Original subtitles

Our country is full of incredible makers dreaming of turning their talent...

into money -making careers.

It would mean everything to be able to do this full -time.

So, with a team of fantastic professional mentors... I know your

know what you're capable of doing.

I run a one -of -a -kind bootcamp showing them how to do just that.

Perfect. My proudest moment. I'll go share that. Yes.

Now, I'm on my way to catch up with those who have made their dreams come

Hello. There he is. Hello, mate.

I'll be hearing about their amazing achievements.

I've been able to put down...

And finding out how much money they're making.

A little bit under £40 ,000.

Around £50 ,000. £50 ,000? Yeah. So join me and meet the fabulous makers who

have transformed their lives and made it at market.

You can kind of say I'm living the dream.

I think that's fair to say.

Creative makers from all across the UK come to my bootcamp hoping to turn their

fantastic talents into life -changing businesses.

And today, we're meeting two who have done just that.

Later, we'll head to Wiltshire to hear all about Woodturner Lucinda's

international success.

I've had people collect my work all over the world and people recognise me as

the brush lady and, you know, it's quite something.

But first, I'll be checking in with blacksmith Alex in Northumberland, who's

success beyond his wildest dreams.

I never thought I would have ever seen that sort of money. With the best will

the world, I do work like six days a week and like ten hours a day. Don't get

wrong, you deserve every penny of it, but that is a lot of money.

I first met Alex in the spring of 2022, when he came to my boot camp with big

ambitions, but a bit of a confidence problem.

I struggle a lot with, like, imposter syndrome. I get... I look at my work and

think... I just see the mistakes.

I look at something and I've poured hours and hours and hours of work into

something and I still see little fault lines and things and I think, oh, I

put another five hours in and fix this, fix that, and I'd go way over budget and

I undercharge and things and, I don't know, I feel like I could use a pep

To help Alex build his confidence and a thriving blacksmithing business... I

teamed him up with Adrian Wood.

Adrian's been running a successful forge in the Tees Valley for over 20 years.

Coincidentally, they had met before at one of his blacksmithing workshops,

Alex first fell in love with the craft.

Eight years ago now, he came on one of our blacksmithing courses, and fantastic

to see that he's still got that fire burning bright inside him, and he's

got the passion to continue doing what he's doing.

To work out how best to boost Alex's sales and profits, I set him three

challenges. First up, I asked him to make a volume piece, something he could

make quickly and sell for an affordable price.

He decided to forge a Chinese dragon's head.

Priced at £100, it featured twisted horns, which could become the decorative

part of a door handle or fire dog.

Job one was splitting one end of a piece of steel, before pulling it apart to

create what would become the horns.

I'm wanting to take a partial heat on the very, very bottom of the bar, and

going to take a twist here, twist it that way, twist it this way to get a

sort of water -quenched twist. I think they look fantastic.

They fit as well very nicely with the ethos of, like, a Chinese dragon, you

know? I mean, every time I look at artwork, they've always got these

long, flowing, cloud -like whiskers and horns and things.

Twisting the steel was a high -risk part of the production.

Clamping it in the base.

If Alex allowed the metal to become too cold, it could snap.

Oh, dear.

That was too cold.

So this is what I was worried about happening.

If you can't quite see the colours of what's going on there, you can't gauge

temperature. It's just due to the ambient light of being outdoors. So I've

-twisted that ever so slightly. It's fractured off. So I'm going to cut this

off, start again.

Whilst Alex restarted his volume piece, I sat down with Adrian to talk about his

second challenge.

Before he arrived at my boot camp, I asked Alex to make a high -end piece,

something carrying a heftier price tag.

He brought along a replica of a Viking horse's bridle, priced at £850.

It's fantastically made. He's done a really good job. The design style's

There's a few elements within it that I had a little concern with. It's only on

the inside of the bridle where it touches the horse's face. He could do

something where it's not a sharp point on the end. Do you think it's worth

Personally, I think it's worth more.

Really? I think he said it was about five days' work.

So you're looking at maybe 1 ,500 pounds. It's a great -looking piece. You

want to undersell yourself.

