My Henna Designs - Part 1

Well in my last post , I mentioned that I learned quite a few things at my last job. One of which, is henna. The main boss (the one I actually liked) was an expert at henna designs. At first I just hovered over her while she did it. It intrigued me. I always had her apply left overs on me.

In our little shopping center, there was a Middle Eastern boutique. The owner's daughter (about 8, I think) loved to come in for henna. My boss always did it for her for free too. Well one day, when she came in, my boss handed me the cone and said "Here you go, Vita, you do it" And I've been doing it ever since.

I don't have a picture of that very first design, but trust me when I say it was horrible. That little girl loved it though. Most little girls are like that. They just want something, don't care what design. Which is why my boss started me off with little kids, til I was better.

Here is one of the firsts... Can you say bleh



Now, I'm a visual learner. I have to see it, and then copy it. That's how I was with nail designs too. My boss had a book with henna designs in it. When ever I had down time, I practiced on my self. Customers sometimes would come in with a design they found on google. This was better for me too.

Most of these are not my original designs. No idea who the original artists were, so I can't credit them. I am watermarking them though cause I did do the physical work, I just didn't create it originally.













I wish I could claim this next one as mine. I didn't recreate it either. This lady had gotten this done while on vacation. The design had just barely started to fade. She really liked the design and wanted to go over it again. So, all I had to do was trace over it.



Its not all girls that want henna tattoos. This guy really, really liked the last Batman movie.



Eventually, my skills improved and I was able to experiment with my own styles and designs. The rest of these are all me.;)

Sometimes at work, I needed to take off my wedding rings. So I decided to put a henna ring there instead.









Here is one of my boss putting a design on herself. She is putting a new one on top of an old one.



That's it for now. I have more on my phone. I'll add those in another post. These are just the ones I had on my facebook.

I know this isn't "nail art" related, but I wanted to share these.

Update + Where the hell have I been?!?!

So, I know I have been lacking on the upkeep of this blog, and I'm sorry. IRL had gotten very busy and tiring. Here is a little update. Prepare for a long one.

In 2011, I decided to go to Cosmetology school, to go pro, and become a nail tech. I live in Texas, so the state requirement for Nail Technology is 600 hours, aka 5 months, more or less. I graduated and passed my state board exams with flying colors. Job hunting sucked! 6 months after graduating, (April 12') I finally found a job at a threading salon. The salon did threading, facials and full body waxing. It was owned by two sisters and they had decided to expand the business and include nails. Hence why they hired me. I worked there until this past December.

I left for a TON of reasons. The pay sucked, I wasn't respected and they worked me too hard. By that I mean, I worked 6 days a week, from open to close. No over time either... that had to do with one thing. They really had no idea how to run an American business. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that to be rude, mean or malicious. It was the honest truth. They had no idea what overtime pay was. They didn't understand the concept of benefits. And the way they handled the business...OMG!!!

Customer is always right? Ha! Nope, customer is always wrong. Why yes we did up the prices, nope we didn't bother to tell you til after we finished your service. I know the hours say 10:30-7:00, but we (the owners) will get there about 11:30 and leave at 6:30. Not our employee though, she has to be there on time. Oh you wanted privacy to change your cloths, don't mind me, I'll just stand here waiting for you to strip. My employee is taking too long to do this Brazilian, I better open the door ,WITH OUT KNOCKING, to see what's happening. Yeah... I had a ton of customers complain about that one.

Now most importantly, the number one reason I left! I was hired to do nails. That's what I went to school for. That's what I'm qualified for. I... really didn't do nails that much. About a month after being hired, the other girl working there decided to quit. Shit, I don't blame her. She found another salon that was going to pay her more and for less hours. Instead of hiring someone else, they just trained me. So, then I was doing just about everything. Waxing, threading, facials and henna. The only thing I didn't do was eyebrows. I refused to do eyebrows. I didn't want the added pressure of getting them right. My boss was perfect at it and yet there would always be that one person that is never happy. I didn't want that. Plus I didn't want to give them a reason to leave me there the whole day. They always said that if I started eyebrows, they wouldn't even need to come in. They giggled like if they were joking... I doubt it was a joke. They did leave me alone with a trainee one day towards the end. OMG, that was such a huge fail. I'll save that story for another day.

