Make-up artist Sarah New posted her first transformation video on TikTok from her bedroom in lockdown 2020.
Fast forward two years and the 21-year-old from Caerphilly now has over 2.5 million followers and is poised to launch a global make-up range.
Using the power of make-up and prosthetics Sarah has taken the internet by storm with her videos, which show her transforming into various celebrities, characters, emojis and more. Her success has been so huge that making TikTok videos is now her full-time job.
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Sarah said she had always loved experimenting with different make-up looks, but that her passion really took hold in her teen years.
She said: "I used to do dancing when I was a young teenager and I think that's what got me into it - I used to do my make-up for dance competitions. I've also always loved Halloween, so when that came around I always wanted to dress up."
Before her work on TikTok caught the eye of millions, Sarah was uploading photos to Instagram for a number of years. It wasn't until lockdown happened that friends and family urged her to give the new social media phenomenon a go.
At the time, Sarah was a student at Arts University Bournemouth studying make-up for media and performance. Although she hadn't always wanted to go to university, she said she learnt valuable skills which had helped grow her success.
She said: "At first I didn't want to go to university because I knew I wanted to do make-up and I didn't think it was really necessary. However, both my sisters went to university and my mum encouraged me to have a look and see what courses were about. That's when I found Arts University Bournemouth and the course looked like so much fun.
"A lot of my make-up skills were self-taught, so when I saw that they taught wigs and prosthetics, I thought that's probably not something I could teach myself. So I did it and it's the best decision I've ever made.
"When I was doing my course, I originally wanted to go into either film or photography make-up, but it's a really difficult industry to get into. So, as soon as my socials started blowing up I decided to pursue that. It was good timing because during that lockdown it was my last year of university. I was working from home, so I had a lot more time on my hands to work on my social media and grow it and luckily just as I graduated, I was at a place where I could go full-time."
At first, Sarah said she found making videos challenging as it was completely new to her. However, she said she refused to give up and instead practised until she became good at it.
"At first I really struggled with transitions and stuff like that," she said. "But the more I practised the more I started to really enjoy it. It's a really long process, so sometimes I do still have days where I struggle, but I love seeing the final result.
"The make-up is one side of it, but then learning how to make really good content is difficult. I look at what other big TikTokers are doing and try to imitate them. I'll look at what channels are trending and what kind of style videos do best, I'll take that and do my own version of it."
Sarah said her videos could take anywhere from four hours to eight hours to perfect before she uploaded them to her profile, @sarahnewsfx.
Because of all the work that goes into her videos, Sarah said it was amazing when her TikToks started gaining real momentum just a few months after she joined the platform.
She said: "My first TikTok that actually blew up was a get ready with me style video where I did really curly hair. That got a million views, which was so crazy to me at the time. That was only a couple of months after I started TikTok."
However, her followers really started to soar when she produced an emoji series, where she created make-up looks inspired by emojis.
"It was a trend that went around in 2021. People would comment with emojis and I would do make-up inspired by them. One of them is my most viewed video, it got about 50 million views. That video is basically what got me my whole following.
"I went from 80,000 followers on TikTok to 500,000 in about a week and then I started getting in the millions two or three weeks into the series.
"It feels so surreal because I've been on Instagram for a while and my content was doing well but it wasn't really growing. When I joined TikTok, it was like a whole new world. Your content can literally blow up because of the most random things."
Sarah said she now had a management agency who helped link her up with brands so she could do TikTok full-time. She has recently moved into a new flat in Bournemouth and works in a room used as a studio.
"I do TikTok full time now. It's honestly my dream job to work for myself doing what I love. I feel so grateful for it," she said.
"Because I'm self-employed, I do get to choose when I work which is great. I try not to force it if I'm not feeling inspired, but I do try and get out a certain amount of looks every week.
"Typically I film two to three, maybe four in a week. It really depends on how I'm feeling. Some of them will be sponsored videos my management has given me. Others will be videos I want to do because I'm inspired and feel creative. I also spend a lot of time editing because I don't film in TikTok. Sometimes I film one day and then edit the next day."
Earlier this year, Sarah won a competition with the make-up brand Makeup Revolution. The Creator Revolution competition attracted more than 8,000 entries from across the world and saw Sarah compete in six challenges.
Sarah was then judged by a range of creative industry experts, including fellow TikTok star Abby Roberts and Glow Up 2019 winner Ellis Atlantis.
As winner of the competition, Sarah is now taking part in a £75,000 global product range with Makeup Revolution. It will launch with major retailers around the world in November.
She said: "I'm working with Makeup Revolution to come up with my own line which will hopefully be released around November. I'm super excited, it's going to be face paint and really colourful. It'll be in Superdrug stores and online as well as on the Makeup Revolution website. We've just agreed on a final design so I should be getting a sample product soon and I'm super excited. Seeing it in stores is going to be unreal."
Sarah said her friends and family had been extremely supportive throughout her journey on social media and were really proud of what she had achieved so far.
"My friends and family were so happy for me because they knew I'd been working on my social media since I was a young teenager and then they could see I was finally getting real results from it," she said. "My mum has also been really supportive of me so she was really proud of me."
Sarah said she'd encourage anyone to follow their dreams and not give up on pursuing what they loved.
She said: "Keep at it, not everyone is going to be perfect at the start. I struggled with that myself when I first started doing videos because I knew they weren't perfect, I had never done it before.
"But the more you do something, the better you get. Just keep practising and keep going - you never know where you're going to go with it."
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