Create Challenge Guest Post #2 – Mandi Diehl
2016 Wednesdays on this blog I will create a platform for friends to share their perspective on and experience of creativity.
Today’s guest post brought up a visceral memory for me: sneaking into my mom’s bathroom, friend in tow, at about age 8. My mom’s beauty cabinet beckoned with mystical glowing attraction. I snaked her Bic disposable razor up my dry leg, my friend aghast (clearly I was doing this wrong, but how I was I to know?). Next, I smeared 1977’s shade of blue shadow across my eyelids. I loved it, thought no one would notice because, Beauty! My friend obviously saw the difference, and maybe she wanted to shrink into the shag carpet…?
No longer sporting 70’s blue, I wear my daily makeup way more natural these days. My friend Mandi Diehl finds joy in makeup. She is a make-up artiste to be admired, maintaining her creativity and sense of play as she empowers women to feel beautiful and simultaneously serves her family. Please welcome Mandi!
“Beauty isn’t about looking perfect.
It’s about celebrating your individuality.” –Bobbi Brown
Makeup isn’t always considered to be very “creative.” People tend to look at it as something necessary to cover a flaw, to conform to societal norms, or a mask to conceal yourself entirely. Makeup is seen as something for the vain, rather than the artistic. While I have those moments of, “Thank the good Lord for whoever invented concealer because there’s a volcano on my face,” makeup to me is so much more than covering up.
I look at a face the way I imagine a painter or sketch artist looks at a canvas: clean, clear, and open to creative influence. The difference for me is, while canvases are all the same, faces are not. Faces have so many shapes, textures, and tones. Eyes, noses, lips, and cheeks all vary person to person. Lines, contours, and wrinkles are all diverse. While an artist can shape a canvas with paint or charcoal into whatever they desire, I love that a face doesn’t work the same way. A face defines what the makeup does. It defines what shades work will with its undertones, what blush suits the color in its cheeks, and what eye shadow really makes those eyes shine.
I have done makeup for weddings, photo shoots, proms, and parties, on a variety of faces. My clients visit me for special occasions, give me an idea of what they’re looking for, and I create that. It’s always a joy to watch them look at themselves in the mirror and say, “Look at me!” I love that I get to be a part of something so empowering for them. Helping women feel so confident and so beautiful on the most important days is amazing.
Creating and experimenting with looks on my own face has also been incredibly inspiring. After I had my second baby, my husband and I made the decision that I would stay home with my sweet kiddos instead of going back to work. While being a mommy is my favorite thing in the universe, it can also be isolating. You can lose yourself in the day-to-day care of your household and little ones, you don’t have a lot of adult contact, and it gets easier and easier to put yourself last. The creative process of “putting my face on” helps me find myself. Makeup is that deep sigh of relief for me. It’s that thing that makes me, me.
Mandi Diehl is a wife and work-at-home-mommy of two. She loves Jesus, super hot lattes, Pirates baseball, and the Pacific Northwest. Contact her for makeup consulting at stylesbymandi.com or stylesbymandi@gmail.com.
