Hi, my name is Kylea Wherry and I decided I wanted to start a career in nails after the birth of my first son in 2010, my job as a mental health worker at the time couldn’t offer me the flexibility I needed as a new Mum, so I decided I needed to take a different career path and chose Essential Nails.
I found EN online and was immediately excited as I could learn from home and in my own time, which is why it took me ages to actually submit my final work…. as clearly, you don’t have a lot of time as a new Mum, but the flexibility and no time limit was perfect. After a house build and another son a few years later I’d even gone and lost all the work that was set to be sent off for assessment, but the EN team couldn’t help me enough and sent me out more learning material to enable me to finally submit. I also chose to pay in installments which again really made it possible.
The training worked brilliant for me, I’m a very visual learner so I loved the DVD, the reading material you received was so informative, 6 years on and I’ll still pull it out to read up on.
My favourite system is liquid and powder, I love to create a lot of not polish design work with colored acrylic. I’ll encapsulate anything if it lies around long enough.
I found YouTube very helpful, I will regularly watch nail channels and practice for hours, I’ve recently created my own which is receiving such lovely feedback. I’ve also become a promoter for glitterarty nails who I work closely with, being the face of their products and working alongside some externally talented individuals has pushed my abilities to new levels. I am also now a qualified educator, completing my AET in February and have since held acrylic development days with many nail techs, the furthest taking an 11 hour round trip to me, and I even flew to Northern Ireland to hold a workshop at a salon there.
To be featured in Scratch magazine is a dream, and seeing myself in there was so surreal. Juggling mum life and business life is sometimes hard, so to receive the recognition for my work makes that hard decision of quitting my job and chasing a new career 100% the best thing I’ve ever done.
I’m still currently working from my kitchen, I’ve tailored a writing bureau into a nail desk, but it looks more like Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, with glitters, jewels, pots and potions everywhere, and sadly I’ve seriously outgrown it. So my next huge adventure is to build my own salon, it will have a training room and possibly space to accommodate two more nail techs.