My MUD (Make Up Designory) Experience

I recently did a 2 week make up course at MUD Academy. I haven’t always been interested in makeup.. Infact, I hardly wear makeup apart from eyeliner and lipstick but I was interested in learning about make up so I could do it on people.

All the makeup courses I found were clashing with Nysc and when my Nysc date was postponed for 3 weeks I could register for the course.

On the first day we had a lecture about face shapes, skin types, how to take care of the different skin types and we were given an outline on what we were going to learn for 2 weeks.

 Eyebrow Grooming

Before the course I was really bad with tweezing and shaping my eyebrows.. there was a time I mistakenly cut off quarter of my eyebrows so I did a weave that covered part of my eyebrows and I gave up on doing my eyebrows myself. I still thread my eyebrows but at least I know I can do my eyebrows myself.

Different Make up looks

We were told we needed to bring models with us everyday to practise on from the second day which I didn’t know about so I had to start asking people to come with me everyday.

The first week one of my friends came and I learned eyebrow grooming on her. 

The next week 2 of my friends came on Monday so the instructor showed us an everyday make-up look on one of them and I practised on my second model.  One of my friends was my model for 3 days so I practised most of the make-up looks on her and on the last day my cousin was my model. I really appreciated all of them helping me out because it’s quite stressful  trying to get people every single day from 11am till 4pm.

I also learnt things like highlighting and contouring and fixing of lashes which I was really happy about. I also learnt gele tying.

These are some of the looks I was able to achieve within 2 weeks.

Everyday Make-up look

Smokey

 I learnt a lot within 2 weeks and for someone who didn't know much about make up I was really happy at the end of the course. 

Thanks for reading :)

Oyime

Senegalese Twists

As much as I love box braids I got tired of them a few months ago because I basically kept doing them all year. I wanted to try something different but I didn't want kinky twists so I decided to do those small twists that are apparently called Senegalese twists.

The last time I did them was almost 2 years ago and I did them in black but this time I wanted to do them in Colour 350 (almost red). Unfortunately, I was told that the "Expressions" company was having issues and they didn't have that colour so I settled for Colour 33. Judging from how my hair looks 3 weeks later though, I think it's a good thing they didn't have the colour I wanted.

The day after I did my twists

I love how tiny and full they are compared to my normal box braids and i feel like more parts of my hair get moisturized when I spritz my hair. I also find it easier to do more styles with it.

At a wedding last Saturday

I like the twists but they already looked rough after a week because my hair is really black and it had started coming out of the twists. A friend actually thought I had kinky twists just to show how much of my hair has come out of each twist so if I want a style that will last over a month I think I'll do small braids instead. I really like it though so maybe I'll try black next time I want to do these twists.

Thanks for reading :)

Oyime 

Protein Sensitivity: Coconut oil and Protein Treatments

If you're anything like me then one of the first things you bought when you went natural must have been Coconut Oil. Everyone seems to love coconut oil but unfortunately my hair decided to tell a different story.

The essence of this post is to talk a little about protein sensitivity and why for some of us coconut oil simply doesn't work. 

Coconut oil was the first thing I bought when I went natural because everywhere I looked for products I would need, coconut oil always topped the list. I read about how I would need it for prepooing, as an oil to seal in moisture, if my hair was feeling dry, to seal my ends, etc.

You can imagine how sad I was the first time I tried coconut oil. It made my hair feel so hard and brittle and had me so confused. I thought I wasn't using it right so I used it in different ways. For sealing, for moisturising, for prepooing but it still made my hair feel brittle so I stopped using it.

Another thing I read a lot about was Protein Treatments. Protein treatments are supposed to strengthen your hair and reduce breakage. From what I've read many people do this once a month and people use different things like egg, mayonnaise, honey, avocados, bananas.

I applied a mixture of egg, mayonnaise and honey to my hair the first time I did a protein treatment and covered it with a shower cap for about 45 minutes. It wasn't a good experience because my hair was wet so it was dripping down my neck. The next time I tried it I made sure my hair wasn't wet first to avoid this.

After my protein treatment my hair felt hard and I didn't understand why so the next time I did it I just used honey because honey is a humectant so it is supposed to draw moisture from its surroundings into your hair. For some reason my hair didn't like this either so I just abandoned protein treatments.

Some weeks ago I came across a video that talked about protein sensitivity and the reason why some people's hair does not respond well to coconut oil. From what I understand, if your hair strand is very thick and already has a lot of protein then there is no need to put protein back in because what protein does is strengthen the hair and our hair doesn't need this extra strength. This is why it ends up feeling hard after a protein treatment or using coconut oil.

So if you can relate you can stop trying to use coconut oil in different ways or trying different protein treatments if your hair just doesn't like it. What works for some simply doesn't work for others.

You can watch this video to understand it better. This guy explained it so well

Protein Sensitivity: Why does coconut oil make my hair feel fried?

Thanks for reading :)

Oyime