MY NAME IS IJEOMA [FONDLY KNOWN AS IJ]

I am a creative who constantly chooses evolution and growth in all facets of my life. I repeat mindfulness is crucial to me. My ‘why’ is something I always draw my focus back to. It keeps me grounded, inspired, and in tune with the present moment. I am a very proud African ( born and raised in Kenya by a Nigerian father and a Kenyan mother). I am also a wife and a homemaker to a fantastic British man. I mention these two facts about me because they are core to who I am, the choices I make, and how I see the world.

Like most women, my beauty story began when I was young. I remember seeing my mother putting on lipstick to simply read the paper and sip on her tea. I remember seeing my older sister always stuff a makeup bag in her handbag and double-check her lips before she got out of the car. Early on, I knew beauty was for ritual and facing the world. After graduating from university, I began dabbling in professional makeup artistry. The compliments and encouragement of friends fired me up and in a blink of an eye, I was suddenly a makeup artist. I binge-watched YouTube videos, practiced endlessly, and invested in masterclasses and one-on-one sessions with established artists. It felt good, natural and truly I became lost in the wonder of it all. And it is true what they say, every artist has a signature. And for me, it was skin. The skin had to be impeccable and that’s how I found myself down the rabbit hole of skincare. Any makeup artist worth their salt will tell you how important skin prep is before makeup application. Skin prep is all about understanding skin and skincare. It is through learning about skincare that I fell in love with skincare and found myself creating beauty content online. Almost a decade has passed and I and my creativity have grown. I now also added my love of fragrance to my content creation. I remember the way my mother and older sister took fragrance so seriously. Maybe a part of me was waiting to grow up so I could take it seriously. So, here I am, gratefully and humbly, story-telling through my love for skincare and fragrance

And no, I didn’t forget that food is a part of my mission statement! Food was and is a powerful love language for me. So powerful, that in my twenties I came up with a term, the food story. The food story, to me, is understanding why we eat what we eat, what we eat, and apart from sustenance, the other reasons why we eat. The older I get, the more important my food story becomes for me as a woman. We are living in a time when this conversation is a sensitive one. I am still figuring out how I share my food story in a way that inspires others to discover their own food stories. But as I said, I am a creative. I trust that it will come to me. It always does. And that will be too will be a part of the story.