Jessica Hayes, mama of two gives us the low down on juggling her passion for make-up and raising her kings.

JESSICA HAYES MUA– A make-up artist or MUA is an artist whose medium is the human body, applying makeup and prosthetics for theatrical, television, filmmaking, fashion, magazines and other similar productions including all aspects of the modelling industry. Most MUA’s generally are freelance and their times remain flexible depending on the projects.

THE INTERVIEW…

SARETA: Ms Jessica Hayes! Please describe your ‘everyday life’ before you had kids, you know coz I’m sure with two kiddies, things have changed right?
JESSICA: I worked for MAC in Harrods, London. So my every day life was fast pace. I would commute to London every day, arrive to work fully made up, in nice clothes feeling good about myself and ready for a busy day on counter.
I would then spend my day making other people feel good about themselves and showing them how to use different products to achieve the looks they wanted. I loved my job so much!
Outside of work I was and always have been a “social butterfly” always seeing friends for dinner/drinks/nights out, you know the drill!… and, then I had kids.

SARETA: *laughs* Mate, I know how you feel! Has much changed since you joined team motherhood?
JESSICA: Life as a mother could not be more different to what it was BK (before kids)!
Now my days are spent changing one smelly nappy after the next (two in nappies is soooo fun!), purée-ing broccoli and sweet potatoes, shovelling “organic” snacks into my kids faces to get them to leave me alone for 2 minutes (obviously organic cause god forbid a parent of 2017 should give them anything less!) and basically trying to get us all out of the house as early as possible to keep my sanity in tact. It’s not that I don’t love being a mum (it is?)…. it’s just soooo different. And it’s like RIP to the old me, whom I have slowly started to realise, is never coming back.
It’s funny cause my life before kids always felt like something was missing, and I knew that all I ever wanted to do was to be a mum. And don’t get me wrong, my cup of love for them runneth over and all that jazz, but boy this is the hardest job I ever had!
I also miss peeing without an audience/ drinking a hot cup of tea, and all the other ‘mum clichés’ that since becoming a mum, I have realised are shockingly true for every mum out there (except the ones who lie).

SARETA: You seem to be really into make-up artistry, like, it’s more than a job to you, it’s a career. Would you say that was right?
JESSICA: There is SO much that I love about my job. I love being creative, I love meeting all kinds of people, I love making people feel beautiful/confident/special.
But most of all I like the feeling I have made a positive impact on someone’s life. Maybe just for a day making someone’s wedding morning more relaxed for them and making them feel as beautiful as any bride should feel! Or maybe for longer than that.
I will never forget the day a gentleman came into MAC and asked for a concealer. He suffered from vitiligo and was in his mid 50’s. He said he had always felt conscious about it and never as a man considered wearing makeup but he didn’t know what else to try. I worked hard to find the perfect combination of two concealers – one for colour correction and on for coverage and sat down with him and taught him how to apply it seamlessly so you couldn’t see he was wearing makeup. At the end he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said “Jessica you have changed my life, thank you.”
As dramatic as it sounds I had to leave the counter for a few seconds after he left to pull myself together! But I was so happy to think that I had helped this man feel better, feel happy and maybe even feel beautiful. If that’s not job satisfaction I don’t know what is! And this goes for every single person I work on, I hope to achieve that same feelings for them.

Jessica Hayes Makeup.

SARETA: GURL, Halloween is coming up… what’s on trend for this year?
JESSICA: Halloween is my favourite time of year for makeup as I think it’s a time where you can really go crazy with the creative side of makeup!
The last couple of years the trends have been Clowns/ Broken Dolls/ Gypsies/ Sugar Skulls etc.
This year I would say that with the re-release of the film IT, there will be a lot of Penny Wise looks happening…
SARETA: *Excitedly interrupts* OH MY DAYS! I saw that last week, that film was amazing!
JESSICA: … Also with “Beauty and the Beast” out again the bearded men out there will be queuing up for a beastly face painting I have no doubt! One that I’m excited to see is Unicorns. They are a big trend in general at the moment and I’m hoping this spills over into Halloween so I can to do some really fun Unicorn-esque makeup looks!

SARETA: Do you have any makeup tips that you can share with our readers?
JESSICA: If you book me I’ll share them all with you! *Laughs*
All jokes aside I want to give my 3 top tips to mums on the run, cause I feel like you should know that it is possible to feel half human when time is of the essence!

Makeup Tips Y’all…

1. Invest in a good quality concealer. Go to a good makeup counter and get colour matched so you can just use concealer on its own to cover dark circles and maybe a few blemishes. Make sure it’s one that you can dab on with your finger so you can do it in a few seconds. They will probably tell you that you shouldn’t use a concealer on its own, a) because they want you to buy more products and b) because in an ideal world we would all have time to do a full coverage face complete with a highlight and contour that Kim Kardashian herself would be proud of! But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world where we only have time for concealer. And we don’t have to be perfect we just want to feel a bit better, right?!
2. Buy a cream colour base from MAC (also available from other retailers). These are great cause they can be used on the cheeks and the lips so it’s a two-birds-one-stone kinda product. Also, the creamy consistency means you will get a bit of a dewy finish when you apply it to your cheeks which immediately gives a fresher effect.
3. Find a great mascara! Mascara is what will make the difference between you looking like you actually have eyes and looking like you have pinholes in your face. Even if you don’t have time for the concealer and the cream colour base, the mascara alone will help you look alive. Unless you are blessed with a natural set of dark, full, long lashes (which you’re probably not because for some sick reason it’s only men who ever seem to be born with these!) then mascara is a huge step in the right direction to feeling less run-down mum and more run-way babe!