I needed someone who was going to hand-hold me in a kindly way. Lina’s website leapt out at me primarily because she sounded so passionate about her subject. I might know nothing about make-up but it read like she knew her stuff and that she cared about doing a good job.

The contact form completed and sent, I had a follow up call from Lina shortly after. She sounded exactly as her website suggested she would be: warm; very human; interested and keen to please.

It was especially reassuring to hear that I wasn’t the only woman on the planet earth to have reached her fourth decade without a make-up bag and that arriving at my lesson without one wouldn’t be a problem.

The Big Day

I was ridiculously nervous when lesson day came around. I need not have been as Lina was all beams and smiles and as open and friendly as I could have hoped. She’s also infectiously passionate about her craft and it’s impossible not to be inspired by her.

Right from the start Lina had made it clear that practice during and after the lesson were super important and she made it easy for me to do just that. I’d been asked to bring iPad and iPhone for photography and video recording purposes and so whilst she was working on one side of my face – demonstrating every product and piece of kit and sharing plenty of essential beginner tips for a rookie like me – it was all being recorded and photographed to refer to later. I admit I was a touch dubious but it’s turned out to be hugely helpful.

Watching was fun but I was surprisingly keen to have a crack at it all myself and so with half a face to inspire me and with plenty of encouragement and advice from Lina I got to work on the ‘blank half’.

I have never looked at my face so hard and it was quite a revelation to see it being “woken up”, in Lina’s words. I was quite bowled over with how the light use of just one or two products had magically removed the bags from under my eyes and just made me look altogether brighter.