Jul 7, 2026 · 52 min · 12 segments
What starts with a 13-year-old charging 50p for face painting in her front garden somehow leads to architecture, nightclub face painting, a laser cutter in the living room and a physical face paint…
Thank you for having me today.
Can you start off by telling us a bit about yourself and how you first discovered face painting?
Well, I actually started face painting when I was about 13, I think.
I got, well, actually my sister, my sister was probably about 9 or 10.
She got one of those little Snazaroo beginner sets.
Remember the wee kind of blue one and it had the little... little tiny bits in it yeah and I had like one brush and like two sponges maybe I got one of them and I had a go and I thought I quite like this and I got a couple of other wee kind of colours to start off with and I started charging my friends little brothers and sisters 50 pence for their face paint that's how I started and I used to sit in my front garden as well and charge them 50 pence on my little sister's friends when I was about 13 and then as I got went through high school I would bring it in on like the fun days as well and paint people in school and that kind of kept going until I was about 15 when I was asked by a face painter who was quite well known in Scotland at the time I got a phone call basically saying all the face painters are booked in Scotland would you be available to paint at this party today and I was like Okay.
And then they're like, oh, no pressure.
It's actually for the marketing manager's child of the big theme park in Glasgow as well.
So I was like, okay.
So I did it.
Looking back, it was probably awful, most awful face painting ever.
But she seemed to appreciate it because obviously there was no one else.
And she did offer me a job when I was older, but I never learned to drive when I was around that age.
So I would have never managed to get there because it was like quite difficult to get to.
But yeah, that was quite terrifying.
And I think that was my first kind of paid job.
I think she gave me £60 for it.
And that was about two and a half hours of work.
That's not bad, is it? Yeah.
Not bad for a 15-year-old.
I thought I was right.
No, I'd be thrilled.
When I was 15, I was doing a paper round.
I used to get paid.
I used to have to go out six days a week, deliver these like 20 papers under a circuit of our town.
Thank you for having me today.
Can you start off by telling us a bit about yourself and how you first discovered face painting?
Well, I actually started face painting when I was about 13, I think.
I got, well, actually my sister, my sister was probably about 9 or 10.
She got one of those little Snazaroo beginner sets.
Remember the wee kind of blue one and it had the little... little tiny bits in it yeah and I had like one brush and like two sponges maybe I got one of them and I had a go and I thought I quite like this and I got a couple of other wee kind of colours to start off with and I started charging my friends little brothers and sisters 50 pence for their face paint that's how I started and I used to sit in my front garden as well and charge them 50 pence on my little sister's friends when I was about 13 and then as I got went through high school I would bring it in on like the fun days as well and paint people in school and that kind of kept going until I was about 15 when I was asked by a face painter who was quite well known in Scotland at the time I got a phone call basically saying all the face painters are booked in Scotland would you be available to paint at this party today and I was like Okay.
And then they're like, oh, no pressure.
It's actually for the marketing manager's child of the big theme park in Glasgow as well.
So I was like, okay.
So I did it.
Looking back, it was probably awful, most awful face painting ever.
But she seemed to appreciate it because obviously there was no one else.
And she did offer me a job when I was older, but I never learned to drive when I was around that age.
So I would have never managed to get there because it was like quite difficult to get to.
But yeah, that was quite terrifying.
And I think that was my first kind of paid job.
I think she gave me £60 for it.
And that was about two and a half hours of work.
That's not bad, is it? Yeah.
Not bad for a 15-year-old.
I thought I was right.
No, I'd be thrilled.
When I was 15, I was doing a paper round.
I used to get paid.
I used to have to go out six days a week, deliver these like 20 papers under a circuit of our town.
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