Meet Manii Basran, the West London mehndi artist who took her Starbucks competition win from cup to billboardMehndi is usually seen on hands.A bride’s palms before her wedding. Intricate patterns running down the fingers. Those tiny lines and details that can take hours to create and are often tied to a very special celebration.But West London mehndi artist Manii Basran decided to put that same art somewhere rather unexpected: a Starbucks cup.And somehow, a cup she picked up on a quick walk from her office ended up taking her artwork all the way to billboards across Great Britain.Basran, 36, is a lettings manager and mehndi artist from Ealing. Raised in Southall, she has been creating mehndi for nearly two decades, having grown up around the art at weddings and other South Asian celebrations.So when Starbucks launched its Illustration Club competition in August 2026 and invited people across the UK to turn its familiar cup into a canvas, she saw an opportunity to bring mehndi into a completely different setting.There wasn’t a big plan behind it.Basran simply walked across the road from her office, bought a Starbucks cup and brought it back to work. Then she picked up her mehndi cone and started drawing.
When a Starbucks logo started looking like a mandala
The idea came from the cup itself.The circular Starbucks siren logo reminded Basran of a mandala, a design she regularly creates for brides. Instead of working around the logo, she decided to make it the starting point for her artwork.And she did it freehand.No pencil outline. No detailed sketch prepared beforehand. Just a mehndi cone, a coffee cup and years of practice.The result was an intricate, mandala-inspired design that looked remarkably like the kind of delicate mehndi you’d expect to see on a bride, only this time it was wrapped around a takeaway cup.For Basran, those tiny details aren’t new territory. Nearly 20 years of working with mehndi means she knows how to create patterns almost instinctively, building one line around another until the design comes together.That experience helped her turn what started as a spontaneous idea into the winning entry.
From Southall weddings to a nationwide campaign
Basran’s relationship with mehndi goes back to her childhood in Southall.Growing up in a strong South Asian community, she saw the art as a natural part of weddings and celebrations. Over the years, what she grew up with became something she practised and developed herself.Mehndi has traditionally been closely linked to beauty and celebration in South Asian culture. For brides especially, the application of mehndi is often one of the most anticipated parts of the wedding celebrations.Basran took that familiar visual language and placed it somewhere no one might have expected.Her Starbucks design was eventually selected as the overall winner from hundreds of entries across the UK.The judging panel included British-Nigerian artist and designer Yinka Ilori MBE, who will mentor Basran one-to-one as part of her prize. Ilori praised her use of a traditional technique in a completely unexpected setting.But winning was only the beginning.
Her mehndi design made it to billboards
From September 14 to September 27, Basran’s winning design appeared on outdoor advertising sites across Great Britain as part of Starbucks’ Illustration Club campaign.Nine runners-up also had their work featured in the campaign.For someone used to creating detailed designs for brides, seeing her work displayed on billboards was a very different kind of beauty moment.The art that usually sits on someone’s hands for a wedding celebration was suddenly being seen by people across the country.And there is an even more personal ending to the story.
She’s using the design for her own wedding
Basran is getting married later this month, and she plans to bring the same mandala design into her own wedding celebrations.There’s something rather lovely about that.A design inspired by the bridal mandalas she has created for years first found its way onto a Starbucks cup. That cup helped her win a nationwide competition. The artwork then appeared on billboards across Great Britain.And now, the same design is coming back to where Basran’s mehndi journey has always felt most at home: a wedding.What began as a quick, almost spontaneous drawing has taken a traditional South Asian beauty art form into a very different space.A mehndi cone met a coffee cup. The cup became a canvas. And Basran’s intricate lines ended up reaching far beyond the hands she usually creates them for.
