Between my friend is in town and with henna gigs and having to start my new venture, I feel like my week went so quickly last week…  Oh, I should tell you what my new venture is.  I just became an independent consultant for Arbonne.  They offer skin care/personal care products free from animal testing/animal bi-products, parabens, mineral oils, artificial fragrance, dyes and all botanical base :)  I started using this anti aging line- RE9 and it’s great!!  even with my lack of sleep no dark circle under my eyes!  if you are interested in sampling please let me know i have some samples

Back to Luxe Glow,  I had a client who recently had a back surgery and came to me to cover her scar.  We did a henna test to see if henna worked, but it was to light to cover it.  This photo is with henna past on:

So I suggested to do Luxe Glow in black and it covered up really well and looks great!!

I’ve had some busy days last week and it’s nice to be busy

Last Saturday, I had a Leah whom I did her bridal henna a year and a half ago.  She Loved my work and wanted to celebrate her birthday with henna this year so she came back bringing her friend with her.  I think her friend is “hooked” on my henna :)  Leah is very organized and takes care of henna very well, I wish all my clients are like her.  She came with her friend who got her feet done (so she can still drive back) and she told me she already had chicken marinated and salad ready for lunch since she knew she won’t be able to do anything after henna, very well thought out!

Then, I had a little girls birthday party later in the same afternoon for Isabelle.  This was her 10th birthday and she wanted to have henna artist for her birthday.  I offered henna and Luxe Glow for this party.  Quite a hit and even some boys got copper Luxe Glow

This past week I had few Clients for different occasions.  I’ll tell you about the one’s I have photos of.

Linda was going to the Gala of her foundation, so she wanted to wear Luxe Glow for this special occasion for her.  I met Linda at an event last year, she saw my work and loved it and remembered me for this year’s event

Then I had Anisha, who was getting married over Memorial Day Weekend in Vermont.  She contacted me couple of month ago and was trying to figure out the whether she wanted to get her mehndi done in Manhattan or in Vermont.  I’m so glad she decided to do in Manhattan, traveling to VT is a long trip and would have costed  a lot more.  Even though it was a last minute the timing worked out perfectly.  Her fiance was German and he had many of his family and friends traveled in from Europe so it was an interesting henna night we had at her apartment.  I finished my job with a great selection of cheese, bread and fruits :).  It was delicious (it was too good I ate a bit too much I had a tummy ache for a bit :O stupid me..). Ok enough about my tummy ache,  here’s her bridal mehndi.

Oh, the last but not the least, I finally tried out copper I got from Wendy :),  I love it! it shows better on my skin.  Thank you Wendy!

Yesterday was such a beautiful day out and there was a one lucky girl who had her 11th birthday party outside in the beautiful home in Chatham, NJ.  I had a really pretty train ride from Pen Station to Chatham.  She had a Arabian theme party and everyone was dressed up in the costumes with some sparkles.  I had the honer to be at this party  to henna all the girls and some adults there.  As always, some of them went nuts over Luxe Glow but this was for a Henna service I didn’t have Luxe Glow with me but they were happy with the henna designs they got.

As a birthday girl She had a bigger design then other girls :)  then, the belly dancer started her performance and all the kids were mesmerized by her dance..  Then she started to dance with everyone.  Many girls were dancing pretty well, they were just a cute bunch :)  I love doing henna for little girls birthdays..  made me smile for rest of the evening.

I always like to get some design request I usually don’t think of myself..

first request was a geometric design bracelet in Luxe Glow.  I usually don’t do  designs with straight lines nor symmetric  designs since it’s hard to make any correction with Luxe Glow (it also takes longer ) but, I had a very specific request to do a geometric design and I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out..  here is is.

I actually like it a lot! and she loved it

Another day, I got a call from the Ower of Excy laser again to glitter up her staff at her store,  she likes very girlie designs like hearts, crowns, wings etc..  one of her staff’s request was a “bow and flowers” this is what i came up with..

She was quite excited and went home happy (except the little accident..  she knocked off my rhinestone box which it may not have been placed in the secure area.. we ended up spending about an hour sorting them out to put back in the box in different sizes and colors.. )

Please note, this works great as a scar covering..  she had a small scar around the wrist,  you can’t tell ;)  thank you again for having me.  She takes care of everyone so well and I always leave her place full..  Next time I’ll be bringing some sweets at least.

