Beauty Workshop

I was initially abit apprehensive on the usefulness of the beauty workshop conducted by the CC. Will it be a product marketing platform just like other beauty workshops conducted by some beauty houses? Will it be boring one-way information flow talk when we hear a lot but none specific to our skin type?

I arrived at the class 5 minutes early. Any classmates who have arrived kept to themselves and groups. There was no sight of any instructor. I started to feel unease. When the instructor had not arrived 15 minutes past the starting time, my unease grew. I wondered if the class was cancelled without my knowing. Although the number of arrivals had grown, everyone was quiet. I secretly started to hope this class would pass by quickly.

20 minutes past the starting time, the instructor finally rushed in with all her equipment and teaching kits. She was full of energy and I was instantly taken in by her exuberance and her jokes. Her anecdotes sometimes held little relevance to skin care and make-up yet they were her personal experiences which imparted other knowledge, for eg on how to deal with some beauticians’ hard selling, how to handle stress, how to handle disobedient children or how to cure our headache through pressing the acupoints.

After the long but informative and also entertaining introduction, we were ready to start our class proper. The first step was to learn how to properly cleanse our faces. There were 5 basins in the nearby toilet, so off we went in groups of 5. We were taught on how to wash, scrub and tone our face. We were chided for our mistakes of rubbing very hard with scrub which we thought we were doing a very thorough job. Yet, we did not know that we had inadvertently hurt our skin. Here are more tips:
- When we wash or scrub our face, we should always do in circular motions.
- When we want to dry our face, we would pat our face with a dry towel instead of wipe it with the towel.
- We should scrub both our face and body once a week.
- When we scrub, we should not rub it too hard and hurt our skin.
- We should always apply toner as it refines pores and helps clean away any dirt not removed by the cleanser.
- When we apply toner, we should pat them in for the skin to absorb.
- We must always apply sunblock to prevent damage of skin from the sun.
- For skin which is more prone to oil seeds near the eyes, a gel-form eye cream will be more suitable than an oil-based.
- Moisturisers are a must even for oily skin. Both moisturizers and toner help the make-up to be applied on more easily.

After washing our skin clean, it was back to class to learn how to apply eye cream as scrubs would dry our eyes and caused wrinkles. Then it was the application of tinted moisturizer as moisturizing was essential after a scrub. Well, it was the first-time I saw a tinted moisturizer as it was more popular in the West than Singapore.

Then, it was time for learning the basics of make-up. The instructor required a student to be the ‘model’ for the demonstration. Surprise, surprise, I was picked. My face then became the palette to be used for telling the class how to apply foundation, blusher, eye-shadow, eye-liner to lip gloss. I was extremely nervous with someone so close to my face and the whole class looking at me for a good half an hour. I never felt so ‘stared-at’ and scrutinized my whole life. Fortunately, the instructor was kind and jovial while my classmates were very encouraging and lavish with their compliments. Hence, my nerves were calmed soon after and I began to enjoy the process and also being the centre of attention for once in my life.

My instructor has only done the blusher and the eye-shadow on one-side of the face and I was supposed to be complete the other on my own. Hmm, I was clearly a novice for make-up. To achieve the same colour and effect of my instructor was clearly an impossible task. Moreover, my eyes were closed half the time when she was applying the eye-shadow and I could only feel and hear what she was doing. Needless to say, my attempt was far off from what the instructor had done.

I was not the only one who benefited from the magical touch of the instructor. She was patient and kind enough to do a little something for everyone in the class – from the shaping of eye-brow through trimming and drawing, to make-up on different skin tones and to eye-shadow and foundation recommendation for everyone. Not only did we learn some basics, we also had fun experimenting with the different colours that the instructor had brought along and getting personal consultation on what colours would be good for our skin tones.

With such customized teaching, the class stretched more than an hour after the official ending time, yet many still lingered around to ask the instructor more questions. The instructor also patiently addressed each question and provided more tips to us.

The workshop was certainly successful and useful. I hope the CC would conduct more such courses for the ladies so that others could benefit from this and we could pick-up new skills.