chairyapp-blog

[chairyapp-blog]

#MyFavoriteOils: Almond Oil

As a #DRB, Sweet Almond Oil is one of my favorites to use with my clients and even on my own hair. It changed my life after I was introduced to it. I add it to my deep conditioners, to my personal water/oil spray bottle, and on my skin. The results are always amazing.

Almond Oil has a million and one uses. It’s been used in medicines and for other purposes going back more than 5000 years in India, other Southeast Asian countries.

There are 2 kinds of almond oil, sweet & bitter. Both are rich in vitamins and have medicinal properties, however bitter almond oil can be toxic if ingested and is only safe for external application while sweet almond oil is extracted from edible almonds and can be ingested.

Sweet Almond oil is full of monounsaturated fatty acids, vitamin E, potassium, proteins, zinc, and other vitamins and minerals. This makes is a miracle oil that can be used on hair, skin, food, and in medicines.

Below, I’ve highlighted a few ways you can use Sweet Almond Oil this for your beauty needs:

Control Hair Loss: You can use Sweet Almond Oil regularly to help with hair loss. Almond oil is packed with magnesium, calcium, and zinc. A deficiency in any of those areas results in poor hair growth and even hair loss. Zinc deficiency has even been connected to alopecia. Using SOA on your scalp daily can help control hair loss.

Protect & Shine: Sweet almond oil can help protect your hair from breakage and split ends by acting as sebum would and coating the hair shaft. Applying a few drops to a spray bottle or a few drops to your hair during styling adds a protective layer and gives an incredible, natural shine to your hair.

Naturally Remove Makeup: Another sign that nature gives us everything we need. Sweet Almond oil can be a natural make up remover. It’s light texture helps it penetrate deep into the skin and pores which helps makeup come off a little easier. Even better, it prevents wrinkles and the fatty acids and vitamins help keep your skin moisturized so you won’t feel dried out after taking your face off at night ;).

Defy Age: Almond oil helps shield the skin from harmful UV rays as a natural sunscreen. This helps you not only avoid a sunburn or unwanted tan, but also protects your skin from aging as a result of too much sun exposure. You can also rub in some almond oil under your eyes to reduce puffiness and dark circles. On top of all of that SAO helps renew skin cells and revitalize the skin.

You can get some Sweet Almond Oil  here or check out even more uses for this wonder-oil at these links.

[chairyapp-blog]

Start with A Good Foundation: Laying a flat Sew-In

Have you ever wondered why some weaves lay super flat and look so realistic? 

The answer: A GOOD FOUNDATION. 

Whether you're using glue, thread, or even clips to add in hair extensions, a well-laid foundation is essential. 

Below we've shared with you some of our favorite YouTubers who are #doingitright and demonstrate exactly how important a good foundation is to achieving beautiful weave. Let us know how your next weave lays after using these helpful tips!

Sew-ins:

Glue-ins:

Clip-ins:

ProTIP: Everyone has different hair; what works for one person may not work for you (and that’s perfectly okay)! Try altering the advice to what fits you, and as always, aim for happy and healthy hair!

[chairyapp-blog]

Crochet braids Follow for more style

www.yeahsexyweaves.tumblr.com

[chairyapp-blog]

Co-founder @naala_l all set at Tate Student Center for #Students2Startups! Come out and learn more about @thedrbco and where we are! SEND ALL OF YOUR STYLIST FRIENDS! 👀👀 #thedrb #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #dreads #sewin #weave

[chairyapp-blog]

#boxbraids styled by @shuvonk in the #statesboroga area! 👌🏾#FEATUREFriday She's the plug in, at or around #gsu #southernnotstate Request a style at thedrb.co and we'll connect you ASAP. Independent stylists: submit your work for a feature via DM or by tagging @thedrbco in the pic! #thedrb #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #statesborostylist #statesboroga #statesborohair #weave #sewin #locs #dreads #afrotexturedhair #blackhair

[chairyapp-blog]

#FEATUREFriday 👀 sew-in styled by #athensstylist @amazinglywhitty at #UGA! Get your hair right for interview season 💯 Check out her profile for info about booking! We're here to support independent stylists on the grind! Submit your work to @thedrbco via DM or by tagging us in the pic! #thedrb #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #athensstylist #athensga #athenshair #weave #sewin #locs #dreads #afrotexturedhair #blackhair

[chairyapp-blog]

Beautiful #fauxlocs!

Ig: @_natalyn

[chairyapp-blog]

[chairyapp-blog]

Styling While On Job Hunt

It’s Spring! Which pretty much translates to Interview Season when you’re in school. Whether you’re looking for an internship for the summer or your first full-time position after graduation, looking your best is always top of mind! Because of some lingering societal stigmas about which hairstyles are or aren’t considered “professional”, styling your hair can seem like huge challenge for naturalistas in any style.

No Fear! This #TIPsyThursday we’ve collected 4 of our favorite tutorials for natural hair, dreadlocks, braids, and the like to help you #expressyourself in the workplace and interviews while staying professional.

