A brand spankin new year

I recently returned to the blogger/youtube game after an almost 2 year hiatus. In that time my life has changed loads. I've moved a bunch, lost, gained, struggled, and now I'm planning. No resolutions on my list, but goals and lots of hard work. All my personal stuff I'll leave off, but I certainly have goals for Free Hand Mehndi.

Regroup and refocus. I left Free Hand Mehndi a giant mess with any and everything unfinished. Unprocessed orders/refunds, over 10,000 emails unanswered, and unfinished projects/contracts. I've spent the last few months ironing things out and cleaning up the giant mess I left. My goal is to have everything settled by March 31st. This means I need to hear from you. If you're due a refund from FHM or we have an unsettled contract I need you to contact me by March 1st.

Upgrade! My camera and editing equipment is in dire need of upgrade. I want to bring you clear crisp video and images, and professionally edited content. I'm working on it. For now things might be a bit murky but trust me, I'm working towards better equipment.

More fun stuff. I get a lot of requests for videos, classes, and even meetups. I hope to be able to make it to at least 3 major cities for meetups in 2014. I want to see your beautiful faces and have tons o henna fun.

Online store. A bulk of my mistakes and failures came about through my online store and retail store. I have a lot of cleaning up to do in this area. As soon as I came back to youtube the first question many asked is if the online store was coming back and how soon could they order. At that time I wasn't sure if that was possible and replied that the online store was not coming back.

 I unfortunately lost my domain name due to my expired bank card, but that's easily fixable. Got locked out of my website because I forgot the password (easily recovered). I messed up big time and lost the trust of my long time viewers and customers (one of my biggest regrets), and this is not easily fixable. I appreciate all of the love, forgiveness, and kindness many of you have shown. Simply opening an online store is something I can do tomorrow, but I'd be setting FHM up for failure I'm sure of it. My mission is to make things right, and it takes time to do that. I need to gain back the trust and respect from my long time viewers and give you my best, in 2014 I intend to do just that.

With all of that said, the online store will reopen in 2014 (no date has been decided at this time). Henna is my passion and I intend to make it my business permanently. At one time I had a lot of success in the online henna business and I hope through hard work that I'll have the same and better than I once had. Sadly the retail store will not reopen.

Searching for the perfect henna powder. I'm on a mission to find the perfect henna powder. Something better than my Monsoon? You bet! It may mean I have to travel, and I'm more than ready to do just that. This is a labor of love and I'm super excited about this project.

I hope that 2014 is a great year for you, and that you grow in your craft and creativity. Heres to better days ahead! **Happy New Year**

She brought me a shirt

With henna the possibilities are endless so when a friend brought me a shirt and asked me to create a design, I was excited. Free hand henna designs with inspiration from objects, is one of my favorite ways to do henna. If an object is not available I get inspiration from veins in the hands (sounds crazy, I know). This design was lots of fun, and this shirt was easy to get inspired by.

Can you see what I used from this shirt? What would you have done differently? What do you use for inspiration? Check out my instagram @freehandmehndi for daily inspiration

Random Henna Inspiration at Midnight

I like to call this Mehndi Midnight Madness. Around midnight my mind is flooded with design ideas. Sometimes I sketch the designs out, other times I ignore the design flow and try to sleep, but these days I'm reaching for a henna cone and bringing these ideas to life.

For the last few nights Morocco has been my inspiration. I'm considering a whole month on youtube dedicated to Moroccan inspired henna designs. Last nights midnight madness I had khamsa/hamsa's on the brain, and geometric shapes and patterns. The typical Moroccan Henna outlines just wouldn't do. The outline of the ring and middle finger with no filler was perfect. I couldn't add or remove from this. Now that it's on skin I can sleep.

When that burst of creativity comes at midnight, how do you cope?

Below are pics of my most recent midnight henna madness

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Floral Strip Fun

Floral strips have taken the henna design world by storm. While they've been around forever they've recently become more popular in bridal and special occasion henna. The awesome thing about floral strips is they're super easy to do, even for a beginner, and they look impressive when finished with very little effort.

Floral strips are made up of 3-4 shapes, accents, or motifs that are repeated until the design is complete. Below is a video of my most recent floral strip adventure. As you can see it took almost no time to complete and looks rather full.

Floral strips are fun for just about anywhere, the arm, hand, foot, leg, and even down the middle of the back.

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All images and video copyright Free Hand Mehndi

Another bit of fusion henna fun inspired by the gulf

I love trying to fuse new styles of henna together. In this bit I mixed Bahraini/Gulf florals and accents with Indian mandala pieces. Much of this design was inspired by designs found on Hennaalakhawat's instagram. I love this style and look forward to trying more designs from this region.

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