Real Life: Beauty School

It has been forever since I posted last so I thought I would give you all an update. Beauty School is CRAZY! You learn secrets of the trade at a rapid fire pace at the begining and then end up reliving highschool by the end! Well it is almost the end and I am working on a new portfolio since the last one got shut down. Yes. It was shut down...due to a few legal techinicalities. Anyway I have a few things I want to share with you about hair growth and color since my most recent incedent at school involves a pair of shears and another student. Oh and when you go to beauty school you will inevitably get your hair cut and colored by another student because your excited and inexperienced and are in a hurry to change up your style. WARNING: DO NOT LET FELLOW STUDENTS CUT YOUR HAIR (unless its just a trim).
    Recently, we just accepted new students and within the four weeks that they are in the intro class their hair color has gone from BLACK to COPPER in a period of just a few hours...scary (but funny) now on to the nitty gritty, the stuff your dying to know.

How To Make Your Hair Grow Longer

You just got a haircut and the stylist took a little too much length off. Well here's a few things that you can do to help your hair grow. Here is God's honest truth: There is no miracle product that can make your hair grow faster. Also, trimming your split ends will not make your hair grow faster. The reason for this is that your hair is actually dead. The only active part of the hair is the folicle and the hair shaft that pushes the hair out of the skin. Once its out, the hair is no longer "living". With that in mind, here is how hair grows: hair is basically harden Keratin which is basically a protein that your body makes naturally and hardens to form hair strand. Your nails are also made up of Keratin as well. =)

In order for your hair to grow you must have a high intake of protein, vitamins, and minerals. This is what is the basic make up of hair and provides it with nourishment to grow.

Now the average person's hair grows about a half an inch a month. So if you have two inches of your natural growth showing, that means the last time you have colored your hair was roughly 4 months ago. And its probably time for a retouch.

So now you can calculate about how long its going to take to grow back the hair that your stylist chopped off. Another tip is to take a multivitamin, that will also help your nails grow as well.

I hope this sheds a little bit of light and cuts out the bull when it comes to getting your hair to grow faster.

Yours~

Amy

Beauty School Update!

Hi Everyone! So the last 4 weeks have been exhausting but exciting and I have never been so pampered for so long for free! The first week was really interesting. We started out learning about hair and learned how to tease hair and then comb it out (woohoo, not too exciting) and then moved on to rollersets which is basically turning the hair into a large gelly mold and then taking strands of hair and rolling it around a roller or curler as we called them back in the day...and also learned how to do fingerwaves and hair wraps. Then we learned how to do perms and relaxers which I didn't quite grasp the whole retouch process for relaxing but thats okay. The third week we covered nails and waxing which had everyone screaming and cussing. The manicure and pedicures were very relaxing though! For the forth week we learned how to do facials.
  During the in between time I have been getting lost either on the way to class or on the way back from class. I have figured out how to get there and back 3 different ways and all of them take 45 mins in both direction. I have broken plenty of traffic laws as well in order to get there on time and have figured out that the fast lane here is on the farthest right lane on the freeway and the fastest moving lane on the main road is the middle one! People drive like assholes here! They cut each other off and squeeze in between cars so close together it would give my mom a stroke to see! AND the freeway speed limits are all speed traps, like the main freeway that runs east/west here is posted at 55mph with 3 lanes of traffic. So what do we all do? We drive like hell, doing 70mph! But this town is pretty cool, it has a country feel to it will a big city mixed in.
  Not everyone has been friendly in either class or in the city.

The girls in class are pissy and caty and young. The older gals sit back, with the exception of one who is constantly angry about people saying the F word as they are getting their legs waxed. There's a lot of drama that comes a long with beauty school. It gets really old. I just try to get the best scores on my tests and aim high for sales and try to learn as many techniques as I can. The homework is pretty much non-existent and the tests are made for you to pass (unless your high all the time like some people in the class).

  Another thing I have noticed here is that I am like the only Asian here! I have seen one lady pushing a stroller that looked Asian but thats it! Talk about culture shock!  I get along with everyone for the most part so I can deal with it. Besides I'm here to learn, I'm not searching for a new bestie. Speaking of bestie's I really miss mine. I miss being able to just run down the street to her house and have a glass of wine and sit with her on her deck and chit chat. I miss my mom too.

  It's going to snow here soon and then we will be geographically isolated until May. I guess I will need to stock up on movies. Joey is doing well in school, she has adapted to her new school and has made a million friends and is excited for her birthday. She misses her Grandma's and auntie's and uncle.

   So if your looking into going to beauty school be carefull who you consort with and focus on learning and stay out of the drama. Don't worry time will go by fast and you will reach your dreams!
Yours truely ~
Amy

Green with Envy

  What is the smallest item that has ever motivated you or inspired you? For most women we are inspired by purses or shoes or scarves and then we design our outfits around that one piece of inspiration. Could you design an entire outfit around a pair of earrings? What about nail polish or shoe laces?

  Heather is in 8th grade, she wears clothes of all different colors, and wears a collection of bracelets up her arms. One them had sparkly writting, some of them were leather, and all of them were different colors.  The one I chose for my inspiration was a braided black and green one. This was no ordinary green hue, this was a vibrant neon green. An excellent depiction of youth! So I chose three shades of green to create this vibrant shadow. 

