WHY I GOT INTO CONTENT CREATION
Well—now that you're here, we can finally begin.
Welcome to my blog, created exclusively for you!
I am so excited! Getting the opportunity to write about beauty has been a fantasy of mine and here we are! I feel like I can be more personal, without putting it out there for everyone on social to comment on etc. Only the people who love me most are here. I'm excited you are one of them!
I wanted to share a little about me: I have always loved makeup. I am 43 years old, and when I was a kid, there was no internet. At that time magazines were everything. My childhood BFF, Brie and I would walk down to the drug store and buy magazines. We loved YM, Seventeen and Bop! Holy shit. If you remember those, when did we get so old? We would scour the pages and look at celebrities and ads and find makeup we liked. I would save my money, go buy makeup and try to replicate what I saw. Good grief. It looked terrible, but it was so much fun.
In High School, I still didn't know what I was doing. I was an only child, so there was no big sister to teach me. My mom surely didn't know anything about makeup either. She did take me to the mall to buy makeup at Macy's and I was in awe of the girls that worked there. Beautiful, magical people that knew about makeup.
In my senior photos I wore a brown, Maybelline eyeliner that doubled as both eyeliner and lipliner. I paired it with my favorite brown, Revlon lipstick in the shade Coffee Bean. My foundation was too pale, and I wore no blush or bronzer. I added a coat of mascara and felt like I looked incredible. LOL.
I stayed local for college. I went to the Santa Rosa Junior College and graduated from Sonoma State University. I was paying for college and rent myself, while working as a waitress at night. I was still short on money, so I needed another job. I eventually landed my DREAM job at the MAC Counter in Macy's. It was love at first sight. The products were the best in the beauty space at that time. My coworkers quickly became some of my closest friends, and finally I learned about all things makeup.
Being a #macgirl was such a special time in my life. I couldn't wait to graduate college to start my career with them. I graduated with a degree in Economics, and proceeded to stay with MAC for the next 13 years. For my last 9 with the company, I was the Regional Sales Manager of San Francisco.
FAST FORWARD…
I married to Chris, had Carmine (my oldest son) and got pregnant with Luca (my youngest son). I made a lot of decisions during that pregnancy. I wanted to move from the East Bay, back to Santa Rosa to be closer to family. I wanted to quit my job, be a stay at home mom and live a more simple life. When Luca was 4 months old, mission accomplished. We were back home. It felt like such a big relief. At first…
I didn't expect being a stay at home mom to feel so difficult. I was at home with a baby and a 2 year old and my days felt endless. I had worked a job since I was 16 years old, and I had no idea what to do with myself. I didn't want to go back to work a “real” job, but I needed a creative outlet. I thought that it could be fun to freelance as a makeup artist. But it seemed like such a daunting undertaking- I had no portfolio of my work - not one picture! (remember I was a sales manager, not a makeup artist for the previous 10 years), no website, no instagram, no clients or leads, and no real kit. Other than my skillset, I started from the absolute bottom.
It's been 7 years and let's just say I figured it out. Doing makeup again, was so rewarding. I LOVED working with my clients, revealing their face to them and seeing the look in their eye. The way they immediately projected such confidence.
I got high off seeing the way they felt about themselves. It seems so silly that makeup can make such a big difference, but it does!
I have never thought of myself as being a great makeup artist. I definitely feel like I'm good at what I do, but my niche is pretty narrow. Natural glam and education is what I feel most comfortable with. I will never be the person who turns you into a lion at Halloween or does a big 'ol cut crease with glitter, etc.
I did love the kudos from clients who were in love with their makeup, but it actually started to drive me crazy. Let me explain. Woman over 40 in particular would have the strongest response. These were moms doing family photos, mothers of the bride and groom etc. They would sit in my chair and word vomit their insecurities. “OMG I'm so bad at makeup, I literally don't know what I'm doing, I didn't do my brows, I don't know what you are going to do with all these wrinkles,” yada yada. I can't tell you how many of these woman got tears in their eyes when they saw themselves. I have had women tell me they have never felt beautiful in their entire lives, but in that moment they did.
Back to this driving me crazy. While I appreciate the ego stroke, this was NOT a lot of makeup. This was some well placed products to enhance your features. This is not rocket science. In fact, I'm positive that you could do it at home, I would tell them. That is where the concept of me doing makeup lessons began. I wanted to teach these women to fish, so they can feed themselves for the rest of their lives. It was a smashing success. Client after client would come with their makeup bag to learn the magic of what could be done everyday in 5-10 minutes.
I got irritated again, when I realized a huge portion of the women I saw at weddings, who felt like I turned them into Cinderella for the day, didn't live around here. They didn't have a real way to come back and do a lesson. It made me sad, because I realized an entire generation of women and then some, had no makeup training growing up (just like me). They never got their job at the MAC counter to learn. I could help them! I also knew what to do with fine lines and wrinkles. I knew first hand how things change as we age, and what to do about it. Despite tremendous insecurity about showing my face on camera, during the pandemic, I started creating content. As a woman over 40, I didn't see a lot of content creators in the beauty space, whose content I would want to learn from. They were talking about wrinkle cream, not teaching about makeup.
I still get nervous to make videos. Putting yourself out there is tremendously uncomfortable. I look like I'm constipated half the time, because I just want to do a good job. LOL. My “why” is YOU. I want to give YOU the confidence that I have given to thousands of women in real life. To know how to use makeup, what to buy and how to use. That's why we are all here. I'm sorry this was a novel, and this will NOT be the TLDR format of my blog! I promise.
Thanks for listening to my story. I just wanted to share a little bit about who am I am! Stay for some actual tips in the next edition! Love you!!!!