Back at the forge, Alex had created the twisted horns for his dragon's head on a

new piece of steel... ..and put a cut in the steel bar so that he could fold it

over to create a face.

I've got my cut in place, and I'm now about to do the fold -over.

But before I do that, I need to make sure that there's nothing that's going

get trapped inside where the weld's going to lie.

So I'm going to give it a good scrubbing, then fold it over.

Alex worked quickly, and his next step was to weld the folded pieces together.

I've done this a hundred times before, Alex, so you know what you're doing.

breathe.

Take it easy.

You've got it.

Now, whilst the heat's in the top there, I'm going to start by bellying it out

down like that.

And now there, I've given him a little bit of an eye socket as well. So in

that, just putting those two little sets in and a little bit of drag on the

nose. His nose has came down a bit more, and he's got some nice little areas

where I can start working the eyes into it as well.

Well done, Alex. Nailed it. Nice one.

Once he finished the eyes, Alex made his dragon a beard.

Then focused on the finer details of the eyes and eyebrows.

It was precise work with little room for error.

I've got his eyebrows in and I'm more or less happy with them. They're okay.

I want to get a heat right there so I can just yark his head down a little bit

and give him a little bit of character.

With the bar at just the right temperature, Alex bent the neck.

Alex's decorative dragon's head had a make time of around four hours.

He priced it at £100, but that was before he'd fashioned it into a sellable

like a door handle or knocker.

The level of fine detail is really quite impressive, and the patience that

you've got to do that is incredible.

The concern is how much time you've spent doing all that detail.

Does that equate to being able to make a profit?

What do you think of the price point? For the work involved, I think it's

cheaper than it maybe should be.

I think it should be, as a concept piece, absolutely great, but if you want

make that into something else, you've got to bring that time down.

Alex had to work on both his speed of production and the pricing of his first

two items.

For his final task, I asked him to make his favourite piece to discover if what

he enjoyed making most could also bring in big sales.

He chose to make a Viking -style pattern -welded knife, priced at £480, which

he'd made before for members of re -enactment societies.

He began by creating a billet, a metal block made from layers of different

strength steel alloys welded together.

Having cleaned it, he added flux, a powder that helped protect the weld from

being contaminated by oxygen in the air.

I just want to be extra careful, keep as much flux on there as I can, and keep

as much air out. Because if air gets in, then the scale will form in between the

layers, which will cause the laminations in the weld, which is where it all

falls apart.

And that's where I just sit there and debate my life choices.

After making sure the block of steel alloys was properly welded together...

Alex hammered it into one long piece, cut it into four bits, then twisted two

them to create part of the knife's final pattern, before finally hammering them

flat and welding them all back together again.

Alex, how are we doing? What stage are we at? Pretty much ready to go into the

oil quench and then temper.

You're very confident with your processes.

How would you feel about going out to a market and selling these things, and

more importantly, selling yourself?

I feel very uncomfortable talking about money, if I'm honest with you. All

you've got to do is just sell the brand.

People go to these markets, Alex, because they want to see beautiful

if you can provide that for them, just be chill with it.

So you're confident you can get this done and dusted? Oh, it'll be done,

be done.

Fantastic. I'll let you get on with it.

I'm cultivating a gentle heat.

along the blade, and we're going to quench it in some oil, and that will

the blade right up.

Okay.

And... And... That's gone

very well.

With the knife shape created, Alex applied the finishing touches.

It'll be onto the grinder, and getting it all nice and smoothed out, and then

sanding it up.

polishing and polishing and polishing and polishing and polishing, and then it

gets cleaned once I've got it really, really mirror shiny with acetone just to

get any grease and grit off, and then it's into the acid tank to pull the

pattern out.

The acid reacted with the twisted metal and different strength steel alloys in

the knife to create the pattern.

With a make time of around 13 hours, Alex gave it a price tag of £480.

Absolutely brilliant. You've done a cracking job. Really, really good job.

really pleased. You've blown me away with the patterning on that. Thank you.

What do you think of the price point? It sounds a big figure, but the amount of

work that goes into it, the people that will probably get that are probably more

like collectors.

