We were lucky to catch up with Creative Contour By Carla recently and have shared our conversation below.
Creative Contour By Carla, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
As a Makeup Artist, I do a few things to stay creative, actually! The first thing is, I love to color or use water color paints. I am in no way a painter, but I just allow myself the freedom to paint or color whatever comes to mind. It allows me the mental space to just go with the flow! I love it so much. And there’s no pressure at all. It just stimulates joy and creativity.
The next thing I do is I pull out some of my old makeup products and mix colors together. I love doing this. I have my color wheel at my side, and I mix until I match it. It’s so much fun!
And the last thing I do is I try out fun, different makeup looks on myself and others. I like to try out different color combinations on different skin tones and see the makeup looks come alive! It’s so beautiful and fun.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Hey beauties! I’m Carla, Owner and Founder of Creative Contour By Carla, LLC.! Makeup Artist here! I started Creative Contour By Carla™ because I love all things makeup, and wanted others to love makeup again. I became a makeup artist in 2013, working under another makeup company on wedding days. By 2017, I was ready to start my own company and work for myself. At that time, I had noticed that the beauty industry was starting to move from “loving yourself,” to “buy this,” or “do that.” And I was absolutely not about that life. I saw that people were getting overwhelmed and just couldn’t stand makeup anymore. I was determined to change that!!
Fast forward to 2020, when the pandemic hit. I had been in business for 3 years at that point, and faced a huge hurdle. How would my business survive? What would life look like? Should I continue on? I am so glad I leaned into my business and worked hard. While there was a lot of learning, struggle, and failure, I survived and adapted. I am thankful for my mentors, because they taught me some valuable skills to make it through. Those valuable skills helped my business grow in amazing ways!
Now we are almost in 2024, and my business has achieved so much growth in so many ways. I’ve been able to expand my offerings to include the following: makeup for weddings, special days, photoshoots, videoshoots, personal makeup shopping appointments, and makeup classes. It’s amazing that I can be a full time makeup artist both with and without having people sit in my chair. I am so grateful! I get to help people love makeup again, whether they want me to apply, or learn their new favorite makeup look! It’s beautiful to see my customers light up with happiness when they look in the mirror. There is no better feeling!
As far as what’s next for Creative Contour By Carla™… well there are a few exciting things in the works! Right now, I am currently expanding my business by collaborating with small businesses to test and showcase products that I like to my social media audience. This is an effort to make more consumers aware of great products from small businesses! There is no pressure at all to purchase anything. But as a small business owner myself, I want to make sure that people are aware of how great small businesses are. We put so much love and labor into our products and services, and people deserve to know about us!! My reviews are just a small piece of that, in order to amplify other small businesses! If you want to know the rest of the things, you’ll have to follow me on my social media channels to see what’s coming up!! They will be exciting and interesting!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Ugh, that’s a tough one! Definitely adaptability, patience, and empathy. Adaptability for a few reasons. The first is because owning a business is a roller coaster ride. Sometimes, you’re busy, busy, busy! Other times, things a re very quiet. You have to know how to financially and physically survive the highs and lows, for sure. And of course, the pandemic. Learning how to have a business that involves people during the pandemic was pretty hard. But once I had some guidance, it helped.
Which leads me to the second skill: patience. Having patience can be really hard for a number of reasons. Having patience while owning a business is required, for sure. You need to be patient as you navigate how you want your business to come intro fruition. You need to have patience when things go awry. You need to have patience with clientele. A lot of patience is required for sure!
And then there is empathy. As someone who works in the customer service field, I work with all kinds of people. Makeup is a very intimate service, where more often than not, people have insecurities. It is my job as a makeup artist to be understanding of their insecurities and try my best to address and possibly relieve them. It can be hard at times, but being empathetic towards my clients and their daily lives helps them overall.
For those of you who are early in your creative business journey, phew! Have patience for sure. Understand that things change, dreams change. Your whole business idea may even change. And that’s ok! Learning to embrace and lean into change really helps. Adapting is so important. Having patience with yourself and this journey is key, no matter how hard it is. Giving yourself and others empathy also helps things go more smoothly. Everything else is honestly a learning lesson. I basically jumped into this business owner thing, so I am still learning 6 years in!
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
What a great question!! Yes, I am always looking to collaborate! I like to collaborate with other small businesses! I specifically like to collaborate with small beauty businesses: makeup companies, skincare companies, and the like! If you are a small beauty business and would like a professional makeup artist to try your product and review it, I’d love to help amplify you!!!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.creativecontourbycarla.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/creativecontourbycarla
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/creativecontourbycarla
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@creativecontourbycarla
- Other: tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@ccbcmua
Image Credits
CK Media, Francielle Santo Photography, Genvieve Photography
