Behind The Scenes with...

I hope you enjoyed reading about Kelley Glover, the cover of the March/April Issue of Ujima Magazine. People have asked me how do you find people for your magazine? Well, this is a great example of how I meet people.

I attended a  BigAustin class and we were asked to go around the room and introduce ourselves. As we went around, Kelley introduced herself and spoke about her project U Better Sing!  We immediately made eye contact and smiled. I knew I wanted to learn more about her project.  After the training we approached each other and started talking and I found her project very interesting and I felt it was something the community needed to be aware of. We also realized we knew some of the same people, which is always nice.

Our first meeting, she came by the office to show me the demo of the show. It was interactive with singing, musical lessons and much more. There is also a story being told within the show by cartoon characters. It is fun and you want to sing. "Do, Re, Me Fa So, La, Ti, Doe" I immediately thought of The Sound of Music. I asked her to be a guest on the Ujima TV show. She accepted and I was able to introduce her project to our viewers. We had such a good time, learning about her musical career and listening to her talk about how her show. We even talked about her performing with Denzel Washington and Ruthie Foster. 

Denzel Washington

I still wanted to share her story and her journey of bringing her dream project to television. That is how she became the cover story for the magazine.

Kelley Glover was a fun interview and a friendship was developed. Please look for her show on KLRU and for information about at U Better Sing!

Thanks Kelley!

Behind The Scenes with the Makeover

As a reader of Ujima Magazine, you know the final story but I want to share what happened behind the scenes. Here we go. So what happened when Julie and I met for my color analysis appointment?

We met at my office and she brought in several boxes of swatches with different colors. But I could not start without finding out what she thought about my shirt. It had a pattern with a loud pink trim. I bought the shirt to hide my stomach area. However, Julie pointed out (in a nice way) it was too long and it made me look shorter and dumpy. The pattern was too busy as well. Julie explained it was not right for me, but the one good thing was the trim took some of the busy pattern away from my face.

When then started the color analysis. The process was not a fast one. I had never had it done so I didn’t know what to expect. Julie was very thorough. She went through each color swatch that were bundled in colors that went together (like a color wheel) and put it up against my face to judge whether or not it worked for me. So I sat and looked in the mirror and she would say “this one” or “this one.” It was hard to determine some of them because the colors look similar to me. But Julie had a keen eye and could determine what worked. She then placed the colors we would use together and the other ones back in her box.

By the end of the day, we had color swatches that worked for my skin color. Whew, it was a lot. But we got through it and I now know what colors to wear. We did have to take pictures so everyone could see my color swatches. Trying to find the correct pose so the swatches could be seen was tricky. We worked on this process for at least three hours.

I enjoyed it and it was interesting to look at colors and learn how they reflect on your skin color, hair and eyes. I admire people who can do this because one bad color can make you look washed out.

I recommend anyone who is updating their look and wardrobe, to think about getting a color analysis done.

Julie is great with this and I want to thank her for giving me her honest opinion and keeping it real!

You can find more information about Julie Lara at www.julielara.com or Julie@julielara.com.

Any comments? Please email me at damitashanklin@aol.com.

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