It was a real pleasure sharing Alex's passion for his craft. And as he set off

back to Northumberland, we gave him an action plan to help him build a

successful, sustainable business.

First, he needed to speed up the pace at which he produced his work,

particularly his volume pieces.

Next, Adrian wanted him to fix his prices and charge what his work was

Finally, he needed to sell himself and his pieces with confidence.

For the next eight weeks, Alex was guided by Adrian as he set to work on

action plan, and he began by focusing on speeding up the production of some

potential new volume pieces.

This one here, that thing I wanted to try out, it's very, very rough at the

minute because it was like a 30 -minute job, but I will figure out how to do it

faster and neater as well.

Got a little leaf coming on one end, and there's a little tulip bud coming up on

the other. I'd quite like to make the tulip bud much wider at the tip there.

He also worked hard trying to turn his dragon's head into a completed sellable

piece. I have been doing dragons and dragons and dragons and dragons, trying

get them right, trying to speed the process up, playing around with a few

different patterns. They've come out quite nicely. I'm really quite pleased

several of them. They seem to be looking nice. My idea is that they would want

to be riveted onto a door instead of screwed in.

I've gotten faster at making them, which is what I wanted.

Alex embraced our suggestions and gave them his all. And after two months of

hard work, he had some great news to share with us.

Most income over the past month or so has been about £2 ,800.

That's a short amount of time.

That'll improve your confidence.

Fantastic. Well done.

Alex had to take off his costs from his terrific sales.

that he'd made some big strides forwards with his business.

It's now over three and a half years since I first met him. Time really does

fly. And I've come to Northumberland to hear about how he's been building a

successful business.

Alex. Oh, how are you? How are you doing?

How are you doing?

Good to see you. Oh, lovely to see you, mate. Do you want to come on in? I'd

love to. Come on in then.

As a metal worker myself, I know you need a proper workspace and the right

equipment to run a business.

And Alex's setup looks fantastic.

I'm blown away.

What an amazing space.

I mean, the equipment is very impressive. I'm very jealous of some of

in here.

But it's not just that. This just feels like a proper setup now.

Yes. Even down to the mezzanine, the little shoe. It looks like a shop up

I can see display cases. I wanted to make a workshop that when people walked

they went, ah.

This is the business.

I'm in the right place. Yeah.

I'll admit, I'm pretty envious of Alex's layout and kit. And it's time to find

out exactly how well things are going.

This is all looking great, but how's the business working out?

It's going really well.

Is it?

I started teaching a few years ago. I've been running blacksmithing workshops

and things for people. I do them in two different ways.

I do public courses.

I do beginners' kitchen knife -making ones. I do axe -making, hammer -making,

forging your own tools like tongs and chisels.

The other aspect is private experiences, and that could be for a team -building

exercise, for a stag do or a hen do, birthday parties.

They must be really fun days.

Oh, they're brilliant.

Fantastic jokes.

Everybody's having a grand time.

Courses are a great way of bringing money into a business.

And Alex's prices range from £165 per person for a one -day beginner's

to £395 per person for a two -day Damascus knife one.

The teaching and the courses that you do here sounds brilliant.

But do you still have time to work on your own projects?

Through the summer period, teaching tends to slag off.

I do commissions constantly throughout the year as well. That sort of helps top

up my wage.

Over the past few years, I've done work for Beamish Museum, helping them restore

iron components to go on to various buildings, most recently the 1950s

I've done a fair bit of work for Bambera Castle, restoring bits of ironwork and

making new pieces of ironwork to match in with the collection.

Brilliant. This sounds like a win -win. You're doing something that you love.

love that you want it to do and it's i think the courses and the commission

sounds like they are keeping things afloat financially paying the rent

the gas bill this is a dream come true for you i'm so happy for you thank you

yeah big commissions and busy courses it's a winning combination and as

such an important part of his business i'm going to try out one of alex's

workshops for myself we're going to start off making our little birds you

see i've roughed out a cut through them we're going to make a decorative bird

and i'm really looking forward to getting stuck in we start by cutting two

vertical slits into a steel bar i'm happy with that

next we heat the bar so we can open it up along the two cup

I'm already emotionally attached to this. It's not got a name yet, but we'll

there.

