For centuries, women have decorated their bodies with everything from charcoal, crushed flower leaves and petals among other things. One of the oldest of the decorations is called Mehndi (I found about 6 or more different spellings) and they love them when painted on the hands, feet, back or any place with a temporary stain.
That paint was made from the vegitation available in a woman's area. Her female family and friends worked toward making her beautiful, one such occasion would be the time of her nuptials. That sort of sounds familiar - we do the same thing for our brides to be where we treat her like royalty. We women who are not getting married should consider doing this about every couple of years over and over again. I want to be pampered and given shiny things and best of all, sample and then select a really terrific cake!!
In the meantime, young ladies these days are doing the same things, but their markings are a lot more permanent. I often wonder what an 85 year old lady looks like with a Harley on her arm and a cane in her hand. . . . .
I did a tattoo blog sometime ago where my objective was to help find items that would be appreciated by the younger people in your life.
For my taste, I would prefer to place these beautiful designs on a nice shirt, a tunic or robe style of garment. These are more to my liking.
Placing some of the wonderful designs here at AnnTheGran on a sleeve or a pant leg may be just what will catch their attention.
I chose this design for several reasons. First of all, it is interesting, it has 4 colors, very few stitches making it quick and easy and I like the cross stitching as something quite unique for a tattoo.
I was thinking of using some voile for this but did not have any on hand, so I decided on mylar. And, I am going to use the colors that might normally be produced from plants, then I will use a color you WON'T find in a tattoo, gold!
Here are my results:
The gold did not show as well as I had hoped. However, the Mylar made up for it by catching the light with every needle opening. That is why I call this a 'Discovery Sew', you are going to discover something. Some people call that a 'sew out' but I don't think that captures the exact activity, you are really discovering the good, the bad and the ugly of what is going to happen with your project.
What are you going to try today?
