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Beauty Therapy Courses

a beauty student giving a woman a facial
Getting Ahead

Beauty Therapy Courses at South Downs Campus

Are you studying a Beauty Therapy course at South Downs Campus in September? If so, you’re in the right place!

We have put together the following ‘Getting Ahead’ work to help you prep for your course over the summer.

We look forward to you starting College with us soon!

a beauty students giving someone a manicure

While on your course next year, you will be carrying out manicure, pedicure and nail art treatments. To enable you to carry out professional and safe treatments on your client, you need to know about the nail and what affects its growth rate and how we as therapists can help this. 

Complete the questions and create a nail art design of your choice using this template. 

  1. What is the function of our nails? (Why do we have fingernails and toenails?) 
  1. If you were to lose your entire fingernail, how long in months would it take to grow back fully? 
  1. If you were to lose your entire toenail, how long in months would it take to grow back fully? 

Nail Techniques 

The below videos are of the types of nail art techniques you will be learning on the course next year. Can you recreate any of these at home? 

How to Freehand Nail Art Like a Pro

Easy Rhinestone Nail Art

3 Ways to Apply Nail Art Transfer Foils

Did you know? Shridhar Chillal, from Maharashtra, India holds the Guinness World Record for having the longest fingernails on one hand. If you were to add up the length of each fingernail on Shridhar’s left hand, the total length is 909.6 cm – that’s almost 10 metres long! He stopped cutting his fingernails in 1952, so he has been growing his nails for over 60 years!

Whilst on your course, our aim is to teach you the skills that you will need to become a professional Beauty Therapist and support you in achieving your qualification. You will learn about the function of our skin, different skin types and conditions that affect the skin.

What type of skin do you have?

  1. Look at your own skin, cleanse your skin before you go to bed, do not put any night creams or products on your face. When you wake up, look, touch and feel your skin. What do you see? Write it down.
  2. Research the four main skin types and the common characteristics which may accompany them.
  3. As an extension activity, you could research different skin conditions and factors that affect them, such as environmental conditions like heat.

Present your findings in whatever form you want. Remember to include images. Does your skin fit with any one of those descriptions?

How to Know Your Skin Type

Treating Oily Skin with Surface Dehydration

Did you know?

  • Every 28 days your skin completely renews itself. This is why it is important to start eating healthily; in 28 days your skin will have totally renewed itself with healthier vitamins! We shed between 30,000 and 40,000 dead skin cells a day, so the top layer of the skin you are looking at now will be dust in a month’s time.
  • The skin is the largest organ in the body; it has specific vital functions. It protects against heat, sunlight, injury and infection.
  • The thinnest skin is found on your eyelids, where it is only 0.02 mm thick. The thickest skin is found on your feet, where it is 1.4 mm thick.
  • The skin on your knuckles can stretch way more than the skin on your arms.
  • The average person’s skin weighs 9 pounds and spans 21 square feet.
  • Lighter skin tones appeared roughly 20,000 to 50,000 years ago as people migrated to colder climates and evolved lighter skin to facilitate vitamin D production.
  • Your skin can release up to 3 gallons of sweat in hot weather!

Beauty Therapy has progressed tremendously throughout the years and, with new technology ever-emerging, we are a fast-paced and innovative industry. Historically, different cultures used different natural products to enhance beauty. Have a go at the task below to explore the interesting evolution of Beauty Therapy.

For this task, you need to produce fact sheets explaining how Beauty Therapy has evolved through the ages and within different ethnic cultures.

You should base your work around the following cultures:

  • Indian
  • Hawaiian
  • Egyptian
  • Greek
  • Chinese

Please include the following information for each culture:

  • The treatments or beauty products they used historically
  • Why they used them
  • The benefits of using them
  • If they are still used today

Treatments

The below videos are a taste of some of the treatments you will come across in your research, although there are many more to discover.

Sugaring

Hawaiian Lomi Lomi Massage

Indian Threading in Malaysia

Did you know? Kohl liner was associated with the Egyptians and was regularly used in ritual. Egyptians also exaggerated their eyes with bold liner in respect of the gods, as they believed it possessed magical properties in providing protection from diseases and warded off the Evil Eye.

Get ahead and read areas of interest in your course textbook: Level 2 Technical Certificate in Beauty Therapy (ISBN – 978-1-5104-1622-2)

Please email your activity responses to Glenda Jones – glenda.jones@hsdc.ac.uk & Sonia Ford – sonia.ford@hsdc.ac.uk  

*This is a representation of your learning space and may not be the exact room you will be using

My time at the college was definitely life changing, I have learnt a lot of new skills, and obviously it’s a completely new experience. The support was great, there was always people there to help and try make it as easy as they can for you. The college is really fantastic, it has helped me on the way to get to what I want to achieve within my career goals.

Erin Morgan, BTEC student

“HSDC provided me with the opportunity for autonomous study and the choice of subjects that I wanted to study, which helped me develop relevant knowledge as well as relevant skills for the workplace.”

Lucas Ratcliffe, A Level and CTEC student

The teaching has been really good, I’ve loved all of my teachers, they’ve all been really nice and supportive.

Jodie Hook