What's a good name for a little bird? You could call it, I don't know. It's

a little bird, it's big. It's an eagle.

Okay, okay then. It's big.

Eddie. Eddie the eagle.

With the metal at the correct temperature, it's over to the anvil.

Once you start driving it down, flip him over. There again, I guess. Yep.

There you go. You'll feel it start to bite.

Yeah, got it. Now, I reckon you probably hit about as far as you can on that,

Heath. I chuck him in. Okay. And then maybe he's on your next, Heath.

A little bit of ice? Get it in the vice.

Okay, back in the fire.

Once the metal has been reheated, the vice holds the bird, or should I say

Eddie, steady.

Oh, yes.

While I peel back what will be the wings.

Nice. That's starting to open out nicely.

Then I heat it again.

And start shaping them. I'll just grab them by the end of one of those little

tails. And we'll start giving them a little tap in the middle.

And you'll see it starts to flatten out.

And then if you grab them by the next bit there.

That's the trick.

Remember, we don't need to get it super, super flat.

No. Because a little bit of the... His wings are flapping already. Exactly.

That's not bad at all. I'll take that. I'm quite pleased, actually. To make the

wings the right size and shape, I hammer the metal at an angle to give it a

curve.

Once I've added some feathers, it's over to the fly press to create its neck.

There you go.

And then big slam, big pull.

There you go.

And then take a little look. You can see it's biting in.

Another heat allows me to pull out the shape of the head.

Then it's time to add the details for Eddie's face.

In my head, he's got a hooked kind of beak. Yeah, how can we get that? If we

just come in, keep the file moving, and we can round this over a fair bit.

Keep it to as few strokes as you possibly can, but just gently rounding

over. Oh, here we go.

My eagle's taking shape now.

The next step is putting in the eyes.

Right, there, I'm done. I'm committing. Ready?

No. He looks a little bit like a parrot.

I think that's looking good. He's looking over that way.

He's seeing somebody over there. He's seeing something over there. He's like,

wait, hang on.

To finish, I shape the ends of the wings and polish the whole piece with a wire

brush. I am quite chuffed with that, actually. Yeah, I would be as well.

I've absolutely loved making Eddie, and the courses are a great way of providing

a steady income for Alex, alongside his commissioned work.

I can see all around his workshop that he's created tools and jigs to help

up production time on his smaller and larger pieces.

But I want to know if any of the other advice Adrian and I gave him has played

part in boosting his business over the past few years.

Alex, when you laughed at my boot camp, myself and Adrian sent you away with

some homework, a bit of an action plan to try and help you to build your

business. One of the pointers that we wanted you to work on was to try and fix

your pricing.

I used to work for nothing.

I hope things have improved.

I've upped my hourly rate. I used to work for £20 an hour, which I'm sure you

can imagine the overheads of running a place like this was nothing.

Now my hourly rate is £45 an hour. Some people don't like that and they go, oh,

I'll go somewhere cheaper.

That's okay. I have enough work to see me happy. Would you have four?

three and a half years ago saying well i've got enough work i'm very grateful

for it but i can now pick and choose and i can pick my clients and select what i

want to work on and you know it's a wonderful position to be in it's

fantastic now another point that we wanted you to look into was trying to

some confidence and a bit of self -belief to sell your work and yourself

from spending the day here with you today i'd say you've smashed that i've

really tried but one of the biggest things that's really helped me has been

helping other people If somebody comes in and they're really nervous and they

calm into it and then they're having a really good time and they're relaxed,

it's such a rewarding feeling for me.

That's really helped me become, I guess, a more confident person.

I'm so pleased to hear just how far Alex has come in the past three and a half

years. He's really leaned into all the advice Adrian and I gave him and I can't

wait to hear what it's meant for his bank balance.

Do you mind if we talk figures?

This is a business after all.

So how much are you earning these days?

This year has been probably my best year.

I'm on track to pay myself around about £40 ,000 this year, which is like... Oh,

my God. £40 ,000?

