Hi, I'm Keshia.

I left school in year eleven. I struggled in school — academically, and with my mental health. Confidence wasn't a thing I had a lot of.

Before beauty, I worked in retail. Fish and chips. A deli. Action sports. Menswear at David Jones, selling underwear and suiting. I was always bored. I never lasted long anywhere.

I was twenty when I saw a beauty course advertised in the newspaper. Eyebrow waxing, tinting, facials. It sounded hands-on, which is what I wanted. I signed up the same week. Halfway through the course, the school turned out to be unaccredited — we had to pay extra to transfer somewhere registered. Some of the girls dropped out. I didn't.

That was the first thing I'd passed in years. It felt like a milestone. Like maybe there was something I could be good at.

I started doing beauty work professionally in my early twenties. Worked for a few different salons. After a few years, I started taking clients in a spare room at home — Keshia's Beauty Room. Then I had my first child. Then I had another. I lived in a three-bedroom house with no spare rooms left.

Around that time, my husband built himself an office in the backyard. A small standalone room — somewhere quiet to work, away from the kids. He'd just finished it when I was six months pregnant with our third.

I asked him if I could borrow the room for Christmas. To take a few clients before the new baby came. He said yes.

After Christmas, I told him I wasn't giving it back. He wasn't thrilled. But it was the first space in our house that was mine — not the kitchen, not the lounge, not a bedroom that doubled as something else. Mine.

I named it Extreme Beauty because it felt extreme. I'd gone from running a business out of a bedroom in a tiny house, six months pregnant, to having my own room. It was the most extreme thing I'd done.

That was sixteen years ago. The room evolved. Then I outgrew it and moved to the studio in Bedford. The clinic comes next.

I take fewer clients than most practitioners. A consultation can run an hour. A tattoo session can run three. I don't double-book. I don't take walk-ins. I don't rush.

Part of that is the work — cosmetic tattoo done well needs time. Mapping a brow takes as long as it takes. If we need to redraw three times before you're happy, we redraw three times.

Part of it is what I want clients to feel when they leave. Most of my clients have been through something — illness, a hard year, a face that's changed in ways they didn't choose. They're not coming to be transformed. They're coming to feel like themselves again. That doesn't happen in twenty minutes.

In the next few years, I want to open a proper clinic. Bigger space, dedicated treatment rooms, possibly a small team. I'd like to bring on someone to help with skin work eventually, so I can focus more on cosmetic tattoo.

For now, I'm here, in the Bedford studio. One client at a time.