complex of them all, and are hence, preferred only in weddings and festivals.

You can try any one of these traditional mehndi and jazz it up with acrylic nail tips. You do not need to be the proud owner of beautiful, shaped healthy nails for this. The acrylic nail tips are artificial nail extensions that can be adorned wishfully. You can paint them with desired colors, shape them as you wish and even add an effect to them by embedding object having three dimensional effects. It is best to receive a like service at a nail salon before trying them at home.

Mehndi designs, a very common form of feminine beautification is an art form widely practiced in the east. With an apparent resemblance with the western tattoos, mehndi is now accepted in Europe and America as the art is temporary and fully herbal. Unlike tattoos that get introduced into the epidermis pigments of the skin, henna is made from crushed henna leaves that leave behind orange stains that stay imprinted for sometime. Depending on the cultures, mehndi designs have evolved and altered as it traveled across the distant lands, absorbing wisps of different cultures.

The Indian mehndi what we all know today as an ornamental embellishment of patterns is actually not the true Indian design. Instead, it is the one with a big dot at the center of the palm and back of the hand with the fingertips capped with henna. This is the traditional form of mehndi in India which is entirely different from the dense art of the African designs. The complex patterns sported by the Indian brides are sketched neatly and improvised to match with the grandness of the occasion. On the contrary, the Arabic mehndi designs are far simpler and mostly consist of veins, leaves, floral patterns, etc that extend up to the arms and legs. Read the rest of this entry »