Yeah.

I'm like...

I never thought I would have ever seen that sort of money.

With the best will in the world, I do work like six days a week and play ten

hours a day. Don't get me wrong, you deserve every penny of it, but that is a

lot of money.

Yeah. How has that changed things in your life?

I've been able to put down a deposit on a house and move out of my parents'

place. Congratulations.

Which is incredible.

It just goes to show, doesn't it, if you've got the hard work, the dedication

and the love and the passion for something, you can make it happen.

Just a few years ago, Alex wasn't really making any money from his craft.

Now he's earning £40 ,000 a year off the cost and has managed to get onto the

property ladder.

It's an outstanding achievement and I couldn't be happier for him.

I'm really proud of what I've been able to achieve.

I have gotten to work not only on some absolutely incredible jobs, but in some

fantastic places and met some incredible people.

I'm able to not only do a job that I love, but I'm able to help people

doing what I love. And that is something that I genuinely never thought I would

have been able to achieve before.

It's incredible.

Time now to catch up with our second maker.

Mum of two, Lucinda from Wiltshire.

When I first met her just over three and a half years ago, she was hoping to

turn her love of woodturning into a reliable money spinner.

In the day, I'm a stay -at -home parent to two young girls, and so most of my

woodturning work is done at night time or sometimes on the weekend.

To help Lucinda make money from the pieces she made, she was guided by Drew

and Barnaby Ash.

Barnaby turns beautiful pieces from locally sourced British timbers.

Drew is the marketing mastermind of their business.

We're really excited to work with Lucinda. She seems like a very talented

already. There's a lot of elements there that I think could be turned into a

successful business with the right advice and care.

For her volume piece, Lucinda made a pair of makeup brushes from She Oak and

Curly Maple, both filled with natural goat's hair and priced at £65 each.

As this was quite a small piece, I'm just going to jump straight in with the

spindle gouge.

I don't want to take too much off.

I'm just making it circular in shape, and this is what I do at the beginning

all my spindle turnings.

And so just doing a few cuts with the spindle gouge just to fill it up.

As Lucinda turned her two makeup brushes, Barnaby and Drew were keen to

more about the idea behind them.

what gave you the idea to make this particular place i just wanted to make

own brushes and i wanted to make something that had a sort of that sort

ergonomic sort of feel to it it's a lot of like makeup brushes have these sort

of long handles and then they've got to go into a bag or they've got to go

somewhere else yeah well i like how this can you know stand up right and it can

look nice as well just wherever you put it as lucinda was making good progress

with her makeup brushes i grabbed her and drew and barnaby for a chat in my

marquee to get their thoughts on her second item, her high -end piece.

Lucinda brought along a polished decorative tray turned from Ziricote, a

exotic hardwood inlaid at the back with a sterling silver maker's mark.

It had a price tag of £260.

It's absolutely spectacular, and I know how much effort goes into getting such a

polished finish. There's a lot more time and effort than people may realise,

and, yeah, it's very, very well made.

Thank you.

How about the price point?

If I was to make a point about the silver coin in the base, it's a

touch, but if it's going to add a lot to the price point and it's hidden... It

doesn't add, like, a massive thing to it, but it's the fact that a lot of

metals will get a patina or they don't last as long, and when you put this on

there, this...

it does make it last.

That price point for the type of item that you're making, you know, you've got

to look at it from that first perception.

Back at the woodshed, Lucinda got straight back to work on the handles of

pair of makeup brushes.

I'm going to drill into the handle.

I'm going to core out the middle, ready for the hair to go in.

Kind of got to get to a certain depth just for the hair to sort of fit

in there.

I've made a little mark, and I sort of know when I get to that mark, that's

to sort of pull out.

The next step was to sand them and prep the goats hair.

There's definitely ways I could be doing things quicker, but I do take a lot of

time on the small details.

I'm always a perfectionist.

It's something I'm actually trying to work on, because I realise now that a

of the time it's what you see isn't what everyone else sees.

So sometimes I need to take less time, I think, on some aspects of it.

To finish, Lucinda cut the brush's hair to the right shape and glued it into

place.