I always have a great ideas (at least I think so ;)), my problems are not knowing the best ways to execute the great ideas..  so any time I throw you with ideas and if you can think of a good ways to execute, PLEASE DO share with me.  I am open to any ideas and it’s always fun to hear other ideas I never think of.

Here we go, one of my biggest goal this spring is to hit the Prom market with Luxe Glow.  I know it’s too late to advertise any more since it’s already around the corner for some.  I finally worked on the postcards to be printed and I should have them by next week.  I did list up private schools in the city and was able to pull some prom dates from some of the school sites.

The next step…  how and where to distribute them.

Question 1-  where is the best place for the postcards to be distributed?  Hand them out on the street around schools?

Question 2- if I want to do a demo where would be a good place?…

Front looks like this, I wanted to have one side with bridal look (let’s face it I can’t have cards just to proms).

and the back, I made it look more colorful for parties.

for some reason every time I upload graphic files with pink it always come out MUCH bluer pink than what actually is..  so the pink is not the correct col.  Just imagine Fuchsia.

I’m going to hit the street once I get these but if you have better ideas let me know!

It’s been at least 3 weeks since the last entry.  My henna work was been a bit slow this month until last weekend plus I started working in my old industry- Fashion textile design (full time freelance) so my week goes really fast..

Anyways, I have a friend who does Calgel nail so i figured if I have Luxe Glow on her maybe her client would be interested in getting it done.  Sure enough (or maybe she pushed it for me.. not sure) I had a chance to meet the owner of Excy Laser who is totally in love with Luxe Glow ( along with my angle heart with wings + crown design which I used to draw at lot when i was working in textile design), even though this was for her daughter’s birthday i think us adults were more into this than kids.  Unfortunately, I didn’t  have my camera but you can see them on her blog (sorry it’s in Japanese but you can see the photos).

And another Maternity henna for Amber who somehow heard about me and Timothi (awesome photographer).  I went to her Upper East Side apartment on Sat, she had a friend over to take some photos with paste on then they are having another shoot this week in Central park!  I can’t wait to see the photos.

so far this is what I have..

I really wish I had more talent was a photographer….

on the way home I was walking on Lexington Ave. I found these.. :)  so pretty.. ah, spring is here (well, they are candles but they bring the spring feel) .

Well, I don’t have any photos yet to show you but, this is what I did for her.  Naomi is half Guyanese and always wanted to get henna for her wedding but she came across Luxe Glow and thought this was for her.  She had two gowns so we discussed the designs to accommodate both gowns.  I can’t wait to see the photos of her in dresses!  I’ll post them when i get them.

This last week has been a bit hectic, many meetings and the lat minute gigs which i was happy to take these..  but fortunately or unfortunately, some great opportunities come up  due to other henna artists car accident and the other was sick…( knock on wood I won’t be the next henna artist canceling gigs.)  One was the even I was able to sub for was a big event for event/ wedding planners!  So, I took this as another opportunity to promote Luxe Glow for Western brides in white gowns.  I started to do some sketches for this occasion, here are some:

one more..

As for the meetings, the bigges one i’m working on right now is the contract with 5 star Hotel opening in SOHO soon!  I was contacted by a spa director there and we are having meetings to work out the details how to work together.  I’m sure i can update as they make official announcements but for now it’s in process and keeping my fingers crossed.  I can see Luxe Glow taking off this summer for sure!

I got a call from a client the other day while I was on the phone talking to a real person after holding for about 10-15 minutes.  so she left a message and I called her right back when I was done.  She was really excited to hear from me and told me that I was the first henna artist to call her back after she called a few people in the past few days. Since it was for her birthday outing I suggested to Luxe Glow and she was even more excited and made an appointment to come by later that day.  When she came by, she told me that as soon as she hung up the phone everyone else started to calling her back..  well people, don’t wait too long…  it’s too late now.  After we talked about her outfit and her inspiration ( which was Alicia Key’s Video “try sleeping with a broken heart” ) I did a butterfly with other motifs to compliment around it.  She also asked me if I could do it both with gold and silver, I’ve never really mixed colors before and I always feel like it could get messy but, if I draw designs separately it comes out fine (it takes a bit longer since I had to let the gold part dry first then do the silver.)  but the result is this.. Ta Da!!