We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heather Shepherd a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heather, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I lived overseas for 8 years with my family working as a refugee aid worker. Many of my friends were Syrian, Afghan and Iranian and all of them loved henna! I started learning henna so I could help create henna tattoos for my friends and also because I loved the art form and was intrigued by its beauty and multiculturalism! When we moved to the US it was the middle of COVID, I was experiencing severe reverse culture shock and also depression. I turned to henna for comfort to help me cope. During that time my husband started school full time and my kids were very little and not in school so I needed to get a job but daycare was so expensive so I started doing henna on the side and it took off!

My mission in Celebration Henna is to celebrate others and to celebrate the art form itself. Many art forms have the artist creating alone, but henna is a social art form. My canvas is another person and the process of creating a henna tattoo is very relational, talking to my client about what they love and how they express themselves to create a personalized tattoo for them!

Henna is a celebratory art form, many used for weddings and celebratory holidays. I also felt that henna isn’t meant to make its wearer more beautiful, it’s meant to celebrate the wearer and to highlight how special they are. For me that’s really beautiful. I love using henna to celebrate the wearer, be it brides, or henna on scars or even henna crowns for chemotherapy patients!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So I started henna while living overseas and working as a refugee aid worker. My Syrian friends introduced me to henna! The organization I worked with held a few ladies spa days where volunteers came in to pamper refugee ladies. We had barbers, massage therapists, makeup artists and henna artists. At the first event I attended the henna artist was swamped and knew I was artistic and asked me to start learning so I could help at future events. So I started practicing and fell in love. When my family decided to move back to the US I missed my friends abroad very much and started doing henna to remember them and to help me find joy in an art form that I loved!

My business is unique in a few ways. The first is that I only use natural henna. This is very important because there is a lot of ignorance when it comes to henna and many artists use chemically modified henna because it stains the skin faster and is shelf stable. The danger to these hennas is that they can cause severe skin reactions. To avoid this I mix my henna fresh for each client using only safe and natural ingredients and ensure a safe henna experience. The second thing that sets me apart is that I specialize in parties! Most henna artists focus on bridal services but I truly love doing henna parties! Henna is the perfect party entertainment because it is unique and memorable. Henna at a party is both party entertainment AND a party favor that your guests will remember for weeks as they admire their beautiful henna tattoo. I create custom tattoos to meet the theme of the event and make sure to have special extras like cosmetic glitter and Swarovski crystals!

I am most proud of my quality of service. I use only the best ingredients for my henna and am prepared to create truly wonderful experiences at events and parties!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I started my business a bit unconventionally. I am a mom and we were struggling financially when I started my business so I didn’t have ANY capitol. I started for zero and built the business slowly. Anytime I made money I set a portion aside in savings to use to help grow the business and the rest went to pay the bills. This is a hard way to start a business because it is slow. I couldn’t afford to pay for advertising at first and had to create everything myself. But I am glad I did it this way because I have learned so much about building a business and I feel so proud of myself and empowered to see that I could do it!

How did you build your audience on social media?

I started my social media journey completely ignorant. My posts were awful! I started learning by watching other social media accounts and learning from what they did. My biggest learning arena was TikTok. I am still a small account there but I have learned so much about putting yourself out there and just experimenting! I have become so much more comfortable with content creation and have used what I learned in TikTok to grow my following on instagram and Facebook. I’ve also learned it’s very important to find where your ideal client actually is! While I prefer using TikTok I was not getting any clients from that platform. It wasn’t until I started taking Facebook more seriously that I started seeing actually conversion from followers to clients!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.celebrationhenna.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/celebrationhenna
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/celebrationhennaatlanta
• Other: TikTok @celebrationhenna

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me and I have permission to use these images