Behind-the-Scenes videos always look so glamorous, I think. The day is usually edited down to a few minutes of high-energy dancing in front of the camera and a few makeup tweaks – the model always looking fabulous in rollers and some kind of silky kimono. Everything goes into fast-motion, MTV style, and the day blurs into a montage of racks of clothes and dozens of assistants milling around and then someone shouts “It’s a wrap!” (which, by the way, hardly anyone does in real life) and the video fades to black.

I’ve tried to capture some of this glamour and high energy in my own “BTS” vide0 – and even some of the MTV fast-forwarding – but I have to be honest: 80% of time spent at a shoot involves waiting for things to happen. Patiently sitting through makeup changes, standing on set as lighting is tweaked and test shots are taken. I’ve edited out a LOT of the waiting bits and also, due to the nature of much of the conversation going on between myself and Sam and Nic from Pixiwoo, I’ve had to chop out quite a bit of the dialogue. I’m not sure what kind of rating would have to be slapped on the “director’s cut” of this video – we managed to get through just about every subject from “sixteen pound babies” to “people with gigantic toenails” with some pretty odd stuff in between…

The shoot you’ll see in the video was for a collaboration with TWO Magazine and Pandora Jewellery*. Pandora have launched a new range of jewellery called the Essence Collection; each charm represents a different personality trait or inner feeling and the shoot used these “essences” as the basis for each shot. Strength was a jet-black bead and that was matched with a dark, striking eye; Passion was a deep, purply-red that we used as the starting point for a lips close-up (you can see that pic further down the page) but we started off with Love and used really soft, pinkish-nude shades for the makeup. I think that the Love shot was my favourite – I loved the simplicity of the jewellery and the neutral makeup tones.

Nails were painted in Fluorescent Beige from Marc Jacobs Beauty and my hair was tonged into soft waves. (Sidenote: Sam from Pixiwoo is absolutely amazing at doing nails. She applied false ones to my fingers more neatly and convincingly than I have ever seen done before and I have had a lot of false nails stuck to me in my time!)

We produced five images over the course of a nine hour day; if that seems rather unproductive then bear in mind that beauty shoots are often a little more labour-intensive than fashion shoots! Everything’s more pinickity and the lighting is more precise and, of course, it takes a lot longer to change a makeup look than it does to change into another dress or outfit. Saying that, the fact that I don’t have to change clothes is one of the reasons that I love beauty shoots so much – I hate having to take off nice warmed-up clothes and put on new cold ones! You’ll notice that I spend much of the day in my jumper and remove as little clothing as I possibly can – bliss.

I often sit there, on a beauty shoot, and think “imagine if people could see me now, sat with my jumper/dressing gown/coat on, doing weird things with lipsticks/brushes/flowers/beads. I’d look so silly!” Well now you can see me looking silly – I’ve dropped in the photograph above just as a taster. You can see the rest in the video. It’s somewhat amazing, really, that the strange bead-biting situation above becomes something quite nifty through the camera lens…

…and then morphs into something glossy and wonderful by the time it has hit the pages of a magazine…

Watch the full video below (or click here) to see me in action and get a bit of behind-the-scenes excitement! You can see the full range of beautiful beads in Pandora’s new Essence Collection on their website here and you can view the final images from our TWO Magazine shoot here. (If you haven’t already subscribed then do, it’s a beauty-lover’s dream-read and completely free.)

Model: Ruth Crilly

Makeup: Nic Chapman

Hair and Nails: Sam Chapman

Photography: Richard Grassie

*this post is part of my collaboration with TWO Magazine and Pandora Jewellery