I attended Aspire for a Mac make-up masterclass. I'd bought a Living Social voucher for it, and it…read morewas a total bargain. If you ever see this deal again, buy it!
On arrival, we were offered a glass of bubbly or wine. Given there was already a danger of me coming out like a Picasso painting, I gave it a miss, but some of the other girls elegantly accepted. I think if there were a couple of you going in a wee group, this might be a nice thing to do.
There were 9 or so of us in the class, which was a great number, as it meant the tutor Claire could give us individual attention later on, and the group was a nice manageable size.
She asked for a volunteer, who was then used as the demonstration subject for the class. The outcome was to create a smokey eyed, sparkly and fancy going out look.Claire was really happy for us to make notes, take photos, and even take videos if we wanted.
We started with the eyes, which included false eyelashes and glitter, and Claire also covered how to shape your brows properly - like the HD Brows. We spent a lot of time on the eyes, as that's the key to that particular look, and we then moved on to contouring. Think Kim Kardashian! You've probably seen pictures or videos of it - where you completely shape your face with very dark or very light contouring make up. We learned that! It's amazing. Having Claire demonstrate this on a real person was so helpful - I would never have tried this otherwise. We then finished the face, and she then moved on to some sort of special lip look - I have to confess I sort of missed this bit as my mind was blown by the contouring.
Every step of the way, Claire took it slowly, explaining exactly what she was doing, and why, and also letting us in to inside secrets, which were hugely useful. She made it seem really simple, and had diagrams to help. She also had a whole heap of make up and kit, which we were allowed to play with later.
After the demo, it was our turn to do our own faces. This was the first time I'd ever tried false eyelashes as I was just too intimidated by them before and didn't want the potential trauma of having one flutter its way into my drink half way during a night out. I still got stuck with them, but Claire helped me out, and I'll definitely try them again on my own now. Best tip of the day was that the £1 ones from Primark are just as good as any posh brand you can buy.
We were allowed to do our full faces, with Claire helping when we got stuck, so that really helped to consolidate the learning. Claire also said she will email us some info about stockists and such, which I'm looking forward to receiving.
One thing I would mention is that the booking bit was a bit difficult - they were obviously inundated with bookings from the voucher deal. My advice would be don't bother phoning or texting, go straight onto the website, where there's a very basic booking system. If you need to change anything, email. That worked for me (eventually!).
This experience put me off a little bit - I was sure what to expect, but when I turned up, I was so pleased, as the standard of tuition was really first class, and Claire was excellent. I'm definitely a bit more confident now, and am looking forward to buying a contouring kit and creating the look again.