Some of us are fortunate enough to be born with a creative flair or a sense of style. Suppose you are one of the fortunate few, now you are posed with a problem: how do you turn your talents into something that can sustain you?  

Grace Emden is a Baton Rouge artist, more specifically, a makeup artist, who specializes in special effects makeup for the movie industry. Grace actually started out making beautiful, high end cakes for weddings and birthday parties and realized, after working on a movie set several years ago that needed a fancy cake for a  banquet scene, that the same skills she applied to decorating cakes could be applied to decorating faces. Since then, Grace and Art Gracefully have been hired for vast array of productions and events – from movies to pet portraits. 

Candace Hampton is a local fashion blogger, whose website, The Beauty Beau, covers a range of affordable and luxury clothing and beauty products with an emphasis on affordability.  Candace grew up in Baton Rouge and has an undergraduate degree in business and an MBA in accounting. She’s put those credential to good use in her day job with the State of Louisiana, but Candace doesn’t want to spend the rest of her career behind a desk. He Beauty Beau is promising to take her far away from the 9-5, and soon.

Photos at Mansurs On The Boulevard by Ken Stewart and Rick LeCompte.