Doing everything else, combined with being the ONLY employee, meant that I didn't get much time to do nails. My boss even turned down customers. She also made a rule, no "nails" on the weekend. The weekend started on Thursday in her book. So the only time I was allowed to do any nails was Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The slow days. When I was able to do nails, I always had them hovering over my shoulder telling me to hurry up and that I was taking too long. Let me just say this. While in school I was taught that a pedicure should be 45 minutes. No more, no less. 45 minutes is the perfect amount of time to do what you need to do, and satisfy your customer. I got tons of practice with pedicures in school. And these weren't regular feet either. They were old lady feet. There is nothing worse than old lady feet. About 85% of the nail services I did in school were old lady pedicures. I quickly became an expert in pedicures. I can do a pedicure in 45 minutes, no problem. Working at this salon, 45 minutes was me taking way too long. They said I should be done in 20! WTF?!?!

Now you might be thinking, why the hell I stayed there that long. Well, like I said, job hunting sucked. I was fresh out of school. No salon work experience. My original plan was to stay there for 6 months. Maybe a year, and that was a big maybe. Just so I could put it on my resume and have some kind of experience. A year passed by, and my POS car decide it wanted to retire. (busted tranni) I had no choice but to buy a new car. Doing so killed mine and my husband's savings. Quitting wasn't a smart option. Some money, is better than no money, right?

In September, I got a Jury Duty summons. While there, one of the judges came in and said they needed volunteers for Grand Jury and that we'd be looking at getting paid just over $1,000. I quickly volunteered. Basically the way it worked was about 25-30 of us volunteered. Out of that pool, 12 people were picked. And two extra were picked as alternates. I was chosen as an alternate. I was told that I was only going to be called if they needed me. And even then, it would be if someone had decided to drop out.

The Grand Jury term was from October to December, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Two weeks into October, I got a call that someone had dropped out and they needed me to fill in for the rest of the term. I was fine with this. Minus having to drive all the way into Downtown Dallas 3 days a week. My job... they were not happy. Not only did my bosses not know how to run a business in America. They also had no idea how basic American government worked. Back in September, when I got my Jury Duty summons, they got mad at me. They thought I had done something bad and had to go to court for it. They even said I needed to call them and tell them I can't go, cause I have to work. Um, it doesn't work that way.

The next day when I came back to work, I explained about the Grand Jury thing... I left out the part about me volunteering for it. So when I got the call in October, that they needed me and meant that I would need to work half days on Mon. Wed. and Fri. They hated it. And the final nail in the coffin for me... They said they had to cut my pay because of it. What? Oh hell no!

IF this had been a regular job, I wouldn't have complained. IF I was being paid a legal wage. IF I was working 40 hours a week and getting paid for over time. But I wasn't. I worked 50 hours a week. No over time and I was making LESS than minimum wage. I was furious! Your going to cut my pay? MY PAY? Hell no, fuck that! I told them I was quitting and they needed to start looking for my replacement.

I ended up staying until the end of November. That's another story. And this post is way longer than I thought it was going to be. Short version... I told them I'd stay long enough for them to find a replacement, they abused that.

I'm glad to be gone from that hell hole of a job. I'm looking forward to future and finding a better job somewhere else.

BTW, here is a vid I took of one of my bosses lecturing me. Out of my two bosses, this is the one I hated. I took great joy in telling her off when I wanted to quit.
What happened was we had two ladies come in for facials and a few minutes after another for a Brazilian wax. We had two steamers, but one had broke. Half way through my facial I had to move the steamer to the next room. She was lecturing me about taking multiple customers and how I shouldn't have said "I'll be right back, I just need to move this next door."