.Week One at The School of Make Up.

What a whirlwind of a week! Probably for the first time in my life I have been awake at 6am every morning for 5 consecutive working days. Don't get me wrong, I have had jobs before, but my shifts were a couple of early starts and for the rest of the week I didn't need to be in until the afternoon. Suprisingly, I have loved being up and catching the train every morning at 08.50 - Subject to Arriva Trains Wales running on time every day - so far so good! Not suprisingly, this weekend and every evening since, I have been totally and utterly shattered! I slept until 2.30 today, what a lazy so and so. But it's all in the name of make up, so I don't mind at all! Here is a rundown of my first week at The School of Make Up - The posts will get more exciting as I learn new things, and start taking photographs of my work, which will hopefully be this week...

Monday.

I was sick with nerves when I woke up - the 'starting a new school/college' kind of nerves you get. I suppose they're good nerves, but still not nice! I got to the station bright and early and managed to get on the correct train - first challenge of the day completed! I arrived in Stockport at 10am, and started to walk to the college. By this point I was SO scared - totally unnecessary, as the minute I stepped in the door I felt so at home. I met the girls (7 of us at the moment, and another one starting tomorrow), who were all lovely and we went upstairs to meet Elaine, the principal of the school. Principal is such a harsh word, especially for her because she is the warmest friendliest woman I have ever met! Monday was more of a get to know each other day, and going through health and safety etc! We did get our brushes though - YAY! I left the school on Monday, so excited for the rest of the week, and I slept like a baby!

Tuesday.

On Tuesday we met Sam Collins who is now a tutor at the school, but in actual fact she was a student at the school when she was 19! She has done amazingly, working with lots of fashion brands and travelling all over the world shooting campaigns, and she's not even thirty yet! Impressive. We started with the basics on Tuesday - Prepping of the skin and foundation. She told us to start a 'style file', which is basically a scrapbook filled with pictures of make up looks, broken down into sections - face, eyes, lips, hair etc. I started mine this weekend and think it's a fabulous idea as you can pull it out for inspiration whenever you like! We completed three foundation looks on Tuesday - light foundation, flawless look and heavy coverage. She did demos on every look and then we went away and practiced at our own fully lit make up table complete with all the products you could dream of! The heavy coverage look was insane, so so much product, but it would look amazing in photographs. With foundation looks done, we were ready for what tomorrow would bring.

Wednesday.

Sam taught us again on Wednesday, and it was highlighting, contouring, blusher and bronzer time. Okay so, contouring is a hell of a lot more complex than you think! I can do it fine on my own face, but when you are studying somebody elses face for parts to accentuate, and parts to shadow, it's a different ball game. I love how you can create cheekbones, slim down noses, make forheads seem smaller and literally remove bits of peoples' faces just from using make up. Make up really is art, it's an optical illusion and you are making something appear to be something that it isn't. I love it! It's alot more clever than most people think. Where was I?! We used the Sleek contour palette and it's really good and amazing value for money. I've never used it before, but i'll definitely be stocking up for my kit. In the afternoon we moved onto bronzer and blusher which was slightly easier than contouring, and I found a new make up crush in MAC Pink Swoon - must pick that up too!

Thursday. 

Sam taught us again, and it was eyebrows and lipliner today, which was good fun. Eyebrows can really change the structure of someone's face and I have always been a big fan of shaped, full brows. When I was at school I plucked them away to nothingness and it has taken me a long time to grow them back, but it was really good to be shown how to fake eyebrows for someone who has very little - I'm going to practice on my Mum, as she has quite thin, fair brows. Lipliner is quite basic to learn, you just need to know what shape the lips are and what you want to do to them. We practiced brows and lips in the morning and then did the whole look in the afternoon - base, contour, bronzer, blusher, brows and lips. We also ended up having a very intellectual conversation with Sam about Keeping up with the Kardashians, always a favourite subject of mine! FYI - All of them are immensly contoured if you couldn't already guess - beautiful? Yes. Contoured? HELL YES! This is what studying make up is doing to me. I can't watch a program, or read a magazine without studying everyones make up.

Friday.

Today we met the amazing Jon Mort. He is a highly respected make up artist who has been in the industry since the early 1980's. He has worked with the likes of Dolce & Gabbana, Roberto Cavali, Moschino, Jaeger, Paul Smith, Armand Basi, Deadmau5, Cascada, Ian Brown, Wayne Rooney, Jason Donovan, Mathew Williamson, Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Rachel Hunter, Fearn Cotton, Cat Deeley, Claudia Winkleman, Caprice, June Sarpong, Gary Barlow and has just come off a two month block of working on Emmerdale as the Make Up Supervisor. I was so nervous to meet him but he is lovely and has AMAZING teeth! Like seriously, I want teeth like that. Anyway, I digress. We learnt a 'no make up' make up look with Jon and then moved onto false lashes - individual and strip. No make up look is a very interesting look, and you do occasionally have to use more make up than you would like to use. Lashes were quite straight forward, only because I love to wear them myself, and i'm qualified in lash extensions so i'm quite comfortable using them. We also got our make up kits on Friday AND another brush set - win.

So that was my first week over at The School of Make Up. I have so much to soak in and my mind has been on make up 24/7 since last Monday - Lets face it, I could be thinking of worse things! Tomorrow we start Bridal make up, so we will see what next week brings along. I'm sure I will still love it as much as I do now come next Friday. Bring on the next 23 weeks, and an SOM night out in Manchester with my make up ladies soon. I can tell you one thing for certain - after waiting twenty years to discover something I truly love doing and discovering my passion... I can safely say I have!

Hope you have all had a lovely weekend.

Kate x