Saturday 14 July 2012

New Shellac Colours Nov 2012

So excited today, found out the new shellac colours for November 2012. I will have lots of happy clients at the Ezina Sanctuary in Witney, absolutely love the midnight blue! Hopefully they will be in the UK for Christmas!

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Making sure you are getting Shellac and not another brand!!

To all Shellac customers - make sure you are getting www.cnd.comShellac and not another brand!

I felt I had to write this as I have now had two of my clients come to me saying they got Shellac done elsewhere but on receiving the treatment said the bottles were not Shellac even though they were advertising the service Shellac.

I will tell you about my most recent experience in my salon www.ezina.co.uk  One of my ladies who comes to me regularly for a shellac pedicure every 4-6 weeks visited me a couple of weeks ago, she ony has a pedicure as she is in the medical industry and sadly is not allowed to wear Shellac on her fingers. (I have done it on her on one occasion when she was going on holiday). So she does know all about Shellac and gets on very well with it.

Anyway the other weekend a friend of hers said her sister was practising with Shellac and would she be a model to practise on, my client said no problem she was having some time off so it would be fine to have it on her fingers. This took place on the Saturday, anyway along my client went and as this other person went through the process my client realised this was not Shellac being used, her nails were buffed to take off the shine, the UV lamp was on continuously, the colour didnt even represent any CND Shellac colour!! She didnt want to say anything, after all it was for free so she just went along with it and left it at that.

My client was then coming to me on the following Wednesday (4 days later) for her Shellac pedicure. Anyway we got chatting and she was telling me about how she was lead to believe it was Shellac treatment she was getting but realised by the look of the lamp and bottles that it wasnt but had gone along with it anyway as she felt too awkward to say anything. She showed me her fingers and she asked me if i could remove it as every finger had chipped and one had come off completely removing some of her nail plate with it and causing peeling on the nail plate. I gladly said I would remove it after her pedicure.

I finished her pedicure and consequently wrapped her nails in magis wraps and acetone (dsolve) to remove the unknown brand of Shellac copy. Well all I can say is one hour later, after having wrapped her fingers 5 times in foil and acetone I revealed her very dry, dehydrated, peeling nails. I smothered them in solar oil and cuticle eraser and gave her some CND hand cream. I said to her if she didnt know me and if she hadnt had first hand experience of the REAL shellac, how would she rate it. She said if she had only had the other treatment, (the not real thing) she would have never had it again and wouldnt have recommended it to anyone.

So here is my advice:

to all customers out there when having a shellac manicure, check all the bottles are branded "CND Shellac", secondly make sure the lamp is CND, the curing of the shellac under the lamp is very important and will determine how long it lasts, and thirdly check the salon or beauty therapist has a shellac certificate (see photo). Beauty salons/therapists are selling Shellac as a concept using other products and not as a BRAND.

People think they are getting Shellac but they are in fact NOT, they are getting a cheaper brand and then experiencing problems such as peeling and chipping giving Shellac a bad name and putting people off having it done again. To all of those who have experienced this, go to a certified salon, http://www.cnd.com/find-salon go on to the CND website, they list these and try it again, I can promise you, you will not be disappointed.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Minx - fashion at your fingertips/toes

Loving funky jubilee/olympic designs by minx, have had loads of requests for these, they are amazing. Polished toes are now a thing of the past. I offer minx at my home salon based in Witney. Click on website for more details www.ezina.co.uk

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Eve Taylor Skincare Range

I am in love with Eve Taylor Skincare Range, I came across Eve Taylor 9 months ago at a beauty fair, at Olympia Beauty and fell in love with the aromatherapy smells from the products. I decided to take on the range and use it for my facials in my salon The Ezina Sanctuary in Witney Oxfordshire. I am also a firm believer in you should practice what you preach so I got rid of my personal Skincare range which was Elemis and started using Eve Taylor. I have now been using the range for 3 months and I have to say I have noticed a difference, apart from the amazing fresh smell, the moisturisers leave your skin nourished without being greasy and shiny.

I have a combination skin so I opted for the balancing range, using the cleanser, toner and once a month the masque. For my moisturiser I used age resist day cream along with the solar shield (contains SPF hence protecting my skin). I also use the exfoliating scrub everyday (it is very mild but leave my skin clean, bright and soft).

I have also now performed quite a few facials on many clients all of whom have loved it and have actually moved away from Clarins and Dermalogica for their everyday Skincare. They are over the moon with the results!

In fact one of my clients the other day came into me and told me Eve Taylor herself had been interviewed on BBC Breakfast, my client watched it and her words to me were " if I can look as good as Eve Taylor at that age I will be a happy woman, she looked amazing!" - proof is in the pudding!

Today I have ordered two products from their advanced Skincare range: 100% pure Hyaloronic acid and the ultra rich solution to take another step further to improving my skin condition. I read an amazing article about these two products so I will report back in a few months with the results on these!

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Shellac Rockstar Fingers & Toes

I have recently been having a go at the Shellac Rockstar nails, my friend visited me at The Ezina Sanctuary in Witney and she choose to have multiple colours!! See Pic!

Also loving the Shellac Rockstar Toes!!

Day 14 of wearing Shellac

Sorry have been so busy lately at The Ezina Sanctuary Beauty Salon in Witney havent had time to blog!! I did however get to my 14th day of wearing Shellac with no peeling or chipping and I have taken pictures!! I have also taken pictures of my nails after having removed the Shellac to show no damage has been done to the nail plate!! You can see a bit of white on the skin which is from the acetone (removal of Shellac involves wrapping fingers with foil wraps with acetone) this will dehydrate your nail briefly but after removing Shellac I rubbed in some of the amazing CND Solar Oil and nails back to normal.

I cannot live without Shellac, I love it and I then went on to re-apply using Rock Royalty layering with Decadence!! Gorgeous.

Thursday 2 February 2012

UV Rays Exposure when having a Shellac Manicure

Today I had a client visit me at my beauty salon, The Ezina Sanctuary in Witney who was concerned about the UV Rays from the CND lamp and whether they were harmful, I know my ambassador of CND had told me that the lamps are harmless and that you would expose yourself more by being outside for 5minutes than you would using the lamp!! She seemed fine about it but after she left I thought I would research it further.

I did find a very interesting article which at first when reading it concerned me slightly, but I then read further at the comments underneath especially the one by Doug Schoon (an internationally-recognized scientist, author and educator with over 30 years experience in the cosmetic, beauty and personal care industry) and CND and realised  Charmaine Gillespie had not properly looked into it before posting her comment. Please click on the link below to read further:

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-reviews/research-institute/about-shellac-manicures

Also thank you Doug Schoon for pointing out the facts not the speculation.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

An article I found - Shellac Attack

I came across these articles online the other day, very interesting, well it is if you are a nail geek like me!!
http://www.aprettylifeinthesuburbs.com/2012/01/shellac-attack.html
http://www.shape.com/blogs/girl-go/truth-about-cnd-shellac-manicure

Day 4 Wearing Shellac

Well its day 4 wearing Shellac, still no chips or peeling just perfect like day 1, I have been doing the usual, cleaning, washing up, tidying and cooking. Afterall when you have a 14 year old and a 10 year old, your work is never done. I also had a client in yesterday for a facial which was good as had to handle creams and oils!! I have got 3 clients booked in for CND Shellac at The Ezina Sanctuary in Witney over the next 3 days and as I have to scrub fresh their nails (which contains acetone) they are may peel off a bit. I will be back on Sunday and see how I have got on! It will be 8 days by then.

Monday 30 January 2012

Day 2 of wearing Shellac and 2012 Shellac New Colours

So I am on day 2 of wearing my shellac Asphalt, so far today I have washed up, done some cleaning, been out in the freezing cold weather and my shellac is still going strong. No chips, no peeling, just perfectly manicured. Will be back later on this one.

Also I cannot wait to purchase the new CND Shellac colours coming out this year. I believe they are being launched here in the UK by Sweet Squared at Professional Beauty at Excel in March 2012. The Ezina Sanctuary from Witney will be there waiting in the long queue which I am sure there will be to purchase them so I can offer them to all of my customers in Witney, Oxfordshire. Get your appointments booked!

http://www.ezina.co.uk/

Sunday 29 January 2012

First day of my Shellac;

I have posted a picture of my Shellac nails done at The Ezina Sanctuary in Witney, I will let you know how I get on with them over the next 14 days!! Colour of shellac is Asphalt. Sorry about the quality of the photo, taken on my blackberry!!

My Experience with CND Shellac

I have decided to start a 14 day diary telling everyone how Shellac lives up to its reputation. I used to be a nail biter and back in September 2011 I decided enough was enough I was going to stop. I came across the most amazing product called Shellac which is basically a polish that goes on like a polish, wears like a gel (protecting my natural nail and stopping me from chewing) and has zero dry time so no walking out of the salon having to take extra care!!

6 months later I have beautiful long nails which I now have to file down to keep short!! Yes I actually have to use a file, this is a Kanga CND file NOT electric files (thats another story)!! And Not my teeth. The success of growing my nails is all down to CND Shellac.

I run my own beauty salon from home called The Ezina Sanctuary and well as soon as I heard about Shellac, that was it, I contacted Sweet Squared (distributor for CND in UK) and signed up on the Shellac....Bring em back course!! I have never looked back.

Tomorrow I will start my 14 day diary with my Shellac!