recent work Archives - Behind the Blush

Couples Session in Croatia

With all the planning going on our upcoming trip to Ireland for an elopement it reminded us to share some of the stunning images that Nicole took of Stefanie and Drew while we were in Croatia last year. We spent the day exploring the old city of Dubrovnik with rock hangouts, gelato pit stops and at the end of the day took in a magical sunset. Photography by Nicole Ashley and hair and makeup by us!

You really never know the people who you will come across in your life or what circumstances will change your life forever. On October 1, 2017, I was in Las Vegas with Nicole during the mass shooting and ended up meeting Oksana and Ray while hiding in a bathroom until it was deemed safe to come out. We spent hours with them and decided to exchange contact info since we felt bonded to them after our experience that night. The next month we were set to travel to New York for work and it ended up that we were staying in Brooklyn where Oksana and Ray also lived. The stars aligned and we were able to do their engagement session while we were there. Nicole posted all the photos on her site with two posts which you can click on here for the first post and then here for the second. I just wanted to share a few on our site as well since the photos are just so stunning! We were all so happy to be able to make some photo magic and create some better new memories after how our last meetup went.

2017 brought so many adventures and changes for Behind the Blush and we wanted to take the time to thank each and every client, family member, friend and supporter that we have for helping make our year the best yet!! We got to expand our team to include Caitlyn and Diane and ended up traveling the world! Check out our 2017 year in review below and we cannot wait to see what 2018 holds for us. Our 2017 year started out with some boudoir beauties while working with Nicole Ashley We also started a monthly favorite series to share our product loves with everyone and do reviews on products that really wowed us. Check them out here for January, February, March Our good friend Suzanna asked to come speak at her school’s Career Day and we presented a talk on how we started our small business and followed our dreams to create Behind the Blush. This is selfie we took with Suz right after our talk! We worked with Lululemon again for one of their Ambassador Love shoots for Meg in her studio. Photo by Nicole Ashley Laurence and Oliver tied the knot in February. Photo by Woodland Photography Co In February we did a collaboration with Nicole Ashley to shoot some different beauty looks on the stunning Jaeda from Mode Models. You can check out all of the photos here! In February our good friends Ryan and Kristina welcomed their baby boy Jack into the world and we worked with Nicole Ashley on this newborn session. We’ve expanded to sell hair product on our site! Check out our shop here! The same day that we worked with Jaeda we also filmed a hair tutorial and you can see the full video for that here! In February we did a styled shoot with an amazing team and in May the shoot was featured on Artfully Wed. Check out the full post here! In March we worked with an amazing team of FaBLOOMosity, The Skinny, and Carmen Freemark to create some pastel magic on this kids styled shoot. See more images on our full blog posts here and here. Perhaps the most exciting news of 2017 for us was expanding our duo to a team of four to include Caitlyn and Diane! Photo by Nicole Ashley In April we also worked on this styled shoot that got featured in Green Wedding Shoes. We loved…

It’s been over a month now since we met up with Nadja and Rolf who came from Switzerland to Las Vegas to celebrate their anniversary and to attend the Route 91 Harvest Festival. If you’ve been following our social accounts then you know most of the story about how all four of us thankfully survived the deadliest shooting in US history. We don’t want to use this post to expand more on the experience except that our thoughts and prayers are with the families and victims and that we hope to meet up with Nadja and Rolf in the future to create some new memories. We wanted to share the beautiful images and behind the scenes of the photo’s that Nicole was able to capture out in Red Rock. To see the full blog post visit Nicole Ashley’s site here.

This past May we were hired to travel across the ocean to Positano, Italy for an elopement! As many of you follow our blog posts, Facebook and Instagram we are sure you saw the sneak peeks and experiences that we had but no words can describe how amazing this little nook of the world is! We were lucky enough to all share an amazing villa which was only a short 15-minute walk to the main downtown/beach area of Positano. Maybe it was the time of year, but this place was seriously magic. The flowers were all in bloom, the weather was at a perfect mid 20’s (with no bugs) and it smelled like flowers and salt water everywhere you went! Our roles for this trip were basically to make Kim and Chris, our couple, feel little to no stress and we stepped up in more ways than our typical job roles would require. From helping with dinners, picking up greenery, decorating for the ceremony. We had the opportunity to do two days of shooting with the couple Kim and Chris for the wedding day and then the day after shoot in a boat! The wedding day was a very early morning as we started at 3:30 am for hair and makeup to have her dressed and prepped for sunrise. Chris also had some pampering, and their friends who joined us- Rob and Megan even snuck in for a quick men’s cut and hair/makeup styling before the ceremony later that evening. The beautiful thing about an elopement is the only rush or agenda at all as we are just working with Nicole to make sure we have the best light for the photos. We have been beyond blessed with the number of travel opportunities for weddings, elopements and engagement sessions and we are so excited to finally share all the images with you! Nicole Ashley, our dear friend, and amazing photographer has been a big reason for all of our success and shared even more photo’s over on her site.

Sometimes schedules and fate really work out in your favor as we ended up booking a second session when we were planning on being in Europe in May/June of this year. Kailey and Dave had Nicole and I fly out to Nice, France to shoot their engagement session in May after we finished the elopement in Italy that originally brought us out to Europe. You have to check out even more of the photos and their full love story here on Nicole’s site! I had been to Nice once before but I had forgotten how really beautiful and magical Nice really is. After I did Kailey’s hair and makeup and helped them decide what to wear we headed out to some of their favorite spots in Nice while Nicole captured their love. From eating gelato in the Old Town of Nice to swishing the perfect basket of flowers on a pebbled beach and then finishing the photos at sunset on a cliff by a light house. We couldn’t have asked for a better couple to work with and we are even more excited for their upcoming wedding in September!

