"It feels surreal" - Chesterfield college make-up student on competition success

The series of competitions are designed by WorldSkills for a range of vocational courses in order to help young people grow personally and professionally, by developing their technical and employability skills. It also provides a platform for employers to view the best standard of work from across the country.

Jess, 18, has made it through to the regional heats in the creative make-up category thanks to her take on the category ‘About Time’. Talking about her entry, Jess said: " “At first I was really nervous, I didn’t want to sound like I was going to get through but I was really hoping I would. I don’t feel like it’s really happening, it’s surreal.”

“The theme we got given was ‘about time’ and I just knew I wanted to do something slightly different so I was thinking about Alice and Wonderland. Once I had the idea I just got a sketch up on my iPad, started to annotate it, and from there was able to have a few practises before doing it for real. The whole process (of applying the make-up to the model) probably took around about four hours.”

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Having advanced through to the next stage – regional heats on June 9 – Jess is one step away from making the Grand Final. A different theme has been issued for the heats with the Chesterfield College student now needing to produce a full-body piece which, for Jess, will be centred around Narnia.

She explained: “I’ve just been practising, so I had my model ready and we’ve gone in and kept myself within the four hour time frame so I know I’m not doing anything too ambitious. We’ve only (practised) the torso so far but I’m going to make sure I know I exactly what I’m doing and give myself the best chance on the day.”

Jess said her ideal category would be ‘horror’ and that, going forward, she would like to get involved in making prosthetics for films and added: “The college has been wonderful. I can’t say how good they have been - my tutors have been amazing and I wouldn’t have had this opportunity if it wasn’t for them.”