Now you must find something, a way to apply your henna. Let me first tell you that there are a few different ways to do this, no one weighs better than another, and you must decide what’s best for you. There are little bottles with tiny little tips on them that are frequently used to apply puffy paint and things of that nature. They are labeled as Jack bottles. Some people use those to apply henna. The bad thing about them is that sometimes you have waste from them because there’s frequently henna that you can’t remove left in the top of the bottle. The good thing is that they’re easy. You take the henna, you pour it in, and you’re done. Another thing used frequently, though not used in this country, are syringes. You take the syringe with the needle part attached then you break the needle in half to remove the sharp. Then you fill it with henna. This works well for applying small, tiny delicate lines. You don’t frequently see this used in the United States but in other countries it’s frequently used a great deal. My favorite method for applying henna is to use a henna cone. This is a cone, it’s small, very pen like and easy to deal with. It’s also flexible, so as I use it I can roll it down and continue to use it until I get every bit of henna out. The tip of it can be made extremely tiny, as fine as a pencil or pen point. I’m going to show you how to make cones because some people have a lot of difficulty with them. Normally the materials you use to make cones are Mylar gift wrap, which is something that is very common you can find at any store, usually in the card section. It’s the same stuff you see used for big Mylar balloons. This is Mylar tissue; it’s slightly thinner than the other type of Mylar but equally usable. Another thing that is used to make cones, and that is also very user friendly, is cellophane. Cellophane is frequently used by florists and it comes a lot of the times in clear rolls. It’s very crispy crunchy, you can cut it into squares the cut the squares into triangles and use that to make your henna cones. One other thing that you can you if you’re in a pinch if you have to are plastic baggies. You take the plastic baggy and cut it so that you just have one square, cut that square in half and roll a cone from that. The bad thing about that is plastic is very thin and very difficult to work with. It feels very soft in your hand. The good thing is that it is readily available to everyone so if you happen to run out of one of these other things you can use that. These are Mylar tissue sheets that have been cut into triangles. Again, this is not an exact science it doesn’t have to be an exact length or dimension. Try to figure out a size that will be easy for you to handle. You don’t want your cones to be so large that they feel unwieldy in your hand nor do you want them to be so tiny that they are unusable. You want to be able to henna more than one person, or put more than one design, per cone. What you’re going to do is take the long edge of your triangle and then roll it. If you find that you are having a difficult time with your Mylar you can lick your finger and then place it there. That tends to develop a certain degree of static clean and help it stick to itself. Once you have it like this you just want to roll. It’s not that difficult and practice makes perfect. If you find that you don’t like the shape of your cone take it apart and start again. Roll roll roll and then stop. You have a cone. Apply tape to this edge to keep it secure and that’s all there is to it. If you think the tip is so tiny that you don’t think henna can get through that’s ok it can be cut just a little bit to let henna through. But there you have it, your applicator.
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