Her two she -oak and curly maple makeup brushes, topped with natural goat's

hair, took just over three hours to make, and with material costs of £25 per

brush, were priced at £65 each.

I think they're really, really interesting, original, unique pieces. I

seen anything quite like it. I think there's a lot of potential there to find

unique selling point for you in a marketplace.

About the price point? I've seen pieces kind of up to that price point that

weren't as original as yours.

I personally would double down on the high -end aspect and focus on the range

unique timbers, but I think there's definitely a potential to go to kind of

and up, and definitely the top -end is probably what I would focus on. Thank

so much.

Lucinda's make -up brushes were a big hit with Barnaby and Drew, and for her

third challenge, I asked her to make her favourite piece.

to find out if the creations she loved making the most could bring in big

She decided to make a dressing table platter out of fiddleback sycamore with

brass coin inlay, this time on the front of the piece.

It had an asking price of £120.

I'm just transferring my weight from my left to my right foot, just doing a few

passes.

So now that's round, I will cut the back and then I'll come back to this later

to get the shape by doing a little bit of a tapered cut.

It was clear that Lucinda was in her element making her pieces, but Drew

to get her thinking more about selling them.

starting with some tips about how to photograph her work. What we did when we

first began our business is we knew that photography was incredibly important,

so we invested in a really decent camera.

And then what it allows to do is take something simple like that.

So what do you think about a shot like that?

Yeah, I really love the composition and how it's quite simple, but it gets

everything in there. I need to definitely get a camera now.

After getting Drew's photography advice, Lucinda went back to work.

And having shaped and inserted the brass inlay into her platter, she gave the

piece a polish.

Ready to put on the final finish, which will be a bit of wax.

I'm going to apply it, just keeping a little bit of distance from the brass

between the wood, and I'm just going to slowly buff it in and then finish off

with a buffing wheel.

I'm just sort of covering the piece, and then I'm going to remove the excess.

Bit of power.

So I get a clean piece of cloth.

And I just insert.

And this just helps remove any excess.

Lucinda's dressing table platter, made from fiddleback sycamore and inlaid with

a polished brass maker's mark, had a make time of around a day and was priced

£120.

What do you think?

I think it's a really, really beautiful piece. And I do like the fact that the

coin's a bit more visible on this one as well. It really adds to the charm.

The finish is very, very high and the quality of the work is really, really

good. Thank you.

How about the price point? It's a really beautiful form. The finish is lovely.

You know, it's got quite a wide appeal for that type of...

Yeah, I can really see this piece and the brush is playing really well as a

of group shot, stylized together, rituals of beauty and self -care. And

a market where people are willing to spend a bit more.

We were all incredibly impressed with Lucinda's work and she headed back to

Wiltshire with an action plan to help make her dream of having a successful

woodturning business come true.

First, she needed to speed up production to make her pieces more profitable.

Next, we wanted her to increase the price of her fantastic makeup brushes.

And finally, she needed to improve her branding and marketing to help sell her

work.

For the next eight weeks, Lucinda worked on her plan, supported by Barnaby and

Drew.

She started with speeding up the creation of her brushes, which included

designed one.

This is my sort of like a contouring type brush.

Oh, wow.

I'm really excited about this. Yeah.

I like the form as well. Yeah,

and they stand up as well. They all go in style with the other ones.

Sounds like some amazing progress. We're really excited for you and seeing how

much you've done.

Yeah, I really like the new brushes.

Thank you.

Bye.

Lucinda also took part in her first craft fair.

Over four days, she had the chance to sell her work to customers looking for

very best handmade pieces.

I'm in my 10th, so I've just had a couple of days here so far, and it's

really well. What I've sold so far is more than I've sold in the time I have

been online, through social media and stuff.

The brushes went down really well, so I've almost sold out all my brushes.

That was amazing.

And I'm just really enjoying myself.

In the two months after my boot camp, Lucinda did everything she could to get

her business up and running.

And when she returned to report back on her progress, she'd absolutely nailed

it. I've made £2 ,065.

And I'm really impressed with what I've done. You should be.

In this short amount of time.

