My business week v. 48

Which intense week corner! It's the final sprint now before all the puzzle pieces are to be in place at the beginning of January, just pull off this patch first and persevere :)

I do not have a lot of pictures from the week because there has been so much else in my head, but it should be enough anyway!

Big changes
Every New Year's Eve I write what I think will happen during the new year, I do not remember at all what I wrote last year but I vet that I absolutely did not think my life would look like it does now.

I have written in posts before that I have had a lot of inner stress and that is because I have been in several situations that I could not do anything about at once - while I have known that big changes must happen and will soon come as a bomb . In part, it's about the relocation that I told you about last week, that we needed to find new premises for the salon. But above all, it has been so on the private front, which has been the biggest pressure and I am completely convinced that this is why I have been ill all the time, I really do not feel good when I can not influence a situation that I do not feel comfortable in I'm a problem solver who tackles things right away, so when I can do nothing but wait and adjust to others, I feel really bad and it takes 1 second for a person to drain me of energy then.

But now things have finally started to happen and even though it did not turn out as I had hoped on all levels, I feel better that something in any case happens! Then I am very adaptable too and now that things are as they are, I accept it and see everything from a positive point of view - everything will be great!

The salon move is in full swing and we are cleaning so it's bouncing around and on Tuesday Miska and I also packed the first moving load from the house we live in and have now moved into my friend and colleague Annika's guest house which she has in the garden. I did not know that 2 weeks ago, fast pucks!

The next change is that with the salon move (which will take place as early as January 1), Miska and I will no longer have an office at the salon because it is too small, so I will mostly work from home and only go in from time to time to take regular customers etc.

Annika is pregnant too and we will be part of the birth and then help during the first time (it was planned before) so it was good timing actually! Both the salon move and the house move solved many problems! :)

So we pull off the patch now with moving chaos and super long to do list in December, but then there will be a booking stop for me in January when I only work from home and wait for the birth! What a thing!!

I have a bad habit of biting my lips and when I am stressed it goes completely out of control, now the wounds have become blisters that sting crazy all the time! Luckily, you work in a salon with free access to anesthetic cream;) It really is the savior in need!

Schedule puzzles and teamwork
Everything about the salon move that we have dealt with before has been big things such as emptying and renovating the new premises, rental notices and notice periods, planning where we are going to save and what is to be sold, dates for moving, finances etc.

Now, however, we have come so far that the staff has become involved and started to help with cleaning and ideas! They have also received a schedule proposal which I am waiting for everyone to approve so that I can change it in the booking system. They get a pay rise, 6-hour days and a much better working environment in the new salon, so they are happy and excited! We have also been to the new room with them and shown what it looks like and they think it is so nice! Really fun :)

The schedule has really been a puzzle because they can not work more than three people at a time and mostly only have to work two at a time. So we increase the opening hours and work shifts with morning shifts / evening shifts instead. Customers are very happy with this! :) Many people work 10-18 themselves, which is our opening hours at the moment and then they can never book an appointment.

Then it has changed a bit regarding just "opening hours" and it is that the opening hours only apply to customer bookings. So we are not open as a store in the same way, but sometimes we may need to close the door if we are crazy about treatments and can not keep track of the reception at the same time. But of course the door is open as much as possible!

Clean the salon and receive customers during the day and complete info, schedules and arrangements in the evenings, this is how large parts of my week have looked like! Our cottage is so heavenly cozy, this is how I sit with my cat Viktoria in my arms and cuddle, brilliant ♥

December promotions
Now December has come and I am so happy about it actually! It is always more booked in the schedule compared to the autumn and I also love New Year's make-up, Christmas gift tips and our nice white, crispy Christmas signage in the shop with white Christmas tree, lanterns and glittery packages ♥

This is what it looks like on our website now:

Our logo is so heavenly good because it blends into so much, e.g. these nice Christmas balls :)

We have many palettes (a lot on sale), sets and make-up brushes and other good Christmas gift tips in the webshop and store! This week I have sorted in the webshop and collected all Christmas gift tips this link for you who want help on the stack!

As usual, you will find this month's "get the look" in the webshop as well, this New Year's make-up is available step by step in this post!

We do New Year's make-up at Creative Makeup also for you who live near Uppsala and have the opportunity to come to our salon! Right now Lisa has times between 12-14 but we open the schedule more when it fills up and maybe that I come in and work too, then it will be the 7th year in a row that I work New Year's Eve :)

And for all the December holidays, I think you should treat the environment to natural glitter that is degradable in nature instead of plastic glitter :) These from Mood Wood are made of cellulose from wood!