For naturals:

For Locs:

For Braids & Twists:

For…everthing?:

#PROtip: If you want to rock color in your tresses, RESEARCH THE COMPANY FIRST! Some companies may be okay with radical blues and pinks while with others you should opt for a more subtle reds and browns!

[chairyapp-blog]

A little afternoon #MondayMotivation: live in the moment. #thedormroombeautician #thedrbco #thedrb

[chairyapp-blog]

#TIPsyThursday: DIY Havana Twists

We know all about #BeautyOnABudget here at The Dorm Room Beautician! It's how we got started in the first place!

@thedrbco is all about #beautyonabudget just like this #TwistsTuesday FEATURE @jonelleberry at UGA . Having options when it comes to stylists saves YOU 💰💰 including the option to #DIY or sign up as a stylist yourself as a side-hustle 😉 Go to thedrb.co to submit a request from stylists in YOUR area! #athensbraids #athenshair #braids #thedrb #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #athensstylist

A photo posted by The Dorm Room Beautician (@thedrbco) on Mar 15, 2016 at 12:19pm PDT

Doing your own hair can help you save time and most importantly, money! The bonus: if you can do it on yourself well, you can probably make some extra cash by doing hair for your friends and others! Trust, someone will ask you who styled your gorgeous locks. Many DRBs get into freelance styling by learning to style hair on themselves first! Just like our #TwistsTuesday IG feature Jonelle did with her Havana Twists. Jonelle completed this beautiful and fun summer style on her own Havana twists! She does her own hair to avoid going home and to stay pretty around a packed student schedule! 

We know you're wondering and the answer is YES,you can do it too! Here is one of our favorite DIY Havana Twists tutorials by YouTube hair, beauty, and health guru, @beautifulbrwnbabydol​. 

Check it out to watch and learn how you can achieve this protective style on yourself (or send us a request at thedrb.co if you’re in the Athens, Ga area and we'll take care of it for ya ;))

Tweet us pics of the completed style @thedrbco!

[chairyapp-blog]

@thedrbco is on air at 4pm on @theshrimptank via @cobbradiox! Tune in at theshrimptank.com to hear about the future of #thedormroombeautician!

[chairyapp-blog]

A little #MondayMotivation for you today for our followers returning from Spring Break! 😉 For those of you on break, enjoy it! #happymonday #GoBeGreat #thedrb #thedormroombeautician #braids #weave #locs #athenshair #athensbraids

[chairyapp-blog]

The DRB @ #StartupStories

This week, co-founder, Brittney Laryea got to tell the Athens startup community the story of how The DRB came to be. 

Brittney was the student-entrepreneur chosen to present for Startup Stories, an event hosted by Four Athens that highlights the story of the very beginnings of businesses. Athens businesses Creature Comforts and Sons of Sawdust also told their stories at the event. 

Below is the transcript of the story she told. In her words, “It was random, but not so random?” 

*story begins*

Hey, Thanks for that amazing intro! and thanks for coming out tonight.

My name is Brittney Laryea and I’m the lead co-founder of The Dorm Room Beautician.

The DRB is an end to end marketplace for freelance beauticians to connect, interact, and complete transactions with potential clients at and around Colleges and Universities.

So that was a lot. Let’s backtrack to how The DRB came up anyway...

I’m sure many of you in the audience can empathize with me; I’m a student. I do a bunch of other stuff too, but I’m a student and I love being a student. What’s cool about being in a college environment is that you’re in this weird part of your life where you’re working to complete a degree in what you think you want to do and you’re focused on that...until you get distracted by a ton of other things you may be into along the way. 

That was me. I was on the accelerated track to being a less-awesome cross between Jovita Moore and Oprah when I suddenly discovered a love for business and entrepreneurship when I started doing hair for my friends and faculty members on campus. I still want to be a great journalist, but this is really cool and really fun so I’m doing both right now.

I learned how to do hair in high school. And when I say do hair, I’m not talking about a wash color and cut. I’m talking about traditionally afro-textured hairstyles like long box braids (Janet), sew in weaves (Gabby, Beyonce), and dreadlocks (Lisa Bonet, Lauryn Hill, Bob Marley). But these traditionally black styles aren’t taught in mainstream cosmetology schools. You have to learn it others in your community, or at specialized schools for black hair or like I did, through YouTube videos and extensive and sometimes embarrassing trial and error process.

By the time I got to UGA, I’d gotten pretty good at styling my own hair and other people started asking to me to do theirs. This is pretty common. Because these styles aren’t taught in mainstream cosmetology school, the industry isn’t regulated and a common way to find people to do your hair is through word of mouth which today includes social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr to help. But this still means a lot of work for potential clients. It’s especially common on college campuses when you’re in a new area, with limited time and money and far from your stylist at home.

It’s all over the place.