I've just been like, wow, OK, this could be something.

And you really need to understand how much progress you have made in this

period of time.

Going from it being a night -time hobby where she was hardly selling anything to

making over £2 ,000 in just a few weeks was a fantastic achievement for Lucinda.

She had to take off her cost, but it was the beginning of something big for her.

It's now been over three and a half years since she arrived at my bootcamp,

to find out how much her profits have grown since then, Drew and Barnaby have

headed to Wiltshire to catch up with her.

Hiya, come on in.

How are you guys doing? Hi, Lucinda. Lovely to see you. Yeah, you too.

Lucinda's recently moved house and has built her own brand new workshop, which

is actually a bit smaller than her last one.

It's interesting, you seem to have downsized and specialised a little bit.

at boot camp I was doing, you know, the platters, I was doing all these

homewares and then the brushes and as, you know, the business has developed

started to sort of drop the platters and focus on the brushes and that's what's

been the sort of big seller and by able to do that I can kind of use less

equipment, be more efficient with my time.

I've had clients, I've bought over 20 makeup brushes now and I've realised

they're quite collectible.

Where do you sell your work now?

Most of my brushes are sold via my website.

I also do commissions.

I did use the dabble in craft fairs, but I sort of focused more on just doing my

collections and drops.

as that's worked really well and i have lots of people who collect makeup

brushes from america buying big orders which has been amazing it's really

special to see you doubling down on on sort of the more high -end and more

creative aspects of what you do and really zeroing in on the brushes you've

really made it your own and developed some really interesting really special

techniques that sort of set you apart as sort of not competing with others and

more like the only doing the specific thing you're doing oh thank you yeah

been amazing i've I started to introduce butterflies, and I've started to add

sapphires to makeup brushes, because why not?

It's been very exciting.

Specializing in one type of product has helped Lucinda to broaden her materials

and incorporate special objects into her unique makeup brushes, which are now

priced between £95 and £300 each.

Her latest creation is made from pink ivory wood, a beautiful Southern African

hardwood. and includes the wing of a butterfly that died naturally sourced

a butterfly farm it has material costs of 45 pounds and a make time of half a

day it's priced at 220 pounds and lucinda's going to show barnaby and drew

it's made what we're doing at the moment is we're just taking those edges off

the corners and making the piece round

it's a very hard dense wood so i'm sort of taking slow cuts of it i've got it

near enough to like where i want it and where i will start to section the pieces

off the naturally pink african wood is very rare making lucinda's makeup brush

even more desirable to create the handle's curve lucinda uses a spindle

checking its height as she goes to make sure it fits with the rest of her 60

millimeter tall brush range

Toggle the side there.

Just like that, and then you've got yourself a nice mover cut now.

When she's happy with the handle's shape, Lucinda uses a large drill bit,

a Forstner bit, to create a wide hole for her brush's bristles.

I'm not going to rush this part at all, and the wood can overheat, and then you

can... get cracks and things like that so i will take it with a few passes then

i'll come back out and then i'll go back in just to make sure that i'm not

damaging the wood these woods were just so dense so say if i was

turning sycamore something like that it would just go straight through and it

would cut through like butter but these ones are just a bit more please be a bit

more careful with them

With the hole for the goat's hair created, Lucinda sands the wood to get

any ridges.

Next, she saws off the end, creates a shallow hole

for a recycled silver maker's mark, and finishes it with an oil to give the wood

a bit more colour.

Then it's time to add a laminated butterfly wing with a strong, fast

adhesive.

It's a bit of a fiddly stage.

You have to be really careful.

The wings are very fragile.

This is a blue morpho butterfly.

These come from the Amazon.

It was really popular to work with blue morpho butterflies in the Victorian era.

What they would do is they'd place glass over the wing and they'd turn them into

serving trays and all sorts.

I'm going to spray it with some Activate.

And that just helps the glue dry a lot faster.

Once the glue has set, Lucinda sands the handle down.

What I'm going for is that glass finish, like it looks like glass when it's

done. Yeah, yeah.

So you've got to have real attention to detail.

It's looking really, really beautiful, Lucinda. Thank you.

