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Welcome to Beauty Diary: Seven days of getting glam with an industry insider. From publicists to professional makeup artists, this is a week in the life of someone who lives and breathes beauty.
I am getting ready for my long day of travel to Cape Town, South Africa! My goal is to land as fresh as I can after a 20+ hour flight. A friend and I go to Emily Hair in South Williamsburg and I get two braids to travel with—airplane bed head is no
There is a Boots pharmacy at the London-Heathrow airport where I am laying over, so I spend an hour looking for new products. I find Batiste dry shampoo, which I see back home... but this one coconut sce
I plan to sleep on my 12 hour flight from London to Cape Town. I take Natural Factors Tranquil Sleep, and sip Organic India Tulsi Sleep tea. Since planes are dry and full of germs, I also sip some Emergen-C and coat my face and cuticl
Touchdown! I land in beautiful Cape Town and we go straight to a market, where I find some amazing hand printed fabric. It's summer here in Cape Town, so my curly hair is a little wild. I smooth it out with Bumble & bumble
Wine country! We head to Paarl and explore one of the many vineyards South Africa has to offer. A delicious wine tasting is 400 rand, which is about $4.00 in the USA. I might have taken advantage of that and gotten a litttttle drunk.
Since I've been drinking wine all day, my lips are stained. I camouflage them with MAC liner in Nightmoth and lipstick in Rebel. Then I drink more amazing and ch
We explore Cape Town and go in and out of markets that sell hand made items, food, and some had salons! Most of them offered a trifecta of hair braiding, eye lash extensions, and nails. The first one I see offers a variety of french manicure style designs
I find another salon that has its pedicure game on lock! So many ideas that I would never think of or have seen back home. The toes on the bottom right have a really cool marble design.
With nails on my mind, I notice a lot of women in Cape Town have nails and toes with bright colors. I run into a woman with a sign advertising a nail salon. The photos show more variations of french manicures. I ask how often someone just gets a solid col
We head to Table Mountain, one of the seven wonders of the world. My mind is blown, its so beautiful and we are lucky to catch sunset while the clouds roll over. It's unreal. We had a long day up there, and my Ole Henriksen CC creme is really standing the
Clicks is the chain drugstore in Cape Town. They carry some familiar brands like Nivea and Neutrogena but I notice that tissue oil (which is Bio Oil in the US) is everywhere in all forms.
I find an amazing shop, African Image, that sells hand made goods from all over Africa. I get some gifts and some new things for my home, including two beautiful hand made pillow cases.
I email my friend and fellow manicurist Alicia Torello in hopes she'll give me a manicure based on the colors and patterns I've seen on my trip. I wake up to her response: Nails she just did that she could incorpora
I spend the whole day flying and back to cold and dry NYC winter. I try the Berocca I bought at Clicks, an effervescent tablet full of vitamins to battle any germs I might have caught on the way home. My skin already feels dry from the flight and w
I have a job first thing in the morning so I prep the night before. I am told that it will be a basic manicure with no color, so I pack my essentials: Bernadette Thompson's
I visit the studio of Janine and Aretha, founders of Floss Gloss, to talk shop. I get a million ideas just from their decor alone.
Janine and Aretha's nails, need I say more?
The girls send me home with an arsenal of Floss Gloss including their new purple, Lean, as well as Dime Piece, a holographic silver glitter that has f
Day off! After a great session at The Swan Pilates in Manhattan I get home and try to relax—but I get distracted. A decorative Versace plate my friend gave me inspires me to do some nails! I match Uslu Airlines
Brooklyn-based manicurist Holly Falcone skipped out on fashion week this year for the opportunity to do the nails for Major Lazer's dancers—at a show in South Africa. Not a bad excuse to ditch the peacocking and blizzards of NYFW, eh?
Unfortunately, Holly's admittedly highly flammable liquid monomer (a must for doing acrylic nails) was confiscated at customs, but she still managed to have a great time touring local wineries, shopping for fabric at the markets, and checking out the competition at local salons. Check out her diary after the jump, which includes her basic manicure essentials and a meeting back in New York with the colorful Floss Gloss team.
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