As a second part to the styled shoot of Pastel Hair Magic we took two of our adorable kid models to create some fun hair looks to showcase some styles that could work amazingly for flower girls or junior bridesmaids. To see even more flower girl hair ideas, and a unicorn, check out our previous post here. To start with both of the girls hair was colored using Joico Color Intensity semi permanent direct deposit colors in purple and pink. On Jessica we curled her hair using the GHD creative curl wand and then did two dutch braids to meet in the back to almost create a half braided crown. We left the pieces out in the front to create that soft pretty look. For Juliane’s look we curled her hair also with the GHD wand and then twisted the front side section of hair onto itself and then added in the stunning tropical flowers from FaBLOOMosity. Both of these looks paired so perfectly with these The Skinny dresses that Erinn provided for the shoot! All photos by Carmen Freemark.

What do you do when it’s the middle of winter/spring in Edmonton and you want to have a Moroccan inspired wedding? You get together with some of the best vendors in the wedding industry and lug a whole set up several flights of stairs to create the most magical and cozy styled elopement. We are so proud of this shoot and of the fact that it got featured in Green Wedding Shoes here. Nicole from Delica Bridal approached Nicole Ashley and us with the opportunity of having our pick of one of the beautiful dresses from Daughters of Simone and then the shoot really grew from there into the images you are seeing here today. Read below for all the vendors and what they contributed to this shoot to help bring our vision to life! Nicole from Delica Bridal provided the stunning dress from Daughters of Simone and the shoot really was built around the vision of the dress. Janine of Fabloomosity created a stunning bridal bouquet and also staged the entire set with extra florals and greenery. She has such an amazing eye for decorating on top of her obvious talent for floral art. Amor with Hunt Amor had a diamond in mind the moment we brought the shoot idea to her. She was able to create a custom engagement ring and matching wedding band with such short notice. She also created the amazing earrings Samantha wore as well as Shawn’s wedding band and cuff links. Neat Rentals provided all of the rugs and furniture that worked so perfectly with our Moroccan theme. They were so kind to also lend us some sheepskins and bronzed accessories. They have the best selection of rental vintage rugs and furniture in Edmonton hands down. We connected with Rubana of Crimson Letters on Instagram and we instantly fell in love with her work in the paper medium. She was so lovely to work with to create some pieces based on our Moroccan theme and mail them all the way to us in Canada. Marie Zydek came and styled our models and assisted in staging and we couldn’t have pulled this off without her styling skills. Simons was gracious enough to lend out the clothing and accessories for this shoot. We got to work with some amazing models from Mode Models: Samantha and Shawn. We kept saying how they looked like Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom during…

When we worked on a wedding last summer with Clara as a photographer we instantly knew we wanted to work with her again. Her style matched ours so well and the images she captured were stunning. She asked us to be part of a styled shoot and we are proud to say that the shoot got featured on Artfully Wed! So proud of the work that all the vendors did to create this romantic styled shoot. Check out the full feature here and we’ve put some of our favorite images below. Photographer: Clara Cecilia Photography Makeup: Janna Huget Hair: Stefanie Carlson Event Designer: Kelsey Siemens Florals: Bethany-Ann Flowers & Styling Cake: The Art of Cake Wedding Dress: Maison Bridal Boutique Dress Designer: Watters Paper Goods: Blissful Paper Co. Furniture Rentals: Details Vintage Rentals: Special Events Rentals Models: Kelsey Siemens & Kyle Kurtz

With the beginning of a new year we decided to start it off with a fresh new website! We don’t want to forget about 2016 so lets look back at a year of changes and adventures for us. Stefanie moved into her new house and built her in-home salon (she also just announced new full time hours and that she is taking on new clients!). We loved working with each and every client we had this year and getting to be a part of their big days. From engagement sessions, maternity sessions, elopements, weddings and styled shoots we could not have asked for more amazing clients to take us on their journey. We are so looking forward to what 2017 has in store for us!! What better way to celebrate the beginning of a new year than to look back on what made 2016 so special for us. Thank you to everyone who has supported us, our families, friends and clients have made 2016 an incredible year! We had no shortage of magical winter weddings this year and we loved how each bride styled their wedding for the winter season. This was our first wedding of the season! Makeup & Hair: Stefanie Carlson | Hair: Caitlyn Steinbrenner | Photography: Erin Walker Photography | Florals: Tickled Floral Makeup: Janna Huget | Photography: Tricia Victoria Photography | Florals: faBLOOMosity Hair: Stefanie Carlson | Makeup: Kristina Susnjara | Photography: Nicole Ashley Photography Who doesn’t love a Valentines Day wedding?? Hair and Makeup: Stefanie Carlson | Photography: Tulle and Tweed Photography We hosted our first Makeup Class of 2016 at the brand new faBLOOMosity location Lake Louise! Hair: Stefanie Carlson | Makeup: Janna Huget | Photography: Nicole Ashley Photography Here are some behind the scene photos from our trip to Lake Louise for their wedding Winter engagement session shot by Nicole Ashley. Hair and Makeup: Stefanie Carlson We sponsored Jada Hong for her Miss Universe competition by doing her hair and makeup for her photos for the Miss Universe website. Hair: Stefanie Carlson | Makeup: Janna Huget | Photography: ENV Photography Stef did Rachel’s hair and makeup for her amazing portrait session with Ampersand Grey We worked with an amazing team on this styled shoot called Love her but Keep her Wild. Check out the full shoot and credits here. Stefanie worked with Alyssa Lau on transforming her hair to the most amazing yellow color which she blogged…