It's great to see Lucinda making a new product, and Barnaby and Drew are keen

find out what else she's been up to since we last saw her over three and a

years ago.

What would you say is your biggest success that you've had since boot camp?

I'd say just... The overall development of the brushes itself, but also the

Queen Elizabeth Scholarship, that was the main thing I got to really develop

designs and my products and the way they're made, the materials they work

I started to turn stone as well in my scholarship, so I plan to do more stone

handle brushes, which will be quite exciting.

Yeah, I've been really impressed to see actually with some of your processes, I

can see there are certain ways of doing things you've developed that are unique

to you. Yeah. And that's very, very exciting.

The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust is a charity that funds training and

education for makers across the UK, and it helped Lucinda develop her skills.

To finish her new butterfly handle makeup brush, she creates a glassy shine

the wood by using a finishing polish traditionally used for wooden musical

instruments.

A nice sort of even tone across the wing. Yeah.

Wow. And I would say that's it now.

She then combs high -grade goat fibres.

creates a knot and glues them into the handle.

Lucinda's new pink ivory wood makeup brush with butterfly wing inlay is an

exquisite high -end product and comes with a price tag of £220.

Focusing on luxury makeup sponges and brushes like this is a great business

plan. And I'm keen to find out if any of the advice we gave her back at the boot

camp has also helped drive her business forward and how it's paying off

financially.

When you came to boot camp, you really spoke about getting those prices up a

little bit, especially on your more luxurious pieces.

How's that gone for you? That's gone quite well. I think it's kind of long

overdue for me to maybe do that again with just the techniques I'm using, the

materials I'm using.

you know, the silver, the gemstones, the exotic woods, butterflies.

So I think, you know, it's probably time for me to consider doing that again.

And maybe I just need to have a bit more confidence to just go for it. There's

definitely potential to sort of continue on. But what you've done so far is

really, really amazing.

Something else we wanted you to focus on with your branding and marketing. Is

that something that you've managed to do?

Yes, I think the branding is a massive part of what I'm doing is I'm also

selling kind of like a concept. It's not just a, you know, a makeup brush is a

bit more than that. And I really implemented the advice I got when I last

you guys invest in a really good camera, learning those photography skills. And

it's really excelled my branding to the point where I've got featured in the New

York Times, where they use my images. And I'm like, that was just such a

for me to realize how far.

My skills have come and just the business itself.

Yeah, having your brand image and brand recognition is really important. You've

really curated and cultivated something that's very uniquely yours, especially

when it reflects in the material and everything that you've chosen to use.

getting in something like the New York Times is a really wonderful, wonderful

thing to achieve. So that's fantastic, especially with your imagery.

Lucinda spent the last three and a half years honing her skills and business.

And I'm looking forward to hearing what that's meant for her earnings.

How much have you made through your work? What have you made for the

So on average, I make around $24 ,000 a year.

Wow, that's incredible.

Congratulations. Huge improvement.

I think it could be higher, but at the moment, you know, I'm a single parent

with two kids, and it's like, what works for me? And I think...

Making higher end but less is what I'm comfortable with without feeling like

going to burn out.

But I hope it will continue to grow. I'm excited for what's to come. If I hadn't

gone through this experience, I don't know if I would have a business today.

may have just remained a hobby.

So I'm really grateful.

Lucinda works around 20 to 25 hours a week to suit her family lifestyle,

£24 ,000 a year after cost.

It's a brilliant achievement, and I've no doubt that the only way is up for her

now. Three and a half years ago, I was just turning things in my garage,

things online. I never thought anything like this was going to happen. I didn't

think I'd have a business.

I have people collecting my work all over the world and people recognise me

the brush lady and it's quite something and I'm quite proud of myself and I

can't wait to see what's to come.

Lucinda and Alex have spent the last few years working hard on all the advice we

gave them.

And they've now got fantastic, sustainable businesses that I'm sure

continue to grow.

Want some help building a business that lasts?

Visit the Open University's interactive guide for practical help to sustain and

grow your business.

Scan the QR code on screen or visit connect .open .ac .uk forward

slash I made it at market.