The Blurb:
Boasting 10 years’ beauty, fashion and television make-up experience (and enviable skin), Natasha Devadlaka’s regular clients include The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. She has worked for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Dujour, OK and ES and her fashion clients include Dolce & Gabbana, Voyage and Bedhead. Luckily, Natasha still has time for us mere mortals. She can be booked to either apply make-up or to teach a variety of looks. She also offers her make-up services to events, parties (Halloween is popular) and weddings.
The Process:
If you bring your own make-up, Natasha can work with your collection, so you don’t get tempted (like I did by not bringing mine) to go out and spend, spend, spend. She dispenses plenty of advice while making your skin look flawless, from where to shop to save money – Charles Fox, 122 Tavistock Street, WC2 for brushes – to how to create luminous skin – mix the foundation base with a little bit of moisturiser. I wanted to learn how to create a smoky sex-kitten look (rather than the slept-in-my-make-up look), so Natasha made up one eye while talking me through the process as I held a compact mirror to get a good close-up of her work. To keep the lesson simple, she stuck to a trio of silver shades and one black (which she added water to, so it could double up as eye liner). Natasha showed me how to create the feline shape; how to build colour, particularly around the ‘triangle’ (the outer corner area from eye line to the eye lid); and how to blend. Her relaxed approach was really helpful: if you make a mistake you can get a cotton bud to it; and if you’re worried about make-up dropping, clean it and leave the base until last.
The Result:
Both eyes looked equally smouldering (admittedly Natasha did get a cotton bud to my too-low ‘tick’ at the end of the outer eye line at one point). My skin looked flawless, my cheeks looked subtly pink and I had a sophisticated nude lipgloss which was neither sparkly nor sticky.
