To create a masterpiece you need the perfect canvas

ABOUT ME
This is my story and how I got started
We have our Innovators / Early Adapters and then there is me. Hi, my name is Vanessa and I am late to the social media game, but better late than never right?
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Up until recently I never really felt that a woman of my age would be successful let alone find an audience in the realm of social media. Instagram and other platforms always gave me the impression that they catered to the young, the beautiful and the rich. That was until I opened my eyes and saw women just like me running amazing pages and producing fantastic content.
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I finally decided to take the plunge in July of 2019 and start an Instagram page from scratch. I could have grasped at low hanging fruits so to speak and have friends and family follow me, but I wanted to stay completely incognito in the event that I fell flat on my face. The next step was to figure out what I was going to post about. I’ve always had a love and appreciation for makeup so why not run with that? It has always been something I was good at and fetched me so many compliments throughout the years. Friends and family would often ask me to do their makeup for them. So @vanessa.andrea.mua was born on Instagram! Now I know you’re thinking, isn’t it dot beauty? I’ll get there in a sec.
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Now I figured my used up palettes and ratty make up bag wasn’t going to make the cut for Instagram pics so I headed on out for a major shopping spree at Sephora and hit rouge on the first purchase. Shh… never tell my husband how much you have to drop to hit that tier please! I got loaded up with some new brushes, a couple of Morphe palettes (my first was the James Charles one), blushes, lashes, foundation… you get the picture!
I then got to work unleashing my creativity and creating all sorts of different looks and my page started to gain traction which was the best feeling ever! I was elated when I hit 50 followers, crazy happy at 100 and blown away when I hit 1000 in such a short period of time.
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Working with a lot of make-up, putting it on, taking it off several times a day started having consequences for my skin. I was struggling with breakouts, dry patches and overall irritation. Things were an absolute mess. I didn’t want to be one of those women who FaceTuned the hell out of her pics until they were barely recognizable. I had to do something.
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This is where my journey into skincare began. Like anyone on social media, when you want to learn and discover new things you hit up the good old hashtags. This lead me to some beautiful accounts created by women just like me. I connected with some amazing people in the skincare community on Instagram who took me under their wing and the next thing I knew, my new found love of skincare completely dominated my Instagram page.
Don’t get me wrong, I love make up and I always will. I felt that in order to create a masterpiece, you needed to have a flawless canvas. I wanted to shift my focus from covering up my skin with foundations and concealers to better caring for it and to be able to show off my natural skin. I dropped the dot mua from my handle and adopted dot beauty instead. Since then @vanessa.andrea.beauty has continuously grown and evolved over the past several months and continues to do so.
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Welcome to my blog, I’m so glad you are here and I hope that I can help you along your skincare journey as well!