A NURSE has embarked upon a second career by opening her own salon.

Olivia Edghill-Zephyr has opened Zephyr's Unisex Salon on Leonard Street in Orford.

She will balance her new career with working as a nurse at Apple Court Care Home on Church Street.

The mum-of-four learned how to braid hair as a girl growing up in Georgetown, Guyana, before moving to Warrington 11 years ago.

She said: "In Guyana I would do different things with people's hair like braiding or relaxing it.

"When I first came to the UK there wasn't anybody here who could do black hair, particularly in Warrington.

"A lot of the time my friends would ask me if I could braid, cut or relax their hair, and people didn't know what to do with their children's hair, so they would ask my advice."

She was inspired to enrol to do a hairdressing qualification at Warrington Collegiate, with Olivia and husband Andrew Zephyr's home in Orford serving as a makeshift Afro-Caribbean salon while they searched for a permanent premises.

Olivia added: "Eventually, I decided to go to college to train professionally and halfway through the course we were getting a great demand for people asking me to do their hair, so we decided to open our own salon.

"We first tried to run it from our friend's barbers shop but that didn't work out, so we decided that we needed a place of our own.

"While we were waiting to find a place for the salon I was doing people's hair at home, but we've finally found the building where we can do it."

Zephyr's Unisex Salon opened on Monday, August 28 and can also cater for European hair.