Which tape henna artists are using to do tape resist in Mauritania has long been a mystery to so many artists who were interested in trying it.
I know I personally have tried *every* medical tape I could get my hands on, and still found it super frustrating and had very little success with doing anything at all like what the Mauritanian master henna artists do.
Well, finally, through the wonders of our super-connected world thanks to the internet, I’ve gotten an answer to the question of what tape is used!!!
I reached out to the leader of theالحنة الموريتانية (Henna Mauritania) facebook group to ask if she might tell me what brand of tape she uses… and she not only happily answered with a very nice note, but she even sent this picture!!!:
It’s Leukoplast brand.
It’s available in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and of course Mauritania, but not readily available in the USA.
The tape pictured here is 18cm x 5m – it can be thought of as a looong sheet of adhesive fabric. Note that the tape is brown (not all Leukoplast tape is, you’ll see), and it has a grid of evenly spaced white dots. The tape is then cut into long, even strips.
I am still trying to find a source for this exact tape. But now at least we know what we’re looking for!
Please contact me if you’ve found a source for this tape, and please share your attempts using this material to do tape resist henna designs with the Henna Gathering group on facebook or with #hennagathering on Instagram.
For Mauritanian design inspiration, check out my ebook, Mauritania, here:
Here are some more examples of Mauritanian designs I’ve done using the “Moroccan” (read: direct application of lines of henna to skin, rather than resist) method: