Tiktok star Keilidh is Kashing in on her makeup skills
Award- winning Best Beauty influencer has grown her business from her box bedroom and with over half a million followers the face of popular brand Morphe now has her own range
Ireland’s leading beauty influencer –with over half a million followers on Instagram – told how she’s gone f rom rags to riches.
Keilidh Cashell, 24, grew a fanbase posting makeup tutorials from her nana’s box room in Monaghan and now she has her own makeup range.
From such humble beginnings the stunner shot to fame, appearing on billboards across the US as the face of American beauty brand Morphe Cosmetics.
Keilidh told the Irish Mirror : “I spent my whole Leaving Cert year working on my art portfolio, but I didn’t get enough points to get into art college, it was a blessing in disguise because I wouldn’t be doing what I ’m doing now if I was there.”
Things have exploded for the star on Tiktok.
She explained: “I love Tiktok as Instagram has become very business like, Tiktok is so natural, you could just post a video of yourself eating cereal and that could go viral.” From collaborating with Youtube legends Manny Mua and James Charles and a slew of awards under her belt, including Best Beauty Influencer at our own IMAGE Magazine Business of Beauty Awards,Keilidh is fast becoming as big as Pippa O’connor.
But she’s not as big as the Love Island crew just yet, she quips: “The Love Island guys like Maura Higgins have me beat but I ’m getting there.
“My job is my phone and it’s something you have on n you at all times.
“I have to put my phone on airplane ne mode in the evening times, I try to respond to o everyone, as I have the loveliest t bunch of people e following me.
“The least I can do is respond back.
As fort rolling? “There’s always negativity, egativity, If you’ re putting yourself online.
People think well if you’re putting yourself out there, I feel like the Internet has made it very easy for people to hate, to shove their unwanted opinions somewhere.
“When you see someone online it dehumanises them and people don’t think it’s a real person.
“I don’t receive a lot of hate, these people are wanting to get a reaction out of you, the worst thing you can do is give them that, it eggs them on.
“To be honest I get so many people sending me positive comments that I feel I ’m doing them a disservice focusing on the negative ones.
Starting small was her foundation: “Originally I was in a little corner of the bedroom, we have a dormer bungalow, there’s a wee window at the top, my makeup station was on a bookcase, then I moved to my nana’s house to create a wee studio.
“So I used to have to travel up and down with my mum to Dublin, I had to get up at the crack of dawn.
“Ever y day I got up at 5am to create a crazy makeup look to post on Instagram.
“I look back on it now and say how did I do it?
“I started off working with Inglot and learnt a lot of core makeup skills and working with loads of different make- up artists.
“I really honed in on blending on myself and creating videos.
“I was literally only living with my boyfriend with his family in a small little box room up until last year in a single bed.
“I’m a very big believer in manifestation, if you think it can happen why can’t it.
“I was doing one of my tours I do, called The Keilidh Experience.
“I do tours across Ireland and America, giving makeup masterclasses.
“Someone asked me what’s the makeup brand I’d like to collaborate with and I said Morphe and then it happened.
“They have the biggest influencers working with them and when they rang me to chat on the phone and asked me to be the face of one of their pallets, I could not get over it.
“I was flown over to LA, we had an amazing photoshoot, the photographer worked with Vogue magazine.
“Everything was the best of the best, everything in LA was a totally different world.
“I was such a Tomboy when I was younger and I never dr ea mt of being there.
“But this is a very new job and nobody knows how long it’s going to last so you have to make the most of it.
The beauty and her boyfriend Darren Kavanagh ( pictured inset) are childhood sweethearts.
She said: “Darren is my rock, we’ve been together 14 years.
In five short years since becoming a makeup artist Keilidh has created her own beauty range, Kash.
She said: “I wanted it to be the quality of the big brands you’d find in Brown Thomas, but affordable to everyone.
“I feel like because I ’m not just an influence rand Ia man actual makeup artist, I spent months creating the right pigment, I’m a perfectionist.
“Some people think how can you make a job out of painting your face, but there’s so much more to it, you have to be a photographer, a videographer and a makeup artist.
Commenting on Ireland’ s top influencing competition, she said: “I admire Pippa O’connor and Suzanne Jackson who created empires for themselves, I feel like every woman should be inspired by that.
“They’re great business women but I feel like I ’m my own woman.”
I was literally only living with my boyfriend with his family in a small little box room up until last year in a single bed.