Troubleshooting ‘White Henna’

Everybody wants perfect results with ‘white henna’; here’s how to get them.

image of feet done with becoming moonlight white henna

When doing Becoming Moonlight the first step to troubleshooting ‘white henna’ is to avoid problems in the first place

  • Read all of the ‘white henna’ section on hennapage.com.  
  • Use materials that work well together.  The Becoming Moonlight® group of materials are formulated to work well together.
  • Don’t use materials on a client if you haven’t tried them yourself and found them to be successful.
  •  Do not use talcum powder on Becoming Moonlight paste: it will collapse the mixture. Use only cosmetic glitter or gilding powder (mica) on Becoming Moonlight paste.  

Before you get started:

Clear the area of potential problems: your work area should have:

  • First, avoid curious cats
  • Second, No friendly dogs with wagging tails 
  • Third, stay away from curious children who are apt to grab things
  • Lastly, No enthusiastic people who want to run up and hug you and your client

Clean the skin first:

  • Use soap and water to remove all dirt, sweat, and lotion.
  • Stay away from hairy areas
  • Areas with tight clothing that rubs the skin are not ideal to work on and will most likely mess up you design.
  • Avoid sweaty or oily skin, especially for Temptu

Prepare for potential messes:

  • Have at hand plenty of paper towels and disposible clean up materials.  Body adhesive (white henna)  is so sticky, that if you have to wipe up a spill, you may as well throw the rags in the trash.  You can’t wash this stuff out of cloth. 
  • Work at a sturdy table 
  • Have plenty of 91% isopropyl alcohol to clean up emergency spills

Practice doing this before you book clients

  • The best way to learn to do ‘white henna’ techniques try out things on your own bare skin until you can reliably get the results you want. When testing, it is helpful to shave your skin first. Removing the ‘white henna’ paste may pull out any hair enmeshed in the paste.

Troubleshooting white henna during application:

My brush sticks to the ‘white henna’ when I try to apply the gilding powder and glitter.

  • It’s not dry enough. Wait longer.
  • If your brush has ‘white henna’ paste stuck in the bristles, rinse it in 91% isopropyl alcohol

My ‘white henna’ paste takes forever to dry.

  • Make finer lines than you would with henna
  •  Make Becoming Moonlight paste lines about as thick as a cat’s whisker. Fine lines will dry faster than thick lines. 

The gilding powder won’t brush off the skin.

  • Gilding powder may stick to the skin if the skin has lotion, oil, or perspiration on it. 
  • If you can’t brush away excess mica powder, wait about 20 minutes for your Becoming Moonlight to completely firm up, then rinse it away.

The gilding paste is hard, lumpy, or has chunks and watery spots.  

  • It froze.  The chains of molecules that make up the paste will collapse if the paste freezes: you’ll have runny stuff and rubbery, sticky lumps.
  • Don’t keep your paste in the refrigerator.

Do you want to get rid of the ‘white henna’  pattern fast?

  • If you are tired of your design, rub Becoming Moonlight adhesive off with the sticky side of scotch tape.
  • You can also remove ‘white henna’ paste by scrubbing, or rubbing oil or lotion onto it.
  • You can remove ‘white henna’ with isopropyl alcohol.
  • Temptu can be removed by scrubbing with lotion
removal of becoming moonlight white henna with tape
Removing ‘white henna’ with scotch tape.