Clean up my makeup studio
From living in a large villa to living in a small cottage is a challenge for a beauty fan like me! I have had an entire room as a make-up studio at home where I took all my make-up pictures and product pictures for the blog / webshop and there I have had shelves along all the walls that are full of make-up and products and drawers that have been completely crammed! When you start to have a box for only lipstick and a box for only lip gloss, you know that it starts to go too far haha.

The thing is that I basically only use things that we sell ourselves, except when I make fun product reviews but then everything is tested a few times and then it ends up in the "will never use the collection again". I have been able to justify this when I lived with my partner because then I thought "but this can be used by my sister!" or "this one the kids will love when they start putting on more make-up". Since the majority of the things are barely used anyway, I have closed my eyes to;)

But now I can in no way justify that “I save all these products as I do Never will use just because I like them ”. So I got a lump in my stomach (material love I know haha) pack everything in garbage bags and let my colleagues at the salon pick what they wanted! Guess if they were happy!

Here Ida and Olga have started chopping in on the first of the four garbage bags;) When they finished cleaning, our interns also got to chop in, talk about luxury internships haha!

No step-by-step makeup this week
I have published two make - ups this week but they are timed from last week. Because with the move, it has taken time to get the photo corner in order so I have not been able to do a single makeup look here yet. Our cottage has an upper floor where half is now a walk in closet (an unlucky but practical variant hehe) and the other half is a make-up and photo corner.

Now it is complete except that I do not have a light background, at home I had a white painted wall behind me so I never had to think about it. However, I found a roll of white oilcloth in the salon when we cleaned and it must work well to nail it up? :)

I have tested the light though and it works brilliantly, this is what it looks like now before the background is fixed:

A beige background would have worked but the windows are sabbath and it has a sloping ceiling so I have to sit in the middle of the room haha :)

So briefly, the week has been characterized by moving both work and private life and all the work and fixing that it entails. For example, we have started selling salon items at Blocket and have a small flea market corner in the waiting room and have removed a lot of stuff already! Thursday started with a staff meeting and then I had 6 customers and stood a lot in the reception so it had been the only relatively normal day of the whole week.

Today's project will be to get that photo background so that blogging rolls on as usual next week!

Have a nice Sunday and first Advent everyone! :) Hugs are ♥

Green cat eye tutorial

Hello!

I do not write product list on today's make-up because one of the products is a sample for our make-up brand and because our niche is not official yet, I skip writing product list completely instead;)

You can only see it as inspiration!

Light purple sweater, light purple in the corner of the eye and dark purple lips. Love!

Love to make a cat eye shape where you also make a dark "spike" in the corner of the eye for extra effect :)

  1. Eyeshadow primer
    Light purple shimmer shadow in the corner of the eye
  2. Copper shadow in the middle of the eyelid
  3. Dark green shadow at the end of the eyelid and then copper color along the globe line and blur together
  4. Dark green eyeliner along the waterline
    Green eye shadow under the eye and as eyeliner with wing using a moistened brush
    More purple shimmer under the brow, under the eyeliner and at the bottom of the lower lash line
  5. Black mascara on all lashes

Clear!

Hugs are! ♥

Sunset makeup tutorial

When I started experimenting with colorful eyeshadows type 9 (?) Years ago, I loved doing different "sunset makeups" with colors in yellow, red and orange on the eyelids like a sunset and then blue under the eyes like water.

Today I got hungry for it again and I still love it! :)

Face primer - Pixi Flawless & Poreless Primer
Concealer - Pixi Pat Away Concealing Base (2 Nude)
Foundation -
glo Pressed Base (Golden medium)
Powder that neutralizes redness - glo Redness relief powder
Contouring - Contouring Palette (2)
Rouge - Blush (35)
Highlighter - Pixi Glow-Y-Powder (London luster)
Fixing Mist - Pixi Makeup Fixing Mist
Powder - Paese Bamboo Silk Powder

Eyebrows - glo Micro Brow Pencil (Raven)

Lips - Benecos Natural Lip Liner (Brown)

All products are available for purchase in my web shop creativemakeup.se!

So nice with make-up that are completely different colors on the top than the bottom I think! There will probably be more of these soon, I suspect;)

  1. Eyeshadow primer, Pixi eye bright primer
    Warm brown eye shadow along the globe line and at the end of the eyelid, glo Shadow Palette (Mixed Metals)
  2. Red eye shadow at the end of the eyelid and fade a little into the brown color
  3. Yellow eyeshadow on the rest of the eyelid with fade it so much in the red that it almost turns orange, then I put more yellow in the middle of the eyelid so that it is a little more bright just there
  4. Light turquoise eye shadow in the corner of the eye, Paese Opal Eyeshadow (Saint Tropez)
    Dark blue eyeliner along the waterline, Paese Linea Automatic Liner (Blue Glam)
  5. Blue eye shadow along the lower lash line, Paese Neo Eyeshadow (661)
  6. Black eye shadow along the upper lash line and smoky in the outer corner of the eye, tie together a little with the blue on the underside, Paese cashmere eyeshadow (602)
  7. Blue glitter in the corner of the eye and in the middle under the eye and gold glitter in the middle of the eyelid, Mood Wood Natural Glitter (Blue and Gold) attached with Kryolan Cake Liner Sealer - Natural glitter that is biodegradable in nature woop woop!
    And a little light turquoise shadow from the outer corner of the eye and outwards as well
  8. Black mascara on all lashes, Magnetic lash mascara

Clear!

