EGD: Lash Paradise Beauty Lounge

Although I don’t wildly spend money on things I can’t afford, I’d like to say I have expensive taste. I enjoy looking at clothes, buying prestige brands when I shop for makeup, and not settling for store brand things when I know I can get the national brand names. I’m not great at saving (though I try), and I dunno… I wanna be fancy, I guess.

My boyfriend’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Torianna, has her cosmetology license and has been working doing hair (blowouts, specifically) and lashes for years at this point. She started her own LLC doing lashes and cleverly named it after herself: Lash Paradise. (Torianna’s last name is Paradise—cool, right?) She started by working out of her home in a cute little room in the house she and her two children shared with her mother and stepfather. There were cute and bougie lash-themed decorations, a nice bed lined with that crinkly paper you find in the doctor’s office on a roll, a small rolly-stool for the tech to sit while she’s working, and a nice little organizer on the side with all of her tools and supplies.

Over the years, she’s built up her clientele, and as a fellow woman with expensive taste, she also had dreams of having a high-end salon.

During the pandemic, she came to my boyfriend and me and announced she found a space and was going to rent it for her own salon. She wanted me to design the logo and signage and my boyfriend would take care of getting the collateral fabricated and he would install.

I was trying to wait until the salon’s grand opening before posting this blog, but the grand opening was also supposed to be a couple of months ago. The salon is open and operating and books fast! Contact and location info will be at the bottom of this post.

Lash Paradise Beauty Lounge, located at 127 Greentree Rd Ste 3, Blackwood, NJ 08012, is not too far from the on-ramp to 42 N (North-South Freeway) with easy access to Deptford shopping areas, 295 N and S, and the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin bridges to Philadelphia. It’s also close to the AC Expressway, linking Philadelphia to Atlantic City, and Rt 322 for a more scenic route to the southern shore points.

You can call the salon at (856) 535-8569 or visit their website at https://lashparadisebeautylounge.com/home to book an appointment.

Wine Bar

While working at the sign shop, I met a woman who was an important part of the company, although she was not an employee, manager or co-owner. Rather, she was a family friend who helped with the finance stuff and would occasionally bring the shop some work.

One of the projects she brought along was for us to build a custom over-the-door sign for the wine bar in a restaurant owned by a friend of hers.

She spoke with my boss, then came to me with her idea, giving me full rights to creativity. This is what I came up with, approval soon following.

The idea was to take the top portion of a barrel (imagine taking a large wine barrel and cutting just below the top band) and turning it into a custom sign with 3-D elements such as laser- and router-cut and painted acrylic letters and shapes affixed to the surface with studs and adhesive.

Unfortunately, the plan fell through, so we were never able to bring this sign to life. It sits memorialized in its 2-D state in my portfolio.

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This was designed while I was employed at Urban Sign & Crane, Inc.