The apparently simple question, "How do you cut the tip off a carrot bag?", has vexed many a henna user over the years. Well, here's the answer - the definitive video guide!

For those of you who like to get straight down to it, to your left you'll find the whole video, in a variety of formats. Just select your preferred player and connection speed, then click Play. Alternatively, you can right click the Download button and select "Save Target As..." (in IE) or "Save Link As..." (in Netscape). This will let you save the high quality file (300k) even if you only have a modem connection. It might take a few minutes though as the file is about 7MB!

For the rest of you, I've broken the video down into short clips, explained what's going on in text, and added the odd diagram to help you along.

Adding the henna

First of all, you need to put some henna into the carrot bag. You can do this either by spooning henna paste in from a container ("Fill your carrot bag" - worth watching just for the neat way Catherine opens out the bag), or by cutting a large hole in the end of a previously filled carrot bag and squeezing the henna out of the old bag and into the new one("Another way to fill your carrot bag"). Think of it as milking a cow.

Cut the tip

Then you need to find a good cutting surface and a sharp blade. A scalpel, single-sided razor blade, or DIY knife will do nicely. Don't try this at home unless you're confident you know what you're doing! The Henna Page is not responsible for any missing digits!

Lay the carrot bag on the cutting surface, making sure the seam is furthest from you. Here comes the clever bit. Take the blade, and cut off the very tip of the carrot bag, at an angle. The diagram below shows exactly what to do, and here is the video clip ("Cut the tip").

Essentially, you're mostly cutting off the seam, while making a tiny hole in the end of the bag at the same time. This means there is no hanging seam end to upset the flow of the henna onto the skin.