I spent my Fourth of July splayed out on the floor while a friend and henna artist went about free-handing elaborate designs on my feet and arm. I chattered up at the men, including my husband, who were sitting around my dining room table, playing obscure card games and occasionally leaning over to see what odd magic was being worked down there.

If art is magic, and I think that it is, she was working some serious enchantments. Before she started, she plopped down on the floor next to me and opened up two notebooks full of her designs, flipping pages at top speed. Beautiful stuff flew past, things more intricate than an Islamic tile mosaic. Heady stuff.

Then she said, “What do you want?”

Choose? How do you choose? The best I could come up with was, “I like the ones with the birds in them.”

She opened her kit. There were tubes of henna paste sent to her by her family in India made from dried, ground leaves. The stuff sold in the U.S., she told me, is old, no good. Some artists here even add dangerous chemicals to their dyes that burn the skin. Useful information to have if you’re considering one of those Venice Boardwalk hawkers offering up their version of the ancient art for twenty bucks.

In no time, she’d finished my arm – my entire arm from shoulder to elbow – in an elaborate and gorgeously abstract version of a rising phoenix. She moved down to my feet, filling those in from toe to ankle with swirling floral and paisley patterns. I was entranced and wondering exactly how much it would cost to keep her on permanent payroll.

Once she was done, I was not. It was my first henna, and although I knew about the elaborate traditions of bridal henna, that women once painted were barred from working, I didn’t fully appreciate why. Henna goes on thick. It must dry, be rewetted with lemon juice, dry again. Move and it smears. After a minimum of six hours, you can coat the skin in olive oil and scrape away the raised lines of paste. But no water. No water for a full day to let the dye set and the color develop.

With my feet and arm both beautifully decorated, I was useless. My husband had to grill the steaks. She assembled the salad. I felt terribly guilty, but oh, is it worth it.

The evidence: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahream