A Carrot Bag is a plastic jellybean bag. It's intended to be used to put orange jellybeans in for Easter Baskets.   It has one seam down the diagonal side.  It's 2 mil plastic. It's easy on the hand and reuseable. It's cheap.  It is the best henna tool I've ever used.

It works best with henna paste mixed about the consistency of yoghurt.

All you have to do is put 2 tablespoons of your henna paste into the bag and snip off a teeny-tiny bit off the tip ... just enough to let the air out. Squish the henna down towards the tip and expel the air. Then roll-fold the top of the carrot bag down.  You can firm it up with a twist tie if you like.

Then, try squeezing out a little of the henna.  If you're having to squeeze so hard that the line comes out curly, then snip off a TINY bit more of the tip, and try it again.  Keep snipping ITTY BITTY slivers off the tip  until you have the line you want.  You won't need to squeeze the cone hard with your fingers. The pressure on the cone comes from the palm of your hand.  Your fingers will just guide the cone.  Holding and using the cone is a bit like holding a lab rat and drawing with it's nose.  Hold gently but firmly. 

The drawing motion will come out of the larger muscles in your arm, not your fingers, so you'll be able to draw much faster and with steadier lines than you would with a jacquard bottle.  Your hand won't get tired and crampy as it does with the bottle.

It takes some practice to learn to work with a carrot bag.  Some people like to use it with pastry tips.  You can henna for 10 hours straight for several days in a row without getting hand cramps with these bags!  That is important when you have long summertime henna gigs!  You can also leave the henna paste in the cone stashed in the fridge for a few days, if you miscalculated how much henna you'd need.

With carrot bags, you'll never again have to pick out a clogged tip.  You just pinch the tip to get any stuck bit out.  With carrot bags you'll never again have to clean a tip or bottle.

Carrot bags are available retail from Castle Art and Imports.  Email or call Amy through the website and ask for them.

If you want to try out one or two just to see if you like them, email me, info@mehandi.com  for my address, and send a self addressed stamped envelope to Catherine Cartwright Jones. I'll send you a couple. Free.  It's a pro bono thing.

A wholesale source for carrot bags is Linnea's at 4149 Karg Industrial Parkway,  Kent, Ohio, 44240 ; phone # 330-678-7112.   You'll need to file business papers with them and purchase at least 2000 carrot bags at a time. The stock number for carrot bags is # 28-151, and they come in packs of 200.

This is the sort of result I get using Carrot Bags:

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