Botanical flower mandala in brown henna with dangling swirls on the side of a person's body, beside red fabric.

Henna flower mandala on skin

Botanical · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical flower mandala with layered petals, leaves and a spiral centre is drawn in brown henna on skin. Fine outlined linework and hatched detailing fill the petals and leaves, with curled tendrils hanging below the bloom. The design is centred on a warm skin tone, with a red fabric edge at the left of the frame.

Botanical Other Flower Mandala Leaves Swirl Spiral Petal Henna

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have finally got the east tower roof patched enough that Mum's old trunk stays dry, though the swallows have taken the great hall and do not care what I think about it. Mr Oddie from the village came up on Tuesday with the surveyor's men and a sack of lime, and he says the walls will hold another decade if nobody leans on them.

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The strangest thing happened on Thursday. Aunt Parveen arrived unannounced with a paper cone of henna paste and a jar of lemon sugar water, insisting the sun on the south terrace was the only proper light left for work. She spread a clean linen cloth over the rubble of the old well-house and, without a sketch, began to draw a flower. Petals first, each one outlined twice and hatched with fine lines like the ribs of a leaf. Then the leaves, pointed as knives, then a ring of tight scrolls, and at the centre a spiral she tightened until the whole thing seemed to hum.

I asked her why she bothered on a ruin. She tapped the spiral with the cone and said the rain would take the petals first and the centre last, so you draw the centre to remember where you started. Then she showed me how the little curled tendrils hanging from the bloom were meant to be water running off a leaf, or a bell rope, depending on who you asked.

The rain came on Friday and by Saturday the petals had blurred to rust. But the spiral is still there on the cloth, which I have pegged above the kitchen hearth where the smoke can't reach it. Come up at Easter and see it before the swallows decide it would make a good nest. Love, Ruth.