Hugs are! ♥

My business week v. 46 & 47

What was fun about not blogging about my work week last Sunday was to see that people missed the post - it means that it is appreciated! :) Already on Sunday night I got questions about where the post was somewhere haha.

Now two weeks will come in the same post instead - and it has been two intense weeks I can tell!

The first samples for our make-up brand!
It will take a while before we know if the concept around our makeup brand is possible to launch at all, but right now we are running with the 100% setting that it will work! We have a special niche and since it should not be such expensive products, everything is a price issue. Is it possible to manufacture non-standard products without raising prices? There is so much to do and I have already learned a lot about the process!

In my Sunday post 2 weeks ago, I told you that we have just started contacting different manufacturers, I was so Excited! I got a faster response than I thought and for one of the products I got our first samples from a factory in Milan last Friday, waaah so much fun !! Not finished proposals for the final product, but samples of different textures and then different color samples. Because you have to start by approving different qualities etc., there is no point in proceeding with the entire packaging etc. if we do not think that the contents are sufficient.

Testing makeup is something I am used to, so when we have found the right one, I know a good product when I see it;) So this is the funniest and easiest piece!

I also have contact with two other factories: one in the Netherlands that manufactures packaging in environmentally friendly bioplastics that we are investigating the possibilities of using. Such plastic has not really entered the cosmetics industry yet, so it is not certain that we can row it ashore. The 3rd factory is located in France and can manufacture another product that the factory in Milan cannot make.

What takes the longest time is that you have to decide all the thousands of details with ingredients, packaging, assembly, printing, etc. before you get to know the price. So it can happen that we do all the work and then when we count on it, it becomes too expensive to fit our concept.

So there are many aspects that you have to think about :) But it's just a matter of reviewing all the possibilities and doing your best along the way!

Happy girl who just got the package home at half past nine in the evening after a late work day! Now it's testing, testing!

Take the opportunity to use Annika's pregnant belly
Annika's delivery is scheduled for January 10 and she has opened her schedule until Christmas and is fully booked! She works a little longer than Christmas but then she needs to take all return visits, that includes return visits so she can not do a new tattoo on her last day of work :)

The stomach grows so it cracks and we take the opportunity to take advantage of this with body paintings and pictures - e.g. Helene wanted an advertising image to show that she also performs pregnancy massage. Look how nice it turned out:

Ida took the picture and I edited away the background and some small edits with light etc. then it turned out this good! Imagine that there is a little baby in there :)

The new room is nailed!
Great things happen at the salon too! 2 weeks ago I wrote that we had looked at another room and that everything was still a big question mark - but now it's starting to work out!

Since we did not find any other room that felt completely optimal (and you almost always have to sign a contract for 3 years so you do not want to move to something that does not feel quite right), we have decided to move back to our previous room as Annika had before we merged. She still owns it :)

That room is very nice and absolutely perfect on all levels except the small detail that it is too small. BUT after being a little tricky, we have achieved great things anyway! We will increase the opening hours so that the makeup artists can work shifts instead, we have 4 makeup artists so if 2 work in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, it does not matter that it is small. Because we can still fix 2 treatment rooms and a make-up studio / shop and that goes a long way.

I think customers will like the smaller salon more actually. Everyone thinks our current store is so luxurious and nice and it looks good when there are a lot of people at once. But when it comes down to it, customers prefer when it is calm and quiet and think it is super cozy to be able to enter our smaller treatment rooms instead of being out in the makeup studio. So a less cozy salon with fewer people working at the same time is actually not a stupid idea.

There are of course some things that are negative about moving to smaller, the biggest thing is that our talented barber Niclas will unfortunately not fit for long :( But on the whole we have got everything so good that it actually feels just right !

Found an old picture from when Annika had her salon in this room 4 years ago! Now, however, it has been rented out and they have put up thousands of things on the walls and a wall has been completely moved, so we have to start by filling, painting and building a wall before we can move in.

Checklists to curse
This week has mostly been a planning week in fact! There is so much to be fixed with the new premises that the first part of the to-do list only consisted of "this-we-have-to-decide-points".

