For those that haven’t met me yet, my name is Samantha. I’m 38 years old, happily married to my husband Dean and we have two amazing sons Jack-Dean (18, studying a law degree) and William-Harvey (16, currently studying A Levels). I met my husband at a young age. At 18 we had bought our first home together and by the age of 19, I was expecting my first child. On 31st of August 2002 in just 45 mins (fastest birth ever) my son Jack was born, a few days after I then turned 20 years old. I instantly knew after having Jack that I wanted another child and on 3rd June 2004 our second son William was born, I was 22 years old. I always knew that I wanted to start a family and yes I was young but looking back on things I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I desperately wanted to be a good mum, to make sure that my children grew up in a stable, loving environment and had everything they could want or need. That was and still is the most important thing to me. Yes, my family is everything.
I left school with five A-C grades, but couldn’t really say that I was interested in anything particular. Over the years I have had various jobs, mostly in retail, although I did try an office job once and quickly realised that being stuck at a desk in front of a computer, didn’t really suit my personality. I like to be in environments where I’m meeting new people. I was lucky enough that whilst bringing up my sons I didn’t need to work, my husband supported us and paid our bills. As the boys got older I was able to start working again but I chose jobs that worked around my children. I had two part-time jobs, I became a teaching assistant at my son’s primary school, but also worked as a debt collector which I absolutely loved and I’m sure most of you will be pretty surprised by that, but yes I loved it, I enjoyed seeing my customers each week and collecting their payments, I was a nice and approachable debt collector and believed that definitely worked in my favour and maybe why I did so well at it.
So how did I get into beauty?
Well, surprisingly it was my husband that was the driving force that pushed me into the beauty industry. My husband is the risk-taker in our family and it was his idea to get me to do a beauty course. At the time I remember feeling quite unsure. We had only just started to come out of a recession, I didn’t know if my husband’s job would be secure as lots of people had been losing jobs, we didn’t have much disposable income after paying our bills so money was pretty tight for us. The thought of paying for this course via our visa card worried me in case he lost his job, it didn’t work out for me and then we would be left with a debt that we couldn’t afford to repay. But my husband was confident, told me to book the course and do it before anyone else did. Before I knew it I was on a train up to London and came back trained in Teeth Whitening.
Sparkling Whites was born Feb 2012
At this point we had absolutely no idea how well I would do, I remember a conversation between my husband and I say that if I had one or two clients a week that would be amazing, thankfully I’m pleased to say that I did far better then we ever anticipated. By June / July I was able to give up my two part-time jobs and concentrate on my beauty business full time. We were having a conservatory built on the back of our house which was to be my treatment room, due to the regulations around teeth whitening we decided that I needed to offer another treatment, but what would I do? I wanted to offer a treatment that was expensive to train in, that wasn’t as easy to do and also that not many people were doing at the time…. And this is what led me to become a Permanent Make Up Artist.
My Career
9 years on, we have moved to a bigger property where we were able to convert the garage into a clinic. I can honestly say that becoming a Permanent Make Up Artist was one of the best decisions I had ever made and to this day I’m still so passionate about what I do. I love how what I create makes my clients leave feeling happy and full of confidence, it really gives me great satisfaction. Over the years I have spent thousands on attending masterclasses and learning new skills so that I am able to provide the very best treatments for my clients. I will never stop learning, ‘forever a student’ as they say. In 2017 I gained a VCTC qualification to begin teaching having been asked many times over the years to teach permanent make up. I have always believed timing is everything and right now I’m collaborating with another artist to bring an advanced training course to students wishing to advance their skills. I am also working on other courses that I’m hoping to launch this year so as you can imagine there’s a lot of exciting things happening behind the scenes, so definitely watch this space……
Finally, I am beyond grateful to my family, my friends for all of the support they have given me with my little business over the years….. And mostly to my husband because without him I definitely wouldn’t be where I am now.