VARIOUS UPDATES (WITH PICTURES!)

Hey, I passed my full body Swedish massage exam! There were 5 other girls taking their exam in the session I took mine and I was the only one who passed it the first time around without having to repeat anything. I was so stressed about failing and all for nothing!

This week is the mid trimester break, which has come at a perfect time because there's some workbooks and study I need to catch up on (plus some of my graphic design work which is falling pretty badly behind lately).

Did I mention already that we had finally received our lash tint and mani/pedi kits? They have some okay stuff in them, but also some rank smelling things. We got Zoya brand polish, base and top coats, which if you know about nail polish, is a pretty good brand and is free from formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin, toluene, camphor and dibutyl phthalate free and also vegan-friendly as most good brands of polish are these days.

The mani/pedi kit came with a few tools like a cuticle pushes, clipper thingies (love my professional terms?), scissors, a bunch of files, a crappy three-way buffer, a pedi paddle plus some extra pads for it, a bottle of red Zoya polish (red because it's apparently the hardest colour to work with), Zoya Anchor basecoat and Amour topcoat, Hawley cuticle conditioner (which smells absolutely vile - like baby sick), Zoya polish remover and these other two receptacles of some of the most disgusting things I've ever smelt; QTICA Q Smart Spa luxury lotion and sugar scrub.

I am pretty sensitive to smells, and this rank artificially fragranced junk makes me feel sick to the stomach. There seemed to be a variety of 'flavours' of the stuff. I got 'lime zest' and some other got things like mango flavour and pink grapefruit flavour. none of them actually smelt like the alleged flavour. They are just sickeningly sweet and gross. I'm planning on buying my own stuff and just hope that I'll be allowed to use it! Surly I'll be able to since this icky stuff gives me an epic headache.

I've attached some pictures of the manicure and pedicure set up at college, and also a picture of the lash and brow tint kit which came with two tints (black [which is not the darkest shade you can get by the way] and natural brown), a bottle of creme developer, stainless steel tweezers, a glass tint bowl and a plastic kidney dish. The brand of the tint is RefectoCil, which after some investigation I have discovered is a fairly decent brand.

Lash and brow tint kit

Terrible picture of the mani/pedi kit

Manicure setup

Pedicure setup

I'm looking around for an online store where I can get the best price for natural supplies as when the supplies in our kits run out, we have to replace them, because we use our own kits in class. When we go to work in the college clinic (18 sessions in total are required as part of the diploma), we also use our own kits there.

Over this week Easter break, I'll be working on my nail fundamentals workbook, my body systems workbook (for massage class) and also studying for my practical and written facials exam. I think the written facials exam is going to be a pretty epic challenge.

Have a happy chocolate weekend!