We have a first at the Kristina Gasperas Academy – one of our ex-students from Finland has had a makeup book published!
Congrats to Vilja and hope it flies off those Finnish shelves.
She’s been kind enough to send in a blog post with some background on how the book came about…
“I started doing makeup around 10 years ago with no professional training, as a professional I’ve now been working for about 6 years.
I studied for years and years by watching videos of MUAs on YouTube (not this “influencer” crap it’s filled with nowadays) and practiced on my friends, always doing their makeup for events or if we were going out.
Even though I’d been doing makeup for a long time the fact that I didn’t have any formal training was always in the back of my mind, reminding me that maybe I wasn’t a “real” makeup artist, even though clients loved my work. So I came to Kristina’s academy.
After completing a makeup course with her I had such a confidence boost that I started to think maybe I was good enough! I saw that I had been doing things the right way and also learned so much more about flawless makeup!
The fact that we went through using natural light in the best way was definitely a game-changer for me. I knew how to work a camera, I had the gear but I was just lost on how to use light in the most flattering way.
Kristina’s course was priceless. Upon returning to Finland, I started practicing my photos and makeup! After a bit of time I had a very good-looking portfolio set up. Then I realised I could actually teach all these things about makeup and good quality photos. Maybe I could write a book? It’s always been a dream of mine.
5 years ago I would never have thought that I would be writing about makeup but in the summer of 2017 I started talking about it to people: “I want to write a book about makeup”, “I have so much to say about makeup”, “the last published makeup book in Finland was years ago!”. Then one day a client of mine said she could mention it to her publisher – Docendo. They’re a small publisher who mainly publish non-fiction books in Finland. They’d never done a makeup book, so the next day I got a text from my client saying they’d be interested!
I had a meeting with them and we really hit it off. They thought my photos were great and I was confident I could give them a great book. In a few weeks I had the publishing contract in my hands. The same autumn I went to L.A. to study an Advanced Beauty Theory course for a few weeks and learned a lot about the theory behind why some things look good and others don’t. That gave me an extra kick to write my book.
A year after the contract was signed, my book is now being sold in the biggest bookstores in Finland and of course in my own on-line store wonda.fi. I took a lot of effort and it wasn’t always easy, but I got it done! The book is for people who want to improve their makeup skills and you don’t have to have any prior knowledge about makeup. But it’s not boring even if you do know a lot already! 🙂 It includes all of the tips and tricks I’ve learned during the years of doing makeup and taking classes.
It’s called “Parhaat Piirteesi – Meikkaajan Käsikirja” which translated into English means “Your Best Features – A Makeup Handbook” and here’s a link to it on my on-line store:
https://wonda.fi/tuote/parhaat-piirteesi-meikkaajan-kasikirja-vilja-vuolle (shipping only to Finland)”
And I was super-happy to receive a copy from Vilja, now I just need to practice my Finnish…