First you have to do a good planning and then you can roll up your sleeves and start bending off all points :) When you have a lot to do and must be efficient, it is easy to just start, but to do a proper planning first is worth every second!

The biggest project is all our things. We have been spoiled with a huge room and we have filled it up, believe me;) We are obsessed with storage and have an unreasonable number of shelves, chests of drawers, wardrobes and cabinets that are filled with various good-to-have things. Then we have millions of small tables, regular tables, bar tables and signage such as artificial grass, fake plants, signs. You have no idea how much we have to get rid of haha.

So it was the largest list and it is divided into categories:
1. Sell on Blocket (have photographed everything this week!)
2. Flea market (type when we have emptied the premises and we announce that everything that is left is for sale)
3. Take home, much of what we have is private stuff that we have had here such as lamps, mirrors, etc.
4. The last category is save / store, things we can not use but which we do not want to throw away.

Here I am with the checklist in full swing already on the bus to work! At each point you can have a chat conversation (these are the yellow bubbles on the left side) and I went in a little later than Miska and Annika just this day so the whole bus trip I sat and chatted with them about lots of different points. 10 different conversations at the same time, efficiently and well!

Many late work nights
I have stayed at the salon after closing several evenings, it is so quiet and cozy there then! Sometimes you have periods where you would rather go home earlier and work on the couch and sometimes I could stay at the salon until midnight if no one stopped me.

Here you can definitely sit with a cup of tea and cuddle in the evenings;)

When it is dark outside and extinguished inside, our salon is the nicest I think, with pink lights and light loops!

One of the evenings I had a customer after closing also because she went so far that she would not have time to come to us earlier :)

Bridal makeup in Huddinge
Last Saturday was a great day! Up at 5 in the morning to go to Uppsala and pick up my colleague Lisa before we went to Huddinge for a bridal makeup and 5 make-up make-up!

I never take bookings like this outside the salon anymore, but partly this was a little extra fun because I put on make-up at her sister's wedding 4 years ago and then she became a regular customer in the webshop. And then I got the question when I was in a good mood and so she approved the price despite a fairly high amount for the trip there, so the details played a lot too;)

Lisa and I did 3 make-ups each and did it at a hair salon in Huddinge so everything went so smoothly!

Looking for a new makeup artist
With our new schedules, we need our regular makeup artists more on weekdays and thus we are looking for another person who can work on Saturdays. I have announced this in our channels this week!

If you are (or know someone who is) a makeup artist and are interested in weekend jobs and the opportunity to work extra when needed, email me at jobb@creativemakeup.se as quickly as possible :)

Next week you will get more updates about salon moves and changes! I can not write more here until everything is 100% nailed and the staff has been informed :)

Hugs are! ♥

Glitter winter makeup

Hello!

There have been so many gloomy make-ups lately so now I felt for glitter and color! A nice contrast to a nice gray sweater and fixed released hair :) A bit wintry!

Face primer - Pixi Flawless & Poreless Primer
Concealer - Pixi Pat Away Concealing Base (2 Nude)
Foundation -
glo Pressed Base (Golden medium)
Powder that neutralizes redness - glo Redness relief powder
Contouring - Contouring Palette (2)
Rouge - Blush (35)
Highlighter - Pixi Glow-Y-Powder (London luster)
Fixing Mist - Pixi Makeup Fixing Mist
Powder - Paese Bamboo Silk Powder

Eyebrows - glo Micro Brow Pencil (Raven)

Lips - glo Lip Liner (Soulmate)

All products are available for purchase in my web shop creativemakeup.se!

What do you think?

  1. Eyeshadow primer, Pixi eye bright primer
    Turquoise eye shadow on the entire eyelid, Paese Neo Eyeshadow (687)
  2. Yellow eye shadow in the corner of the eye, Paese Neo Eyeshadow (663)
  3. Green eye shadow between the yellow and the turquoise shade, Paese Opal Eyeshadow Trio (Atacama)
  4. Light green glitter on the inside of the eyelid,  Mood Wood Natural Glitter (Mint) attached with Kryolan Cake Liner Sealer - Natural glitter that is biodegradable in nature woop woop!
  5. Turquoise shade in the globe line as well and fade out
  6. Silver shadow at the bottom of the lower lash line and from the outer corner of the eye and outwards, Paese Opal Eyeshadow Trio (Ice queen)
    Black eyeshadow super thin at the bottom of the turquoise shadow in the outer corner of the eye, Paese cashmere eyeshadow (662)
  7. Turquoise shade and green glitter along the lower lash line as well
  8. Black mascara on all lashes, Magnetic lash mascara

Clear!

Nice with color without darkening the eyes so much I think, a little more casual :)

Hugs are!

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