March 29, 2024

Learning Self-Care Homecare

Our blog this week focuses on some top tips to help you pamper at home during this difficult times. Self-care is so important to help us relax, look and feel better, to take our mind of any worries at least temporarily and to build positive self esteem.

Great for sharing with your client too during lockdown to help them remember homecare and keep up their results until you can next get them into the salon…

We’ve had a lot of prospective students enquiring this week about whether our courses are only open to existing beauty therapists or those who want to train to work in beauty.

Our online courses are open to everyone, ideal for complete beginners and the majority of courses require absolutely no prior knowledge of anything beauty related. Now is also a great time to learn a new set of skills to allow you to not only self-care during the lockdown period so taking care of your outgrown gel polish, growing out those eyebrows or starting a new skincare regime.

The online courses are perfect for this and just think, if you carry on doing your treatments at home, within only a few treatments you will have saved back your money. You might even take it one step further and find a new source of income or even a new career!

Looking after Gel Polish

Many of you may be stuck with outgrown gel polish. Where you can, try to leave gel polish untouched as it will give some additional strength to the free edges of your natural nails (even if it doesn’t look it’s best). Apply traditional gel polish over the top to hide the regrowth area if you prefer. Ensure you apply cuticle oil daily to keep your nails supple and healthy underneath.

If you really must remove the gel polish yourself, you will need acetone, 10 thin strips of kitchen foil, some cotton wool or lint free pads ideally, an orange wood stick / hoof stick and nail buffer.

  • Buff each nail gently just enough to remov the shine to remove the seal of the top coat.
  • Soak each pad in the acetone.
  • Wrap pad around the nail trying to keep the acetone mainly over the nail area and not skin.
  • Wrap the thin piece of foil over the top of the pad, squeezing to secure. Wait around 5 minutes.
  • Remove foil and pads. Gel polish should be softened and easy to glide away from the nail using the cuticle / hoof stick.
  • If any remains, rewrap nails and wait a further 5 minutes. Apply cuticle oil to finish.
Caring for Your Skin

Having a good skincare regime is important to addressing your specific skincare concerns but also helping to avoid premature signs of aging. Product suggestions can be sought from your regular beauty therapist or one excellent brand that is getting wide recognition is The Ordinary which have salon quality ingredients in their products but at affordable prices. They can be purchased online, even from Amazon.

  • A good skincare regime consists of cleansing morning and night. There are many excellent hot cloth products on the market or those which use a silicon facial brush like the Foreo Luna.
  • Use of a toner is highly recommended, especially for oily or combination skin types to help restore the skin’s pH balance and close pores.
  • This should be followed by a morning and night moisturiser (or a very well formulated all round product). Rosehip oil is highly praised for providing incredible skin nourishing results and can be applied as a facial oil in place of a moisturiser. Look for a reliable brand with oil from an organic source.
  • For those over the age of 25, an eye serum is great at hydrating this delicate skin.
  • Once a week to fortnightly depending on skin type, you may like to use an exfoliator or one of the many revolutionary skin peel products on the market. Many contain AHA and/or BHA to give great results at removing dead skin cells without the use of rough exfoliant particles which can sometimes also be bad for the environment.
  • Roughly once a week or fortnightly, again dependent on skin type; a facial mask should be applied. Some containSalicylic Acid to address breakouts and dull skin appearance, others have hydrating ingredients such as natural nut or seed oils or collagen infusion and come as either products to be applied to the skin using a brush or fingers, or as a face shaped mask that can literally be placed on the skin once wet.
How to File Nails

This might seem something really simple yet leaves many confused. There are so many nail shapes that can be achieved with just a simple nail file from squoval to coffin shaped.

  • For natural nails we recommend avoiding any of the more dramatic nail shapes as this can weaken the nail plate and increase the likelihood of breakage.
  • If nails are extremely long, use a nail clipper or nail scissors to cut down to a suitable length before filing to smooth rough edges into an even shape.
  • Look at each nail and the shape created by the natural while free edge where it meets the pink of the nail. This is the best shape to stick with if possible so try to match this when filing the free edge.
  • Using the file in one direction, avoid see-sawing away at the nail as this can separate the layers of the nail plate leading to lifting or breakage.

Finally, when cutting toe nails always ensure you cut these straight across. Never shape them into a rounded shape which can encourage ingrown toe nails. If a nail is ingrown, a simple V snipped into the centre of the toe nail (not cutting too deep down though to avoid injuring the delicate skin and nail bed) will encourage an ingrown nail to grow away from the sides to fill the gap in the centre.

Castor Oil to Nourish Brows Lashes

Castor oil is excellent as a tonic to help encourage healthy growth of lashes and brows. Take the opportunity during lockdown to leave brows au naturel and encourage them to regrow to their former beauty. This will give you a blank canvas once able to have your brows professionally reshaped and allow you to take advantage of the fuller brow trends that have been popular lately (where your natural growth allows). If growth is sparse, this regrowth opportunity will at least give you some basis for a brow lamination treatment to give the appearance of fuller brows as the therapist will have more to work with.

For lashes, castor oil can be applied using a disposable mascara wand taking care to use just a little and avoid oil getting into the eye. It will help lashes regain flexibility and strength along with an enhanced sheen. While in lockdown, any remaining lash extensions should shed with your natural lashes along their usual shedding cycle. Resist the urge however tempting, to pluck any stray remaining lash extensions as this could damage your lash follicles and leave unsightly gaps. Avoid use of a lash curler if you can to give your lashes the best chance to return to former, natural glory. You might then want to consider lash tinting and lash lift treatments once lockdown ends and you already have fuller, regrown lashes over returning to lash extensions which require much more maintenance and cost.

If all this knowledge and self-care has you inspired to learn more treatment skills, whether that is to overhaul your beauty regime and reduce regular treatment costs once lockdown ends… Or whether it is to allow you to have some new skills to extend your career options or subsidise your earnings while things take their time to return to normal; what better way than to learn online.

  • Our Online Courses are studied through our Online Student Portal. Study at your own pace, portal is accessible onlie 24/7 with full support from our team and are accredited by IPHM for insurance. You have comprehensive training videos, manuals and multiple choice tests which are instantly marked can be taken as many times as you need to help your understanding throughout.
  • Alternatively if you prefer the human touch, our Virtual Academy courses are delivered online through a live teaching session with our top tutors where you can ask questions and get support. The training sessions are recorded so you can watch them back as many times as you need and you are given a comprehensive training manual also to support your learning. The Virtual Academy courses are accredited by ABT for insurance.

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