Manicures and Pedicures

Week three of my schooling has ended and so far I've done 10 manicures and 8 pedicures, whoo hoo!  I'm not really a foot person but I think pedicures are my favorite.  Sitting on that little tiny chair talking with the person sitting above me while I scrub, clip, file, massage and polish their feet and toes is oddly relaxing...  Each time I get a little bit better at not polishing the skin around their toes and have to look at my "cheat sheet" a little bit less, giving me an amazing sense of accomplishment - She Can Be Taught!  And it doesn't hurt at all that everyone who has allowed me to practice on them has been incredibly grateful and said nice things about me to my instructors :)

I'm doing OK with manicures, this week I've had a couple of people with super-damaged cuticles to work on (one of them being my oldest daughter) so that was great practice.  Due to the fact that most people see their feet from five-some feet away as opposed to being able to easily hold our fingers as close to our faces as we want to I feel like it's a little bit more important to do a good job on the fingers than the toes.  Maybe that's why I'm not as confident about my manicures as I a my pedicures right now but practice makes perfect, eh?

This week there was some Drama at the school.  Monday morning my girls had dental appointments and by the time they were finished it wasn't worth going to the school for only two hours of class so I called and was told not to worry about coming in, they had already sent everyone home because two out of their three teachers quit that morning!  Crazy, crazy...  By the next day they had hired a replacement for one of the teachers and I believe the second replacement will start next week so everything seems like it's getting back to normal pretty quickly but what a scary start for a brand new school, ugh!

There was also quite a bit of excitement at school on Thursday afternoon because our Nail Kits came in!  They are absolutely amazing and I've been told that most schools don't give their students so many "extras" in their kits...  Besides the "normal" stuff for doing nails we received:  A Dremel brand cordless dremel, two sets of nail art brushes, rhinestones, a UV light for curing gel nails and an amazing "toolbox" specially designed for us that rolls and has an extending handle.  I'm soooooo happy!

Oh - and I cheated...  Rachel (my eldest) bought an acrylic nail kit at Walmart and we sat down this morning and I did my first full set!  After using professional brushes and products at school the kit was a joke and we're not able to bring our kits home yet so I couldn't use any of those wonderful tools <sigh> but I did a passable job for my first full set of acrylic nails.  It took about three episodes of Bones on Netflix from start to finish and I was pleased that there wasn't nearly as much filing required to smooth them out as I was afraid there would be.  When we were done she was pleased with her nails and I felt a lot better about my ability to apply what I've learned.

Hopefully I will be able to work on paying clients soon because that means I can get tips!  Tips mean I won't have to pack a lunch every day and there's a wonderful Chinese buffet at the other end of the strip mall... yummy!

I'm trying to upload some pictures of my work, hopefully they go through and I'll write more next week.