The annual henna-and-wine-on-the-dock day!

Once a year, three of my favorite former colleagues join me at my 'camp' for a henna-on-the-dock date, where we ate lunch on the dock, drank some sparkling pink moscato, shmoozed, and painted ourselves with henna. The group consists of the high school art teacher, the current elementary art teacher (my former job) who was the elementary computer teacher when I was still teaching, and the middle school math teacher who used to be a 4th grade teacher.  I previously posted about our henna date in 2013, but we've done it every year!  You can find the 2013 post by CLICKING HERE.

 

The two photos above are the legs of me and the math teacher.  I've told you about her before, and our first experiences with henna, when she was a 4th grade teacher going through chemo for breast cancer.  Over the course of that winter seven years ago, I painted henna on her head on three occasions,  and it was the best therapy imaginable.  You can read more about that by CLICKING HERE. 

Like any group, we grow and change over the years.  The youngest member of the group, the high school art teacher, now has a toddler.  After eating lunch, she painted henna on her ankle, but... after a few smears and her little guy jumping in a muddy puddle, she decided to leave it was safest to leave it as an ankle decoration!  I don't blame her.  But oh, the little guy, with his head of loopy curls, is SO adorable!!  That's her ankle, above.  Below is my leg.  The two different colors are the difference between the parts that are fresh and the parts that have dried.  

The fourth gal chose not to paint henna at all.  She's only been coming to henna-day for two years, and she's a bit conservative in her 'look' but we were glad we had her there with us to eat lunch in the sunshine and schmooze! Thanks for stopping by! 

A delightful and creative day!

The day's fun began with a yummy lunch at the Main Street Ice Cream Parlor, just a short distance from both the school where I used to teach, and our lakeside 'camp'.  I was there with two friends/former colleagues: the wonderful high school art teacher (she's the leg on the left) and  'C' (the leg on the right), former 4th grade teacher and current middle school math teacher who you learned about in our prior adventures with henna, here, and here, and here.  Obviously, I am the leg in the middle on the top photo.

 Once lunch was done, we headed to the lake, where we spent the afternoon on the dock, sitting in the sunshine, sipping wine, painting our feet and legs with henna.  Does it get any better than this? 

Somehow a little henna also landed on my arm.  There has to be a dragonfly somewhere, right? 

And of course I took a few minutes to play around with some of the special settings on my camera. 

 

 

 We will definitely have another henna-by-the-lake session again soon!  Only next time we will use some NEW henna, so that the color will 'take' better. (My leg designs are a faded orange-brown color today, which doesn't show up well at all on my tan leg.  My foot looks a bit better, with the color a bit richer.  We need a new batch of henna!)

Lunch with the ladies

It being school vacation and all, I  got to have a lunch date yesterday with two of my favorite former co-workers.  One is friend C, who, if you are a longtime reader of my blog, will know as the fourth grade teacher down the hall whose head I painted with henna (three times!) while she was going through chemo for breast cancer.  You can read about her our henna adventures here.  She remains healthy and cancer-free, has left the fourth grade behind, and now is in her third year of teaching math and computer skills to crazy middle schoolers.  She still is the driving force behind the wonderful school garden and the school's bottle recycling program.  I miss the long afternoon visits with her when we took breaks from our work to put together puzzles in my art room.

The other co-worker I'll call E, the high school art teacher who I mentored when she was newly hired, and who now is in her 3rd year teaching grader 7-12 art. Since she was hired, she has totally turned around a program that had totally fallen apart.  Check out what she found when she was hired, here and here!  She has made the classroom an inviting environment, created curriculum, gained the respect of the students, exponentially improved the quality of student work being created, and just been all around NICE, even while becoming the new yearbook adviser, supervising the creation of props and painting sets for the school musical production, and teaching everything from crazy 7th graders to digital photography to ceramics to drawing and painting and more.  I don't know anyone who doesn't adore her, and ironically, she and C, whose classroom is around the corner, have become good friends.

The day before our lunch, I had spent the afternoon in my old art room with my replacement (at her request), showing her some tips for making molas, using tooling foil, and doing imitation batik with toothpaste.  While I've never blogged about molas (but I will some time, I promise), if you check my labels to the right you can find my various posts on tooling foil and toothpaste batik by just clicking on the words!

Another artistic endeavor - henna!

On Friday, friend "C" and I had a "play date" with some henna, leftover from last year. I blogged about the henna experience here: http://plbrown.blogspot.com/2010/07/always-bright-side.html and here: http://plbrown.blogspot.com/2011/03/another-doodle.html

The more-than-a-year-old henna didn't "take" too dark. Maybe it is expired?

Another doodle.

After yesterday's Zentangle post, when I said I like to doodle on anything, anywhere, I realized I was remiss in leaving out one of my strangest and most meaningful doodle experiences. I posted the whole story of my henna doodles, including more photos, here: http://plbrown.blogspot.com/2010/07/always-bright-side.html. Since this was posted in July, perhaps some of you never saw the original post. Dear friend "C", I know you read my blog so I hope you don't mind my re-posting these photos despite your current good health and full head of curly hair! We still need to schedule a henna-date to paint our arms and hands!

Always a Bright Side

Some dear friends have recently gone through treatment for breast cancer, so this post is for them in particular, but also in honor of any women who have, or currently are, or will be battling breast cancer. You are a brave bunch of gals! A special thanks to my friend 'C' for letting me use these photos of her. I'll begin by explaining how the piece of art in the photo above, titled "Always a Bright Side" came about.

When my good friend C, the 4th grade teacher down the hall, was diagnosed last school year and was told she would need chemo, she knew she didn't want to wear wigs but was concerned about the naked look of her bald head. But she's got a positive outlook on life, so I joined in to help her 'make lemonade' out a situation that could have been very sour indeed.

Being the doodler I am, I agreed to do a 'henna tattoo' on her scalp when she lost her hair (yes, it is safe). (C, was it your idea or mine? I don't even remember!) Eventually we repeated the process two more times, until her hair began to grow back.

C said she needed eyes in the back of her head, for her rambunctious students, so that's how I began. And then it just grew from there, with no real plan.

Here's how it looked when we were done (after a few hours of crazy doodling and a LOT of laughter):

The second time, we repeated the eyes but then added a tree beginning at the base of her neck, with critters hidden everywhere.

Henna doesn't seem to get very dark on a scalp, so in an attempt to get the henna to 'take' better, we wrapped C's henna-paste covered head in cellophane to keep in heat and moisture as in photo below. (If we weren't already rolling with laughter, this sealed the deal!) Then she pulled a hat over it to keep her head warm. It was wintertime, after all.

And above is is the foot of C's teenage daughter. Cute, huh?

The third time, we went with an underwater theme. (Look to the upper center of the back of her head to find the eyes, this time two kissing fishies. )

The kids at school treated her head like a game of "I Spy" or "Where's Waldo", looking for critters and doo-dads. C said she never felt bald when the henna was on her head. And each time we repeated the process, we laughed for hours.

I had a grand time digitally altering the photos of C's henna-ed head. Then, for the framed artwork shown at the beginning of this post, I did a 'toothpaste batik' on some pink fabric that I then adhered to a mat. I think the title, "Always a Bright Side" is pretty explanatory. By the way, by the end of school, C's hair was growing like weeds. But we still have henna left over. Maybe we should doodle on our legs while sitting on the dock?

These photos below show a close up of the 'batik' fabric and an altered image that I did not use in the final product. IYou'll find instructions for toothpaste batik in an older post here: http://plbrown.blogspot.com/search/label/batik.