I love bringing you the blogger spotlight each week so you can learn new and interesting things about my fellow beauty bloggers.
Toya Smith Marshall is a wife to her beloved husband, Victor, and a mother to her most breathtaking daughter, Sarai. At a young age, she fell in love with make-up, but it wasn't until her adult years, at the encouragement of her cousin, that she decided to truly study makeup artistry and make it a business. Toya graduated from the Von Lee International School of Aesthetics and became a freelance make-up artist, opening her own company, Makeda Make-Up Artistry. She enjoys all facets of the beauty business, but her first love lies in giving a woman simple tips that she can use to make herself feel and look her most beautiful. Toya's motto is "Own your beauty!" because she believes each woman is beautiful and should recognize and relish what makes her unique.
Besides being a makeup artist, Toya is a professional belly dancer and has just begun teaching a beginner belly dance class. Toya specializes in tribal fusion belly dance, which combines more traditional belly dance moves with some hip-hop and jazz-inspired movements, and a little bit of Toya's own special sass. She also has been trained in more traditional styles like Egyptian and Lebanese raqs sharqi. She is a member of The Niraja Dance Company, a nationally known troupe of Middle Eastern Dancers under the direction of Lotus Niraja. Toya performs under the name Makeda Maysá - Makeda meaning "beautiful" and Maysá meaning "walks with a proud and swinging gait."
Toya began her blog, "The Life of A Ladybug" as a personal blog, one that would allow her friends and anyone else who happened along, to know what was going on in her life at any moment and read what she felt about whatever topic happened to be on her mind. Eventually, as Toya became more and more immersed in the beauty business, "The Life of A Ladybug" became a full-fledged beauty blog, wherein Toya offers product reviews, industry news, and tips and tricks on how to maximize one's own beauty, using makeup and fashion. Now that her original blog is a beauty blog, she's created another blog, "Makeda" for her friends and readers who are just interested in what she has to say about belly dance, womanhood, African American issues, and life in general.
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