I first applied Heather's foundation and primed the eyes. Then I used ELF's black eyeliner along the top of the lid and just below the water line.

After applying black mascara I defined the eyebrows with a black shadow and added a frosty lipstick to finish this look. For complete details please see my website:www.theglamfairy.webs.com/apps/photos/

5 Best Tips for Beauty Sleep

   Sleep is an essential part of our lives. We need it to function at work and school, to have energy and cellular repair, we need it for mood control, and mostly importantly to keep those dark under eye circles away! Here are five great tips to get the perfect beauty rest.

#1 Melatonin by NOW

Melatonin is great for resetting circadian rhythms (sleep patterns).  This is a brand that my husband uses that has the highest absorbtion rate and is also rated as one of the best brands to buy for quality. I did some research at Apple Nutrition here in Madison and this brand is about $19.99 for 80 capsules. They are chewable and also come in time-released caplets but those are a little more pricey. Always ask the attendant for the brands they recommend and what brands they have tried and have had the best experience with. Don't forget to consult your doctor as well if you are pregnant or breastfeeding and don't forget to look for the FDA approved label on all vitamins.

#2 Bath and Body Works Stress Relief Room Spray

This is just one of many stress relief room sprays that Bath and Body Works has. They have a Sleep line that specializes in aeromatherapy. This particular spray has eucalyptus and mint fragrance which is very relaxing. However it can be a little strong for someone who's not exactly a mint-lover so only one spritz is perfectly sufficient for beautysleep.

#3 Unplug At Least One Hour Before Bedtime.

This is really essential for students. I remember staying up really late during my highschool years playing video games and watching The Real World on MTV. Now I spend it watching Netflix and working on my beauty biz. I do try to shut off my electronics by ten o'clock at the latest but I have the luxury of sleeping in.  If you don't have that luxury and you need to be up and Adam by a certain time, then please try this. When we stare at screens for long periods of time, it makes our brains fatigue (literaly) trying to catch up everything we process through out the day. Just think about all of the things we see all day long. That's a lot of visual intake!  So turning off electronics at least an hour before bed gives our brains enough time to process, wind down, and get ready for sleep. Dreams are also associated with the brains way to store memories (some food for thought). lol

#4 Drink A Glass of Water Before Bed

Ideally, you should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day (see my clear skin blog) but just incase you missed a glass, this is a perfect time to get caught up. Drinking a glass of water (or even a few sips) keeps us hydrated through the night and keeps our mouths moist, thus reducing sleep intruptions due to thurst. *Don't drink too much or your sleep will be interupted by a full bladder. Drinking water also keeps headaches away as well.

#5 Read A Book Before Bed

*Yes, they put the series out of order in this pic, this was not my doing*

Reading is a great way to get sleepy! I'm not saying read a boring book before bed. Read something interesting! This is great mental exhaustion for our bodies, a natural way to fall asleep. How many times have you fallen asleep in a waiting room reading a magazine or on an airplane or bus reading a book? Yes, the white noise does also help, which brings me to my last point.  *White noise can be a Godsend for those who struggle to stay asleep during the night. It is especially helpful for children who are restless and don't want to settle down for bed. What can be used for white noise? Put a radio in your child's bedroom, somewhere out of reach if they are little, and turn it to a staticky station with the volume down low enough that they can hear it but not enough to drive you crazy. Let them fuss in there cribs until they pass out.  This will also help you get your beauty sleep.

Our Ideal Perfection

This video is amazing and I wish that someone had created this in the 80's when deathly skinny was "in", when girls would kill to look like Cindy Crawford. Our ideal image of perfection is exactly what we see everyday in tv commercials, magazine ads, billboards, and now on the internet. Our children go to school wearing midrif shirts and shorts that show their innocent little bottoms. They have highlights and lowlights in their hair and cell phones, their eyebrows are threaded to perfection and they are dressed to the nines, all of that just to go to grade school. Kids are hiding behind buildings stealing kisses from their boyfriends and doing things that are way too early for them to even know about let alone understand. And we wonder where they get all of these ideas and pressure from! We don't censor our children from watching R rated movies anymore. We don't explain to them what sex is and what the consequences are for doing it. We don't encourage our children enough to do well in school and focus so that they can have a fullfilling life full of joy (at least the majority of us don't). We have reality shows on tv about teens having babies way before they even considered an adult by law. But where does all of this start? Where did we our children start to fall between the cracks of the society of perfection? We strive to look perfect all the time (at least us women do) and yet our lives get so screwed up sometimes. Why are we so concerned about looking perfect all the time, but not concerned about the perfect life? About perfect happiness? I think we're short changing ourselves by only striving to look perfect but not taking it to the next step by achieving the perfect life. That's not to say that you can't have a baby first and then get married (that's sort of how my life went) but I think we all get the chance to start over with our children, by teaching them morals and better values than what we were taught as children. So when your driving your children to the mall and you see a pretty lady on a billboard along the way, be sure to mention that the lady was once a regular teenager with normal teen ideals, and was photoshopped to look like your idol. Or just have them watch this video.