TULSA – Cheyenne Kelly (Yuchi/Mvskoke) is a 25 year old certified makeup artist and the face of Indigenous Ink, a beauty service specializing in permanent makeup- ombre powder brows, nano blading, lip blushing and eyeliner tattooing. Currently part-time at Beauty Bar Med Spa in Tulsa, Kelly has grown her own clientele and plans to expand her skills and services.
How it started
Kelly began work right after high school graduation full-time at a post office. She felt she struggled in school and didn’t want to go to college. She worked there for five years and thought it would be her forever placement until life took a turn when she lost her father.
“That just kind of changed the trajectory of my life. I was kind of like ‘I’m not supposed to be here anymore, I need to go back home,’” Kelly shared. Kelly moved home, and was unemployed for a few months before finding fulltime work.
Knowing her interests, she began researching permanent makeup training and learned it can cost thousands of dollars. Knowing that federal funding wouldn’t help her through school, she waited two years before fully committing.
After looking into Beauty Bar Med Spa in Tulsa, Kelly learned that not only was their training cost affordable but they also offered night classes, ensuring she could stay at her full-time job.
“Through Oklahoma you have to take 300 hours to get a license, so I just went from 3-7 p.m. and two days out of the weekend, my job was thankfully flexible with me,” said Kelly.
“I’m kind of at the part where I’m done with my schooling, I already took my test through the state and I’m licensed. I’m dabbling into more stuff so I have my business going, I’m still at Beauty Bar Med Spa right now,” Kelly said.
Beauty Bar Med Spa owner Kristy Ha is Kelly’s instructor and taught Kelly everything she knows. According to Kelly, Ha is First Nations from Canada. “I’ve been there and I’m honestly just dabbling into so much stuff and people message me all the time wanting to get in. I have a waiting list,” Kelly said.
Media Buzz
She started her training in January of this year, and she has been doing cosmetic tattooing since February. She started a social media account, “Indigenous Ink,” to reach potential clients through her profile.
Currently running her own social media business, Kelly is still learning how to navigate her business and on-line presence.
“Honeslty, I didn’t even expect that I just graduated the program and they had to take pictures of me so I was like I’ll just post them and honestly, genuinely I didn’t expect that reaction at all. I’m so grateful for people that shared and followed my page because I didn’t think it was gonna go anything like that. I’m very grateful it did,” Kelly said.
Her clientele list so far has traveled from Oklahoma City, Holdenville, and Seminole.
“People travel from down south to come up, they have been messaging me and they don’t care what prices that they pay, they just want me to do it, which is crazy to me,” said Kelly.
Kelly tries to message everyone back, she wants to reach a personal connection with each potential client. She shared, “It’s not just about the price, what are they looking for? Am I the right fit or not?”
According to Kelly, permanent makeup requires understanding how skin texture can affect the outcome. “You have to talk to people and get to know how their skin is, just to see what they’re interested in because some people don’t wear makeup at all and they don’t know what they want. They’re like ‘is this going to look crazy on me? Is there another alternative that we can do?’ Stuff like that, they don’t know it’s going to look natural,” Kelly said.
For Kelly, the difficulty was not the cosmetic tattooing itself, but realizing that everyone’s face is unique. So she has to look at their face shape, figure out what would fit their frame, map their face and make sure no mistakes are made in the process.
“I always tell my clients like everything that I do to you, I’m not making you look better. I’m just enhancing your natural looks because you’re already beautiful. So everything that I do is just enhancing whether it’s defining your lip border, giving you eyebrows. I try to stay pretty natural to their natural shape unless they don’t want to,” Kelly said.
The enjoyment
“I like being able to help people feel better about themselves and a lot of people come and they’re a little bit vulnerable,” Kelly said. “So they’re kind of like ‘I don’t like this about me’ or ‘I want a change and not have to wake up and not have any brow’ so I kind of like that part of it.”
Kelly likes working for herself and putting her results on her Indigenous Ink social media pages and seeing all of the responses.
“As far as running my own business I guess I can’t say I haven’t fully dove into that yet, but the business is a reflection of me so I really like that people like what I’m doing and I’m able to express myself, this is mine and I’m able to say I did this on my own.”
Kelly is currently starting to get into the paramedical services such as scars, stretch marks, and areola restoration. After she receives her license for those, she wants to get into scalp services for people that are dealing with hair loss.
Future plans
Right now Kelly is focused on adding more to her services at Beauty Bar Med Spa, however her plan later on is to be able to venture off and run her own place. Currently she is working to get her Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), and she wants to make sure she has the confidence to run her own spot.
“Within 5 to 10 years I want to have my own spot. I live in Glenpool, so I’d like to bring something like a Beauty Bar to Glenpool. I want to be able to teach other people when I get my instructor’s license and help other people that want to do the same thing that I do,” Kelly said.
Kelly’s instructor Ha was her motivator. Kelly saw how much Ha had pushed her and believed in her.
“She has a great establishment, all the people that work there are super nice and she has such patience with every student. Honestly, I’m only as good as what she has taught me, she really poured in a lot and she has a lot of late nights that she’s there with students. She has offered more stuff to me to advance my techniques that I have right now, so that’s what I’m doing,” Kelly said.
Appreciative of all her clients
Kelly is very grateful for the overwhelming response, especially in the community. “Native people are big with community. They want to see everybody else be better and strive to be the next big thing. So I feel super grateful that I brought something new to the community,” said Kelly.
“It’s just the small things and making a difference in people’s lives, making it easier and making them feel better about themselves. We deserve to feel good about ourselves.”
For anyone that wants to look at her services, results or consult about the services she provides you can find her on Facebook Indigenous Ink by Cheyenne.