At first I fell into it too. I was one of the girls asking around or scour different social media profiles looking for pictures of work that we can trust, hopefully affordable, hopefully near us, and hopefully flexible. They’d text, email, imessage, kik, or otherwise connect with them to figure out things like scheduling, pricing and getting other pictures. Finally, after everything is said and done, we pay with whatever they accept, oftentimes cash but sometimes Venmo, PayPal, or another sending platform. I personally got sick of texting pictures fast and started maintaining a blog where I would post some of the styles that I did on myself and for others.

Business started blowing up and I was getting more clients and a larger portfolio. I did that for the fall semester of sophomore year until I had a good base and deactivated the blog because it worked so well.  I would send clients there if they asked me for pictures and handle the scheduling and payment on my phone or in cash. Doing hair was a nice side hustle at this point and I enjoyed it.

It was all fun until one of my newer clients got mad and cursed me out because he didn’t know my schedule. So, when he called to book and appointment for the day before spring break I was already booked and leaving town the following morning. As I was cursed out for something out of my control that he never asked for in the first place, I thought back to that blog I maintained and thought of how nice it would be if I’d had a schedule up there…

With all of that in my head I finished up with my clients got on a plane and went to NYC for spring break.

While I was up there I visited one of my mentors who also happened to be my very first client ever, Clo. In her office I started brainstorming. What if I had like a website where people could see my work, and I could have a calendar of my schedule up? Maybe that would help my clients. Ugh maintaining a blog was so much work though! Who would want to do that! No one…but there has to be an easier way… maybe I should just stop doing hair?

Clo heard my woes and told me to come with her to meet Tina, this psychic she knew in the City. Yeah plot twist. I kid you not, I walked into this room. The walls were white and it was barely big enough to fit two people at a table and a small couch. And this little old lady is sitting on this couch and she looks a total free spirit. Smoking cigarettes and packing the playing cards in her hands. She had tons of jewelry on there were incents burning.

So Clo throws me to the wolf like she want to go first and after 40 dollars and a few minutes in a smoky room with Tina, I came out wanting to start Campusbraider.com which morphed into The DRB after I came home and told my now business partner Kaye about it. Soon after we met with Sean Durkin form Axon tutoring, a digital peer to peer service and got involved with Four Athens.

So its been about a year since then and in that time with the help of Four Athens and programs with UGA we’ve been registered with the Secretary of State, I’ve learned basic development skills from an Intro to Front End Development class, we’ve learned the keys to building a business through the THINC UGA, FourAthens/ATDC accelerator, gotten legal advice from the UGA Law clinic, hired our technical founder Marcelo ,and spoken with and gotten advice from great people like Marc Gorlin, Bob Sullivan, Chanel Martin who made Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2015, on top of a bunch of other awesome milestones.

I think some of the reactions I that I get when I tell people I’m still a full time college student with a job and internship and life are interesting. They either say to take a semester off or drop out or ask why I would even try this at such a young age, or that I should finish school first because I need to focus on getting a job. That or they are quietly impressed that I’m not completely insane.

Although all three of us being students slows the progress some, I think being a student has helped me the most in this venture. The partnership Four Athens has with the entrepreneurship program created the Accelerator, which I highly doubt would have been free in a non-educational setting and taught us so much. Besides, being a student allows us easier access to call on alumni like Adam Levin, Marc Gorlin and Juliana Lutzi, Meredith Dean, and others for guidance and support.

If the industry needs it now, don’t wait on it. If you have the resources, do it now because if you don’t someone else will and that will royally SUCK. Being young allows time for failure, which is inevitable in one way or another. So if you have an idea and you’re still a student, don’t quit your day job (School. School is your day job). Take advantage of the resources and connections we pay so much for to build a decent foundation for after you graduate.

That’s what we’re doing. Right now thedrb.co is developing as fast as we can. We are registering and connecting stylists at UGA manually for now while we continue to develop the platform. Were also keeping an eye out for sponsors and investors.

Thank you for listening. If you want to know more, link up with me after this or like and follow The Dorm Room Beautician on our social platforms!

*story ends*

@thedrbco​ on Twitter and IG!  

[chairyapp-blog]

S/o to the UGA student who asked #TheDRBco about #fauxlocs today at the library! @amazinglywhitty can hook you up! She did these sleek #fauxlocs on herself! #FEATURE Submit by tagging @thedrbco or via DM! Complete our stylist form at thedrb.co to get connected for free! #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #thedrb #fauxlocs #FEATURE #braids #weave #locs #athensbraids #athenshair

[chairyapp-blog]

If hair is your hustle at or around UGA, we want to get you connected! We have some requests coming in for spring break! Fill out our form and we'll reach out to you when we get a request you can fill! It's FREE. #UGAonly #Athensonly #thedrb #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #athensga #athenshair #athensbraids #athensstylist #studentstylists

[chairyapp-blog]

Thanks for the s/o @lady_elizabeth7! There were SO many beautiful styles last night @ncnw_uga by talented collegiate stylists! Great job ladies! 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 Let us know who your campus hook up is and we'll give them a shoutout! Tag @thedrbco! Check out thedrb.co to register as a stylist so we can get you connected! #NCNWhairshow #thedrbco #thedormroombeautician #thedrb